The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture

WOMEN'S LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL.

The Women's Legislative Council (WLC) was perhaps the most conservative Oklahoma women's lobbying group in the 1920s. The Oklahoma council was one of many in the United States in which women organized to coordinate legislative activities. California women established the first WLC in 1911. The idea caught on and became a force in promoting legislation in most states by the early 1920s. State organizations of the WLC were probably patterned on the Women's Joint Congressional Committee (WJCC), a national organization whose purpose it was for legislation for women's welfare.

The Oklahoma Women's Legislative Council served the same purpose as the WJCC. Women representing the concerns of various Oklahoma women's clubs worked through the WLC to initiate state instead of federal legislation to solve community problems. The bipartisan organization stated its purpose as a political agency whose members would "select, endorse, promote, or oppose legislative bills for the betterment of humanity in general, women and children especially." Delegate members represented nonsectarian, nonpolitical women's clubs in Oklahoma, including the Oklahoma General Federation of Women's Clubs (consisting of 297 clubs), Young Women's Christian Association, Woman's Christian Temperance Union, Daughters of the American Revolution, United Daughters of the Confederacy, and the PEO, a secret literary club.

Suzanne H. Schrems