Women won voting rights through temperance activism
Because saloons were male-only spaces and domestic violence was tied to alcoholism, 19th-century American women fought for temperance as a safety issue, making prohibition their first stepping stone toward suffrage.
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Temperance activism was the unexpected catalyst for women's suffrage
Nineteenth-century saloons served almost exclusively men, and farm laborers drank beer as though it were water. Alcoholism directly threatened women and children's safety. This material danger is what first drew women toward temperance activism. When the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) grew into the largest women's organization in the world at the time, its president Frances Willard reframed voting rights as ‘a weapon against the tyranny of drunkenness’—turning temperance into one of the few outlets through which women could openly participate in politics. The women's suffrage movement seized this opening.
— Joya DilbertoThe government handed an unwinnable Prohibition enforcement job to a woman
At age 32, lawyer Mabel Walker Willebrandt was appointed Assistant Attorney General, tasked with enforcing an ‘impossible’ mandate: eliminating bootlegging across America. Historians are blunt about the motive: the Republican Party needed a high-profile woman to placate female voters while dumping an impossible task that would tarnish any political career onto a woman's shoulders. The failure of Prohibition itself became, in a sense, the failure of her political career.
— Joya DilbertoAfter men's anti-Prohibition groups failed, women ended Prohibition
The men's anti-Prohibition groups had been ineffectual. The real force that dismantled Prohibition was an all-women's organization built by Pauline Sabin, an heiress to the Morton Salt fortune. It drew women across class and racial lines and scaled with remarkable speed, powered by Sabin's personal wealth and networks—far outpacing the WCTU's reach. Just before the election, Sabin switched the group's endorsement to Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, who promised to repeal Prohibition.
— Joya DilbertoAA's template came from a Christian movement, not from peer support groups
In 1935, Bill W., struggling to stay sober, felt the urge to drink and called a nearby church for help, connecting him with Dr. Bob. The two talked for five hours in a friend's living room and found solace—this conversation birthed AA. Both founders claimed they'd never heard of the 19th-century Washingtonians, a peer support organization. What they actually drew from was the Oxford Group, a Christian lifestyle movement that emphasized confession, mutual support, and submission to a higher power. Anonymity, confession-style sharing, and surrender to a higher power—AA's defining practices—all came from Oxford Group.
— Jamie LoftessAA's founding text includes a chapter on how wives should manage drunk husbands
The 1939 edition of AA's foundational text, the Big Book, devotes its eighth chapter, ‘To Wives,’ to instructing spouses how to maintain their husband's sobriety without becoming a ‘nagging wet blanket’. The chapter's author, Bill W., went on to have affairs throughout his life. His infidelities acquired their own term within AA—‘13th stepping’—a euphemism for older members exploiting their status to sexually coerce newcomers entering recovery. The victims are almost always women.
— Jamie LoftessAA's sobriety chips were never part of the official organization
Many assume the white chip is an original AA ritual from the 1930s, but it appears nowhere in AA's official canon or organizational history. The chips originated in a 1940s local practice, credited to a nun named Ignatia. Working in a hospital with withdrawal patients, she would hand out Sacred Heart medals and tell people they must return the medal before taking their first drink. Religion and women—erased from the official narrative—quietly sustained the program.
— Jamie LoftessBlack members were allowed only as ‘guests’ for decades
Bill W. was willing to welcome Black alcoholics as early as 1940, but Dr. Bob and other white members objected. Black people could attend only as ‘guests’. A St. Louis all-Black group even hid its existence in 1945 to avoid white members finding out. AA inherited the Washingtonians' rule of staying out of ‘politics’—but this rule was always enforced through a white lens. What counted as a political issue was never neutral.
— Jamie LoftessThe evidence on AA's effectiveness is contradictory
A controversial earlier study put the success rate of the 12-step program as low as 7 percent. But a 2020 meta-analysis of existing research found that 42 percent of AA members had achieved complete abstinence after one year. The episode's conclusion is modest: what actually works seems to be the community itself—a place you can always go to, where someone will listen, and which has nothing to do with ‘drinking’—rather than any specific theology or procedure.
— Jamie LoftessIn their own words · checked verbatim
Prohibition was a crummy idea and it didn't work. I mean, it failed because it was just a bad idea from the get-go.
Joya Dilberto7:08
"If we could but make the world sober, we would have no slavery,"
Jamie Loftess9:10
It was an impossible job, impossible to do. Prohibition was impossible to enforce. So, of course, they gave it to a woman.
Joya Dilberto16:21
And so Pauline literally goes, "Hold my beer." Finds a bunch of like-minded women and starts organizing as a oneisssue activist to end prohibition.
Joya Dilberto21:27
If he gets the sense that you are a nag or a killjoy, your chance of accomplishing anything useful may be zero.
Jamie Loftess31:39
history of elder members sexually preying on newly sober converts, almost always men praying on women.
Jamie Loftess32:40
a thorough review of all of the existing studies done in 2020 showed that 42% of people participating in AA are completely abstinent a year later.
Jamie Loftess46:50
Figures
| 1830: per capita annual whiskey consumption | Approximately 88 bottles per year | 7:08 |
| Duration of Prohibition | Nearly 14 years (1920–1933) | 22:27 |
| AA membership in 1941 | Approximately 2,000 members | 33:40 |
| Inquiries within 2 weeks of 1941 article | Nearly 1,000 | 33:40 |
| Big Book cumulative sales | Over 37 million copies | 30:38 |
| Current AA membership | Approximately 2 million | 40:46 |
| Controversial study: 12-step success rate floor | 7% | 46:50 |
| 2020 meta-analysis: one-year complete abstinence rate | 42% | 46:50 |
Glossary
- Oxford Group
- A Christian lifestyle movement of the early 20th century that emphasized confession, mutual support, and submission to a higher power; AA borrowed its core practices.
- 13th stepping
- AA slang for older members using their status and seniority to sexually coerce newcomers in recovery; victims are almost always women.
- Volstead Act
- The federal law enforcing Prohibition by criminalizing the production and sale of alcohol in the United States.
- WCTU
- Women's Christian Temperance Union—the world's largest women's organization in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; the primary force behind temperance activism and women's political mobilization.
How to listen
People interested in addiction recovery mechanisms, the history where religion and social movements intersect, or anyone considering AA or its alternatives.
The opening segment (0:00–4:06) where the host shares personal family history has lower information density; skip directly to the Prohibition history.