Red-baiting public women: Gender, loyalty, and red scare politics

This dissertation explores how gender shaped loyalty and security cases involving women during the second red scare. The paper argues that this era was a formative period in the ongoing debate about female loyalty. Women in politics often attracted public criticism, but in a political crisis, the same women drew suspicion as well. Because the fear of Communism and corruption within the government was so pronounced at the time, underlying anxieties about female ability and trustworthiness surfaced in interesting ways.;The discussion centers on five particular investigative cases involving professional female federal policy makers in the State Department and Department of Defense. Each chapter illustrates how gender norms contributed to constructions of female loyalty. The subjects (Anna M. Rosenberg, Dorothy Kenyon, Mary Jane Keeney, and Marcia R. Harrison) demonstrate how beliefs about women's nature, character, and ability influenced loyalty and security cases on many levels.;The study is organized around the themes of nativism, ethnicity, and religion, as well as careerism, marital status, self-representation, and popular psychology. Taken together, the cases indicate that the interplay between these factors and notions about women's nature defined loyal citizenship differently for women than for men.;A historical perspective on this topic provides insight into how gender conservatism influenced loyalty and security investigations and shaped the political landscape for conservatives and liberals alike. These red scare dramas provide a window into the long-standing debate about where women belong in a republican democracy and a modern patriarchy.