Sorosis (New York, N.Y.)

Sorosis is an organization of professional and literary women founded in New York City in 1868. Columnist "Jennie June" (Jane C. Croly) and other women journalists were denied tickets to a New York Press Club event honoring Charles Dickens. The presenters claimed that the presence of the women would make the occasion "promiscuous." Offended, the female journalists founded their own press club, naming it Sorosis after a botanical term referring to plants with a grouping of flowers that bore fruit. The term was meant to symbolize women's determination to transform supposedly delicate and feeble ladies into important members of public society. Jane Croly organized a group of her friends, many of whom were writers, into the club to "promote agreeable and useful relations among women," particularly those who had found "expression in outward life and work." The club's mission was to "establish a freemasonry among women of similar pursuits....[to afford] an opportunity for discussion...the results of which promise to exert an important influence on the future of women and the welfare of society." Historian Karen J. Blair states that the members tended to be "career women who had become keenly aware of sexism in their struggle for professional success."

New York's Sorosis and Boston's New England Woman's Club (both founded in 1868) inspired the formation of women's clubs across the country. Croly called a national convention of women's clubs in 1869 that eventually led to the formation of the Association for the Advancement of Women (1873) and the General Federation of Women's Clubs (1890).

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