Women's Peace Society

The Women's Peace Society (WPS) was an interwar organization that based its feminist pacifism on the moral principles of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. WPS focused on total disarmament and the immorality of violence. The organization had between 1,500 and 2,500 members at its peak. Its headquarters were in New York City, New York. Many of the members gained important experiences and skills in the abolitionist and suffrage movements that they used to obtain forums for a radical peace agenda.

WPS was founded in 1919 when Garrison's daughter, Fanny Garrison Villard, and several other members of the Women's Peace Party's New York chapter (now part of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom) left that organization to better focus on nonresistance and nonviolence. WPS members insisted that all life at all times is sacred, and members signed a pledge to that effect.

During a 1921 conference, WPS worked with Canadian women to form the Women's Peace Union of the Western Hemisphere. The conference was the beginning of the end for WPS. Many of the active members of WPS were unhappy with Villard's tight grip on the organization and what they believed were her weaknesses on the issue of disarmament, split from WPS to focus on the Women's Peace Union. WPS continued to work alongside the new organization, particularly on a constitutional amendment that attempted to outlaw war. In 1923, WPS along with the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the Women's Peace Union established the American War Resisters' League, which is still active. WPS spoke out against the first U.S. military air shows in 1931 and participated in congressional hearings on the antiwar amendment during the 1930s. WPS's last newsletter to its members was sent in the 1930s and the organization fell into oblivion because of World War II and the organization's failure to attract younger women.

Villard was elected the permanent chair of WPS, and she funded the organization until the last few years of her life (she died in 1928). The organization also had a vice president, and Annie E. Gray was the executive director of WPS. Gray led the organization after Villard's health failed.

WPS linked women's equality to the need for complete disarmament. The organization primarily focused its energies on educational activities, but WPS was also active in political lobbying, disarmament parades, and antiwar demonstrations. Members of the organization drafted literature, spoke at public events, and held educational contests that promoted pacifism and total nonresistance. Like many of the women's peace organizations of the time, WPS advocated an expanded role of women in international relations and particularly peace work because members believed that women's roles as nurturers made them inherently pacifist.