The Working Women's Association (WWA) was formed in New York City on September 17, 1868 in the offices of The Revolution, a women's rights newspaper established earlier that year by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Its stated purpose was to create "an association of working-women which might act for the interests of its members, in the same manner as the associations of workingmen now regulate the wages, etc., of those belonging to them." Shortly afterwards Anthony was seated as a delegate of the WWA at the annual congress of the National Labor Union (NLU), the first national labor federation in the U.S.

The WWA's membership grew to include over a hundred wage-earning women in addition to journalists and other women whose work was more intellectual than manual.