Introduction

This article from The Raleigh Times discusses State's Mates' role in providing a social outlet for student wives.  It goes on to describe the "fun" activities planned for the 1960-1961 academic year, which allow members to "relax... on a limited budget."

This section discusses the importance of social activities to State's Mates members, and the ways in which they reflected conservative values in the face of challenges during the 1960's.

State’s Mates began its existence as a bridge club for student wives in 1947, and never ceased to fulfill its chief function for its members: social identity.  Student wives held a common identity, and engaged in common problems: for example, limited budgets, as well as trying to define themselves as housewives while their husbands were not yet breadwinners.  Consequently, State’s Mates gave them a way to relax and assert a domestic identity without threatening their work or roles at home.  It also fostered camaraderie among women whose chief connection to one another was through their husbands.

The use of social activities in groups to assert a common identity is by no means atypical, and yet the literature on social organizations (i.e., those without a cause such as political or social activism), especially women’s social organizations, is limited.  Even when women’s clubs were organized around a cause, the ability for women to relax and interact was still an intrinsic component to their existence.  In so doing, they fulfilled a social need: one that was exacerbated by definitions of gender which focused on different roles.  Since State’s Mates was defined around its members’ roles as wives, it was especially important that they be able to interact with one another as women.  Perhaps the closest equivalent to this type of organization at the time was the university sorority, which fulfilled similar functions of support networks and social need.

Part of why organizations like State’s Mates have been neglected in discussions of women’s history is because they existed mainly as social functions.  However, even though the social activities of State’s Mates were designed to entertain, they still reflected and asserted a world view that a majority of members held in common.

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