High society women in newly independent Lebanon followed a tradition of highly visible gendered work in the realm of charity, and often featured in Lebanese magazines as benevolent and fashionable hostesses of fundraisers and other charity events. The scholarship of women in the Middle East discusses the mandate period’s rise of women’s charities in relation to women's movements in the absence of opportunities in formal political roles and offices for women, often describing their work as politically limited due to their gendered restrictions. This paper seeks to challenge the assumption that gendered charity work was less politically significant and to rethink the relationship between gendered work, patriarchy and power in Lebanon from 1943 to 1975. During Lebanon’s so-called “Golden Age,” high society women manning charity committees worked to produce specific and exclusionary versions of Lebanese culture and folklore through a variety of cultural festivals and artisanal organizations. These initiatives sought to define Lebanese cultural authenticity to domestic and foreign audiences, and to “civilize” or erase aspects deemed undesirable. I argue that these high society women reinforced the Lebanese patriarchal order - simultaneously supporting the exclusion of women in formal politics and influencing Lebanese politics themselves - by actively framing themselves as passive, incompetent and politically inept maternal figures. Such rhetoric served as a gendered tool that depoliticized their highly ideological work and rendered it politically unthreatening, despite their considerable influence in defining Lebanon.