what did ywca do while women pressed for the right to vote?
YWCA Empowered and Prepared Women for the Workforce, Campaigned for an Eight-Hour Day Aug. 15, 2005, Washington, DC – Americans will mark the 85th anniversary of women gaining the right to vote on Aug. 26, 2005. The YWCA was active in labor issues primarily during that period — advocating for women who were being taken advantage of in the workplace. Voting rights were essential, but the YWCA, like today, also was serving women with crucial needs. While helping pass the 19th Amendment, members were busy campaigning for an eight-hour workday and addressing job training and housing needs for women. Based on the associations’ work with women in industrial plants, the YWCA Convention voted in 1920 not only to work for a law establishing an eight-hour workday, but to advocate for the right of labor to organize and a ban on night work. The members of the YWCA Winston-Salem (NC), like most chapters, were typically middle-to-upper class women. They preferred quiet support for the suffrage move
