As an organization, it was composed of wives, sisters, aunts, daughters and other female relatives of drunken men.
[3] These readings seem to correspond to more general theories of an 'angel in the bedroom' theory of sexuality that has been attributed to the Victorians by late 20th century researchers of the period—the idea being that women had the capacity to cleanse the private household of the implications of 'amoral' capitalism.
Murphy notes that many of these Martha Washingtonians were assigned rather traditional female roles: for example, collecting, making and selling clothing to the families of reformed drunks.
Women's rights were not prevalent nor wanted by most of these women- the movement was broadly conservative in outlook.
Considering that these were a group of women with little to no real political or financial power, the temperance movement was a resounding success, since America's consumption of alcohol was reduced by half in a period of around twenty years or so- the effects of these women were not insignificant.