It was founded by Etheldred Browning a former Irish suffragist who had run the women’s section of the Garden City and Town Planning Association (GCTPA).
Other founding members included Geraldine Lennox of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), Lady Rhondda, and Ray Strachey.
At the society's 1924 dinner, Mrs. C. S. Peel explained that the association "aimed at providing women workers with houses where there would be scope for individual tastes, and where they could live surrounded by their household gods".
[6] Skilled women contractors were central to the organisation's development, including the architect Gertrude Leverkus and the first woman chartered accountants, Ethel Watts and Miriam Homersham.
[11] The organisation celebrated its centenary in 2020, with an exhibition Pioneering Courage: Housing and the Working Woman 1919 – 1939 based on three years of research into their history.