At Cornell the home economics department taught innovative classes
on women's role in society during the 1910s on topics such as the
"history of housekeeping" and the "history of women's organizations."
In 1914, Martha Van Rensselaer
and Flora Rose hired Radcliffe-educated
Blanche Hazard as an assistant
professor to develop a series of courses on the history of women
and women's work. After women won the right to vote in New York
State in 1918, Blanche Hazard wrote an essay entitled Civic Duties
of Women. In this article, she instructed women about the electoral
process, the different levels and functions of government, and the
importance of their political participation. In a September 12,
1919 letter to Van Rensselaer, Hazard explained her reasons for
writing the Civic Duties: "Our department did pioneering
emergency work through its staff and the extension agents when the
right to vote was first suddenly put into the lives of N. Y. State
women, knowing as we did, that the average farm woman had not the
access to many suffragists or political speeches or books and would
want to be and need to be an intelligent voter and worker in public
life."
Civic Duties of Women
