Women, Work, and Protest

Women, Work, and Protest
Author: Ruth Milkman
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 319
Release: 2013-05-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 1136247688

As paid work becomes increasingly central in women’s lives, the history of their labor struggles assumes more and more importance. This volume represents the best of the new feminist scholarship in twentieth-century U.S. women’s labor history. Fourteen original essays illuminate the complex relationship between gender, consciousness and working-class activism, and deepen historical understanding of the contradictory legacy of trade unionism for women workers. The contributors take up a wide range of specific subjects, and write from diverse theoretical perspectives. Some of the essays are case studies of women’s participation in individual unions, organizing efforts, or strikes; others examine broader themes in women’s labor history, focusing on a specific time period; and still others explore the situation of particular categories of women workers over a longer time span. This collection extends the scope of current research and interpretation in women’s labor history, both conceptually and in terms of periodization – emphasis is placed on the post-World War I period where the literature is sparse. This book will be valuable for scholars, students and general readers alike.

Feminism and the Servant Problem

Feminism and the Servant Problem
Author: Laura Schwartz
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 247
Release: 2019-07-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108471331

Reveals a hidden history of women's suffrage from the perspectives of working-class women employed as domestic servants.

The Feminine Mystique

The Feminine Mystique
Author: Betty Friedan
Publisher:
Total Pages: 366
Release: 1992
Genre: Feminism
ISBN: 9780140136555

This novel was the major inspiration for the Women's Movement and continues to be a powerful and illuminating analysis of the position of women in Western society___

The Other Women's Movement

The Other Women's Movement
Author: Dorothy Sue Cobble
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 333
Release: 2011-08-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1400840864

American feminism has always been about more than the struggle for individual rights and equal treatment with men. There's also a vital and continuing tradition of women's reform that sought social as well as individual rights and argued for the dismantling of the masculine standard. In this much anticipated book, Dorothy Sue Cobble retrieves the forgotten feminism of the previous generations of working women, illuminating the ideas that inspired them and the reforms they secured from employers and the state. This socially and ethnically diverse movement for change emerged first from union halls and factory floors and spread to the "pink collar" domain of telephone operators, secretaries, and airline hostesses. From the 1930s to the 1980s, these women pursued answers to problems that are increasingly pressing today: how to balance work and family and how to address the growing economic inequalities that confront us. The Other Women's Movement traces their impact from the 1940s into the feminist movement of the present. The labor reformers whose stories are told in The Other Women's Movement wanted equality and "special benefits," and they did not see the two as incompatible. They argued that gender differences must be accommodated and that "equality" could not always be achieved by applying an identical standard of treatment to men and women. The reform agenda they championed--an end to unfair sex discrimination, just compensation for their waged labor, and the right to care for their families and communities--launched a revolution in employment practices that carries on today. Unique in its range and perspective, this is the first book to link the continuous tradition of social feminism to the leadership of labor women within that movement.

Working Out Gender

Working Out Gender
Author: Margaret Walsh
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 358
Release: 2017-03-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 1351870971

Working out Gender brings together leading scholars and young researchers to examine the various ways in which gender is currently being used in labour history. Having been a dynamic and contentious category of historical analysis since the mid 1980s gender continues to incite much debate. This volume seeks a more informed view about labour history both by advancing the position of women and making their lives central to learning and by examining men as gendered persons and discussing the social construction of masculinity. A broad perspective of labour history is scrutinised on both sides of the Atlantic, though the emphasis is given to European experiences. Themes examined include work and workplace activities, the working classes, masculinity and politics, and the timespan ranges from the eighteenth century to recent times.

Hidden From History

Hidden From History
Author: Sheila Rowbotham
Publisher: Pluto Press
Total Pages: 196
Release: 1977
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780904383560

In this study of women from the Puritan revolution to the 1930s, the author shows how class and sex, work and family, personal life and social pressures have shaped and hindered women's struggles for equality.

The Rising of the Women

The Rising of the Women
Author: Meredith Tax
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2022-04-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1839765747

How working-class socialist women changed the course of American history, with a foreword by labor journalist Sarah Jaffe. In this landmark study, Meredith Tax charts the actions of women in working-class, feminist, and socialist movements during the first upsurge of the American labor movement. From the pioneering efforts of Chicago women in the 1880s to the unprecedented New York City shirtwaist strike in 1909 to the 1912 “bread and roses” strike of immigrant textile workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and from the Socialist Party to the Industrial Workers of the World, Tax gives us a rich narrative of women workers’ struggles. Caught between the hostility of male trade unionists, the sexism of male socialist organizers, and the assumptions of middle-class feminists, women workers forged their own demands for economic and political justice. In doing so, Tax argues, a unique form of socialist-feminist class consciousness was created, whose ripples touched the suffrage movement. First published in 1980, The Rising of the Women is a classic of feminist labor history, presented here with a new introduction by the author and a new foreword by Sarah Jaffe.