World's Congress of Representative Women

The World's Congress of Representative Women was a week-long convention for the voicing of women's concerns, held within the World's Columbian Exposition (Chicago World's Fair) in May 1893. At 81 meetings, organized by women from each of the United States, 150,000 people came to the World's Congress Auxiliary Building and listened to speeches given by almost 500 women from 27 countries.

The World's Congress of Representative Women was arranged, sponsored and promoted by the women's branch of the World's Congress Auxiliary, under the guidance of President Bertha Honoré Palmer, the wife of prominent Chicagoan Potter Palmer. The men of the Auxiliary formed seventeen departments and held more than 100 congresses with a variety of political, social and technical agendas; the women's branch held just one congress. Of all the congresses at the World's Columbian Exposition, the World's Congress of Representative Women was the most highly attended.

Bertha Honoré Palmer served as the president of the 117-woman strong Board of Lady Managers, the organization which dealt with women's business at the World's Columbian Exposition. The Board built the Woman's Building, designed by 21-year-old Sophia Hayden, as the showplace for women's art. The building itself was decorated by women artists, featuring architectural ornament sculpted by Enid Yandell and Alice Rideout, both 19, and a large painting by Mary Cassatt, Modern Woman, one of two extensive murals in the Woman's Building, the other one, Primitive Woman being by Mary MacMonnies. Interior art was curated by Candace Wheeler and Sara Hallowell. The Board also built a Children's Building, a child-care center required to support fair-goers and convention-goers who brought children. As well, the Board built a women's dormitory near the fairgrounds, to house women traveling alone or with small children.

Women at the World's Congress achieved the goals they sought. They had come from each state in the Union to staff and run offices, gather and spend resources, pay their workers, sign contracts; all without going into debt as had many of the men's subcommittees.

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