How did Catholic women vote in 1928 and earlier?

[TJ in Oregon]

I can tell you that Catholics in Wisconsin voted overwhelmingly Democratic prior to 1920, with the solitary exception of Belgian Catholics around the Green Bay areas who leaned Republican (and always have). Maps of WI statewide elections in that era look almost like an inversion of the mid-2000s, where the Democrats won the eastern, more German and more Catholic part of the state while the Republicans won the western WASP and Nordic areas. Back in those days, the WI Democrats were a small very conservative party and the WI Republicans were feuding between progressive and stalwart factions.

When Woodrow Wilson so unjustly embroiled the US in WWI, the German Catholics (along with the ~half of German Lutherans who were Democrats) flipped instantly, and pretty much completely, to the Republicans. Since Germans were the majority of Catholics in the state, that meant that Catholics were on the whole a Republican constituency in Wisconsin more or less from that point forward (excepting a couple outlier points such as 1928 and to a lesser extent 1960, although many German Catholics still voted against JFK because he was too liberal). However, despite the Republican tradition among German Catholics, other ethnic Catholics, especially the Polish, largely remained a Democratic constituency throughout that period and have only very recently started to open up to the GOP. The Belgians continued to vote for the Republicans by moderate margins.

So, to answer the question, at least within Wisconsin, the answer would be Republican in 1920 and 1924 and Democratic in 1928. Since the 19th Amendment was passed in 1920, women did not vote in presidential elections before then, but almost certainly would have voted Democratic if they could, except for the Belgians.

Nationwide the answer will vary by state and ethnic group.