Description
Book SynopsisThe thirteen critical and well-documented chapters of Women, Work and Activism examine women’s labor struggle from late nineteenth-century Portuguese mutual societies to Yugoslav peasant women’s work in the 1930s, and from the Catalan labor movement under the Franco dictatorship to workplace democracy in the United States. The authors portray women's labor activism in a wide variety of contexts. This includes spontaneous resistance to masculinist trade unionism, the feminist engagement of women workers, the activism of communist wives of workers, and female long-distance migration, among others. The chapters address the gendered involvement of working people in multiple and often precarious and unstable labor relations and in unpaid labor, as well as the role of the state and other institutions in shaping the history of women’s labor.
The book is an innovative contribution to both the new labor history and feminist history. It fully integrates the conceptual advances made by gender historians in the study of labor activism, driving home critiques of Eurocentric historiographies of labor to Europe while simultaneously contributing to an inclusive history of women’s labor-related activism wherever to be found. Examining women’s activism in male-dominated movements and institutions, and in women’s networks and organizations, the authors make a case for a new direction in gender history.
Trade Review"'Women, Work, and Activism' ist ein einmaliger Sammelband, der das Potenzial des Forschungsfelds Gewerkschaftsgeschichte, Labor History und Geschlecht abwechslungsreich und vielschichtig darstellt. Es ist zu hoffen, dass hier ein erster Impuls gesetzt wurde, der weitere Arbeiten im Themenfeld inspiriert." -- Sophia Kuhnle * Arbeit – Bewegung – Geschichte *
Table of ContentsList of Acronyms
List of Tables and Figures
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Thinking the History of Women’s Activism into Global Labor History
Eloisa Betti, Leda Papastefanaki, Marica Tolomelli, and Susan Zimmermann
Part 1
Toward Inclusive Framings: Women’s Labor Activism in Men- and Women-Dominated Contexts
Women in the Mutual Societies of Portugal from the End of the Nineteenth Century to the 1930s
Virgínia Baptista and Paulo Marques Alves
The Female Staff in the PTT International between Trade Unionism and Feminism from the Early Twentieth Century to the Interwar Period
Laura Savelli
Women and the Labor Movement under a Dictatorship: Comisiones Obreras (Workers’ Commissions) in Greater Barcelona during Franco’s Dictatorship and the Transition to Democracy (1964–1981)
Nadia Varo Moral
“Traditionally Reserved for Men”: Australian Trade Unions and the 1970s Working Women’s Campaign for Liberation
Diane Kirkby, Lee-Ann Monk, and Emma Robertson
Part 2
Women in Motion: Rethinking Agency and Activism at the Workplace and Beyond
The Strike, the Household, the Gendered Division of Labor, and International Networks: Women Auxiliaries and the Ship Repair Workers’ Strike (Genoa, 1955)
Marco Caligari
“In Order to Safeguard the Lives of Our Children and Families”: Resistance and Protest of Women Workers in the Greek Tobacco Industry, 1945–1970
Thanasis Betas
Inside the Factory, Outside the Party-state: The Agency of Yugoslav Women Workers in Late Socialism (1976–1989)
Rory Archer
Work and the Politics of the Injured Body: Nurse Activism, Occupational Risk, and the Politics of Care in the United States
Elizabeth Faue
Part 3
How the Personal Reveals the Political: Women Activists’ Biographies and Beyond
Women Activists’ Relationship to Peasant Women’s Work in Yugoslavia in the 1930s
Isidora Grubački
Women in the Trade Union Movement and Their Biographies: The Camera del Lavoro (Chamber of Labor) in Milan (1945–1965)
Debora Migliucci
French Trade Unionists Go International: The Circulation of Ideas on the Education and Training of Women Workers in the 1950s and 1960s
Françoise F. Laot
Trade Union Feminism in Lyon: Commissions-femmes as Sites of Resistance and Well-being in the 1970s
Anna Frisone
Working Women on the Move: Genealogies of Gendered Migrant Labor
Maria Tamboukou
List of Contributors
Chapter Abstracts
Index
