Governing and Operating the American University Women’s Club House in Paris, 1921

Author: Joyce Goodman, December 2020

The early governance structure of the American University Women’s Club House in Paris was linked closely with its purpose and to the national and international scholarly networks through which it was intended the Club would operate. The 1921 plan for the organisation of the club noted that the aim was:

“to maintain in Paris a Clubhouse in order to afford American University women studying in the Collège de France, the Sorbonne and other university departments residential, social and educational opportunities such as they cannot otherwise obtain. To make the Club an international meeting place for non-resident university women from other countries and also the European centre for the activities for the International Federation of University Women.”

The Board of Managers of the University Women’s Paris Club operated via a finance committee and a membership committee and met monthly between October and May in New York. All Board members had to be members of the American Association of University Women which was formed when the Association of Collegiate Alumnae and the Southern Association of College Women amalgamated in 1921. The Club’s Board of Managers reported twice-yearly to the Governing Committee of the American University Women’s Paris Club, which itself met twice yearly in New York and held its annual meeting in the first week of May.

The Governing Committee in turn was linked to the Committee on International relations of the AAUW and to the International Federation of University Women (IFUW) via the IFUW’s Club Committee. Both the AAUW and the IFUW were represented on the Board of Managers through their chair persons: Virginia Gildersleeve (1877-1965), dean of Barnard College of Columbia University, New York and M. Carey Thomas (1857-1935), president of Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania, and chair of the IFUW’s Club House Committee. All members of the Board of Management were required to be members of the AAUW. Both Gildersleeve and Thomas were founder members of the IFUW and Gildersleeve was the first president of the IFUW. Other members of the Board of Management were also closely involved in both organisations. Dora Emerson Wheeler (Mrs Morton Wheeler, 1869-47) was vice-president of the North Atlantic Section of the American Association of Collegiate Alumnae (ACA) in 1920 and a US voting delegate at the first IFUW conference held in in London in the same year, when she chaired the IFUW nominations committee. This structure combined with networking by members of the Board of Managers aligned the Paris Club with the internationalist ethos of the IFUW. On the other hand, the Club’s operating plan on the other hand prioritised American graduate women.

Operating the Club House in 1921

During university term-time in France, which ran from autumn until late spring, rooms at the Club were to be reserved for university women who were resident students in Paris and attending classes at the Sorbonne, the Collège de France or other academic institutions of “high standing.” During term time, rooms at the Club could only be rented to other university women when there were insufficient students to fill them.

Initially the intention was to fill the bedrooms with American, British and French university women. The 1921 Plan of Operation stipulated that five-sixths of the bedrooms were to be filled by American women. The plan was for the Board of Managers to apportion the remaining one-sixth of the bedrooms between French and British women. A room or rooms were to be reserved for “guests of honour who shall be women of high academic distinction.” Limited accommodation for university women from other countries was to be considered only later.

When the French universities were not in session, the Club was to be open as a residential Club for university women. The preference was to be given to American university women members of the Club and their friends. If demand from American women was sufficient to more than fill the Club, all rooms were to be reserved for American university women. As large a proportion of British university women were to be admitted “in justice to the American women.”

The ground floor rooms were to include the European office of the American Association of University Women (AAUW, the successor organisation to the Association of Collegiate Alumnae) which was also to serve as the office of the International Federation of University Women (IFUW). There was also a lounge, a writing room, and a reading room for non-resident IFUW members and a sitting-room for a visiting Professor.

Sources

Primary sources

Bryn Mawr College Special Collections. Courtesy of the Special Collections Department, Bryn Mawr College Library:

• M.Carey Thomas Personal Papers, IBD2 folder Paris Club House.
  • Plan for the Organisation of the American University Womens Paris Club House               Committee, 1921.

Sybil Campbell Collection, The University of Winchester:

• IFUW. Report of the First Conference, July 1920.