Anne Brancato Wood

Anne Brancato Wood (January 17, 1903 – August 22, 1972) was an American politician who in 1932 became the first woman to be elected to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives as a Democrat.

[1][2] As a 29-year-old unmarried Italian American woman running in a district dominated by Philadelphia's Republican political machine, Brancato was a long-shot candidate.

She walked door-to-door in Philadelphia's fifth district distributing campaign literature and delivered speeches in fluent Italian from the backs of flatbed trucks.

[2] Brancato swiftly established a progressive record in the House, championing an array of social welfare and poverty relief laws to protect her most vulnerable constituents.

In March 1933, in the midst of the Great Depression, she introduced an anti-eviction bill to protect homeowners and renters from eviction if they were unable to find a job.

She introduced or sponsored bills such as the Pawnbrokers' Act (cracking down on loan sharks), the Hasty Marriage Act (requiring a three-day waiting period between obtaining a marriage license and getting married), the Mothers' Assistance Fund Law (to support poor mothers), and the Minimum Wage and Hour Law for Women, along with bills to protect women's property rights, build playgrounds in crowded urban neighborhoods, and ban the word illegitimate from the birth certificates of children born out of wedlock.