"Women’s Wages": A Central Topic to McCulloch’s Career

After graduating from Union College of Law and returning to Rockford to open her law practice, Catharine Waugh McCulloch went back to the Rockford Female Seminary to pursue an M.A. Her thesis titled “Women’s Wages” spoke to women’s lack of legal status through the lens of income inequality and coverture laws. Under these laws, which were common in Europe and the U.S. at the time, the government viewed women as not citizens but a part of their father’s or husband’s property. Social reformists and women’s rights advocates, such as McCulloch vehemently opposed coverture as a way to subordinate women’s value in society. She addressed opponents to wage equality, and broached the topic of whether women’s work in the home should be quantified, especially in the case of a divorce. The issue came up multiple times in McCulloch’s career with writings ranging from her 1888 thesis to an article written in 1924. 

As a young lawyer, McCulloch represented many women who wanted independence from their husbands and guardians. Due to coverture laws still in place, women were legally viewed as a part of their father’s or husband’s estate. Therefore, any wages they earned outside the home or property they owned was legally theirs. For example, if a woman wanted to divorce her husband she was often left without any property or financial resources to support herself, even if she had been earning wages while married. McCulloch’s 1911 play titled Bridget’s Sisters or The Legal Status of Illinois Women in 1868 described through a fictionalized story about how the legal system did not protect women from abusive and exploitative husbands. Women would even go so far as to hide their wages so their husbands could not spend them without their consent. Bridget’s Sisters showed how much laws had changed since the 1860s, but also how outdated existing laws remained. 

McCulloch took issue with these laws and argued that women deserved more independence from their husbands. Further, She remarked that the founders and early American lawmakers believed women were not contributing members of society therefore they did not receive the same rights as men. However, McCulloch argued that was at the very least no longer the case and that women contributing to the workforce, academia, and working in the home are entitled to equal representation. Catharine Waugh McCulloch made a repeated argument in many of her writings, that since the United States’ founding women have made serious gains to become contributing members to society. By the end of the nineteenth century many colleges allowed women to enroll, and more amidst the industrial revolution more women began working outside the home.

The issue of women’s wages became strongly connected to women’s suffrage. As women became wage earners and taxpayers, a central principle of American politics came into question: that taxation without representation is unjust. In 1902, McCulloch wrote an article for Chicago Legal News, “Tax-Paying Women and the Ballot,” arguing to her fellow attorneys - 

“Are the women tax-payers of Illinois as worthy of confidence and honor as their sisters in the neighboring states? Taxation without representation is tyranny in Illinois to-day as much as it was in the time of King George.” 

Any expert of U.S. Constitutional law would know the importance of this foundational right, and McCulloch in her article left no space for misunderstanding - that preventing women from voting contradicted the founder’s intentions.

McCulloch continued to write on the subject of women’s wages, and in 1924 published by the National League of Women Voters, she wrote “The Economic Status of a Wife Working at Home.” She argued that progress towards workplace wage equality was not enough since most women at the time worked at home, and the practice of husbands giving their wives “pin money” for household and personal expenses was not sufficient considering the important work they engaged in. She instead provides examples of remedies, such as “community property schemes” that existed in eight states where “each spouse owns half of the family earnings and accretions.” In her view “marriage is a partnership” and husbands should not control their wives. Most middle-class women, the community McCulloch lived in, did not work outside the home. She not only fought for working-class women to keep their wages, but also advocated for the independence and security of women working at home. McCulloch continued pushing the relevance of the issue through her prolific writings. McCulloch addresses this argument again nearly 40 years later, reinforcing her argument that women are contributing members to the economy whether working outside the home or through domestic work such as raising children. 

Sources: 

Albjerg Graham, Patricia. “Expansion and Exclusion: A History of Women in American Higher Education,” Signs, Vol. 3, No. 4, Summer. University of Chicago Press, 1978. 

Allgor, Catherine. “Coverture: The Word You Probably Don't Know But Should,” National Women’s History Museum, September 4, 2012. 

Waugh McCulloch, Catharine. “The Economic Status of a Wife Working at Home,” 1924, National League of Women Voters, Evanston History Center Subject Files.

Waugh McCulloch, Catharine. Bridget’s Sisters or The Legal Status of Illinois Women in 1868, 1911, Illinois Equal Suffrage Association, Evanston History Center Subject Files. 

Waugh McCulloch, Catharine. “Tax-Paying Women and the Ballot,” Chicago Legal News, May 24, 1902, Evanston History Center Subject Files.  

Waugh McCulloch, Catharine. Woman’s Wages, part III: Remedies, Master’s Thesis for Rockford Female Seminary, 1888, Evanston History Center Subject Files/

Waugh McCulloch, Catharine. “Facts Stronger Than Fiction,” New York State Woman Suffrage Association, January 1, 1909, Evanston History Center Subject Files.