Abstract

Using historical examples from an exceptionally pro-woman Quaker community in Maryland, this essay examines how the epithet “public woman”, accompanied by threats of retaliation and scorn, silenced and discouraged women from assuming strong leadership positions. Local women in this community developed strategies that kept their leadership largely hidden behind a screen of domesticity, but those strategies sacrificed momentum and weakened their ability to energize local social capital to meet the challenges of the post-WWII period. The essay argues that creating gender balance in public leadership requires creating a public realm in which women leaders are highly visible, not isolated, and not endangered. The paper concludes with some suggestions about what legacies from the past might be carried forward as models for contemporary women, and some that are best left behind.