Women’s organizations exist because female-only communities matter. These spaces are built on the shared experiences of women and offer women a place to develop their own voices.
Until very recently, the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) was one such space.
In 1890, the Sons of the American Revolution was founded to honor and preserve the legacy of patriots who fought in the American Revolution. The membership was limited to men who could directly trace their lineage to those who fought for freedom during the American Revolution; women set about creating an equal organization for themselves. They recognized that women, just like men, deserved a space to build community around the shared heritage of patriots who put their lives on the line to start this nation.
The DAR has exceeded its male counterpart in generosity, involvement, and historical preservation. The Sons of the American Revolution boasts about 37,000 members, whereas the DAR has nearly 190,000.
Some of the greatest monuments and national parks can be attributed to the DAR’s involvement and perseverance. The DAR contributed $200,000 to the restoration of Independence Hall, more than $750,000 to the restoration of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, and over $500,000 toward the National World War II Memorial.
This financial footprint and legacy are precisely why what happens within the DAR matters. This organization, created for and by women, has spent more than 130 years preserving the people, places, and principles that shaped our country. Its members have demonstrated what women can accomplish when they organize around a shared mission.
Yet this June, the DAR failed to protect the very women it was created to serve by failing to pass a resolution to define the word “woman” in its National Bylaws. The DAR failed to uphold the legacy that women had built for generations since the founding of our nation.
Evie Magazine described concerns from members during the nearly 12-hour meeting. Around 3,000 voting members were confined to a conference room without water and with little to no access to restrooms, fearing that even stepping outside the room would mean losing their right to vote. On top of these appalling conditions, a lack of adequate information prior to the meeting, mounting frustration with the voting process, and a surprise second vote after some members had been denied entry or had already given up left members feeling depleted and jaded. Members attested that this was a premeditated decision by the DAR to force their desired outcome.
The issue was not merely about the failed resolution, but about the disregard for women’s voices within an institution originally intended to foster them.
Just a few years ago, I experienced a situation that felt shockingly similar.
When I joined Kappa Kappa Gamma at the University of Wyoming, I was looking for the sisterhood and community that sororities promise to women. I wanted the opportunity to live among women in a space designed to foster and support us through my education and my most formative and fun years.
Instead of support and community, I witnessed the sisterhood fall apart when my sorority admitted a biological male despite many members’ concerns and objections. After an initial vote on membership did not admit the individual to my sorority, leadership brought the issue back for a second vote, conducted in a manner that pressured members to support a proposition we had already opposed. We were pressured and shamed into admitting this male “sister,” with some of us feeling like we had little choice.
The division that followed in my sorority chapter taught me what happens when women’s organizations lose sight of their mission and forget to protect the voices of the very women they were created to serve.
My personal experience is hardly a rare occurrence these days. Women’s sports advocate Payton McNabb found herself embroiled in a Title IX violation at her college, Western Carolina University, when a 27-year-old transgender-identifying male was using the women’s restroom while she was in there. When she filmed and posted this interaction, the male took action against her by filing a complaint with the school’s administration.
And for incarcerated women, they have nowhere to turn when states decide to allow male inmates to self-identify as women and transfer into female facilities. The outcome is as horrific as you’d expect, both for the correctional officers and female prisoners — nothing short of cruel and unusual punishment.
When women’s organizations cater to men, we lose the sacred space for women’s voices to truly be heard and the opportunity for sisterhood. Women’s organizations must be allowed to exist to serve the members they were created to serve without being labeled bigots.
The DAR itself should understand this. Its strict membership requirements have always been based on biological, lineal descent from a patriot of the American Revolution. Their rules even require that adopted people establish eligibility based on their biological ancestry, not their adopted family.
If biological lineage is still relevant to DAR’s membership application, why is biological sex now irrelevant?
If an institution with this amount of strict identity background checks and this rich history can lose sight of why a distinctly female organization was valuable in the first place, it raises a much larger question about whether any women-only institution will be permitted to remain meaningfully women-only.
The DAR recognizes that biology matters because its mission depends on it, but it has lost sight of the women for whom its mission was created.
If women’s voices can be erased so easily within organizations meant to protect them, how can we expect to achieve equality outside of them?
Women created organizations like the DAR and sororities like Kappa Kappa Gamma with the firm belief that we, like men, deserved spaces where we could thrive — in community, sisterhood, and in unity toward a common mission. Our responsibility is to refuse to let these spaces disappear.