The Pink Scare: _The Woman Patriot_ and the Gendering of Radicalism

Abstract

From 1918 to 1932, the five female directors of the Woman Patriot Publishing Company published _The Woman Patriot_ in the wake of the Progressive Era and the First Red Scare. The newspaper emerged as an active voice in the countermovement against women’s suffrage. Despite the anti-suffragists’ efforts, the 19th Amendment’s enfranchisement of women moved women from the private to the public sphere. _The Woman Patriot_ adapted and continued their conspiratorial association of feminism and radicalism. This paper applies resource mobilization theory and political opportunity theory to the strategies of _The Woman Patriot_. While the Woman Patriot Publishing Company ultimately fell out of alignment with its political coalition, its accomplishments complicate the historical understanding of the waning of maternalist reform and the Equal Rights Amendment, and the waxing of female conservatism.