The Structure of Women’s Nonprofit Organizations

Women activists paid considerable attention to how they structured their organizations in the early years of the contemporary women’s movement in the United States. As the movement has matured over time, what has happened to this preoccupation with organizational structure? What do women’s nonprofit organizations look like structurally? What explains their particular form?

Rebecca Bordt explores these questions in the context of a wide variety of women’s nonprofit organizations in contemporary New York City. She conducted surveys of over one hundred organizations and supplemented these data with an analysis of in-depth interviews, organizational documents and field notes of a sample of these groups.

Rebecca L. Bordt is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame.