Women and the American Labor Movement

Women and the American Labor Movement PDF Author: Philip S. Foner
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781608469215
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 623

Get Book Here

Book Description
A comprehensive account of the women who organized for labor rights and equality from the early factories to the 1970's.

Women and the American Labor Movement

Women and the American Labor Movement PDF Author: Philip S. Foner
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781608469215
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 623

Get Book Here

Book Description
A comprehensive account of the women who organized for labor rights and equality from the early factories to the 1970's.

The Other Women's Movement

The Other Women's Movement PDF Author: Dorothy Sue Cobble
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400840864
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 333

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

As Equals and as Sisters

As Equals and as Sisters PDF Author: Nancy Schrom Dye
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 216

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book is the story of the New York Women's Trade Union League's efforts to reach New York City's working women and interest them in unionization, to create an alliance of upper-class and working-class women, and to synthesize unionism and feminism into a viable program for improving the lives of New York City's women wage earners. It is an attempt to delineate the cultural, ideological, and tactical difficulties the WTUL encountered in its efforts to organize the city's working women and its ultimate disillusionment with the strategy of integrating women into male-dominated unions. Finally, this work is concerned with the league's transformation from a self-defined labor organization that downplayed women's special concerns in the work force into a women's reform organization that emphasized specifically female demands, namely, woman suffrage and protective labor legislation.

Community of Suffering and Struggle

Community of Suffering and Struggle PDF Author: Elizabeth Faue
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469617196
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 447

Get Book Here

Book Description
Elizabeth Faue traces the transformation of the American labor movement from community forms of solidarity to bureaucratic unionism. Arguing that gender is central to understanding this shift, Faue explores women's involvement in labor and political organizations and the role of gender and family ideology in shaping unionism in the twentieth century. Her study of Minneapolis, the site of the important 1934 trucking strike, has broad implications for labor history as a whole. Initially the labor movement rooted itself in community organizations and networks in which women were active, both as members and as leaders. This community orientation reclaimed family, relief, and education as political ground for a labor movement seeking to re-establish itself after the losses of the 1920s. But as the depression deepened, women -- perceived as threats to men seeking work -- lost their places in union leadership, in working-class culture, and on labor's political agenda. When unions exchanged a community orientation for a focus on the workplace and on national politics, they lost the power to recruit and involve women members, even after World War II prompted large numbers of women to enter the work force. In a pathbreaking analysis, Faue explores how the iconography and language of labor reflected ideas about gender. The depiction of work and the worker as male; the reliance on sport, military, and familial metaphors for solidarity; and the ideas of women's place -- these all reinforced the representation of labor solidarity as masculine during a time of increasing female participation in the labor force. Although the language of labor as male was not new in the depression, the crisis of wage-earning -- as a crisis of masculinity -- helped to give psychological power to male dominance in the labor culture. By the end of the war, women no longer occupied a central position in organized labor but a peripheral one.

On Gender, Labor, and Inequality

On Gender, Labor, and Inequality PDF Author: Ruth Milkman
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252098587
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 329

Get Book Here

Book Description
Ruth Milkman's groundbreaking research in women's labor history has contributed important perspectives on work and unionism in the United States. On Gender, Labor, and Inequality presents four decades of Milkman's essential writings, tracing the parallel evolutions of her ideas and the field she helped define. Milkman's introduction frames a career-spanning scholarly project: her interrogation of historical and contemporary intersections of class and gender inequalities in the workplace, and the efforts to challenge those inequalities. Early chapters focus on her pioneering work on women's labor during the Great Depression and the World War II years. In the book's second half, Milkman turns to the past fifty years, a period that saw a dramatic decline in gender inequality even as growing class imbalances created greater-than-ever class disparity among women. She concludes with a previously unpublished essay comparing the impact of the Great Depression and the Great Recession on women workers. A first-of-its-kind collection, On Gender, Labor, and Inequality is an indispensable text by one of the world's top scholars of gender, equality, and work.

Women Labor Activists in the Movies

Women Labor Activists in the Movies PDF Author: Jennifer L. Borda
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476606838
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241

Get Book Here

Book Description
Some of the most indelible images of women in recent American film have been of working women fighting for labor reform or to expose corporate corruption. This critical text explores films with female labor activists as main protagonists, illuminating issues of gender and class while depicting the challenges of working class women. Films covered include Salt of the Earth, Pajama Game, Union Maids, With Babies and Banners, Norma Rae, Silkwood, and Live Nude Girls Unite! Through comparative analysis, the text examines the responses of these films to the labor and feminist movements of the last half century, and how American cinema has articulated notions of disempowerment, ambivalence and, at times, the resistance of both women and the working class at large.

Labor and the New Deal

Labor and the New Deal PDF Author: Louis Stark
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Collective bargaining
Languages : en
Pages : 40

Get Book Here

Book Description


Ladies of Labor, Girls of Adventure

Ladies of Labor, Girls of Adventure PDF Author: Nan Enstad
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231111034
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Get Book Here

Book Description
At the beginning of the twentieth century, labor leaders in women's unions routinely chastised their members for their ceaseless pursuit of fashion, avid reading of dime novels, and "affected" ways, including aristocratic airs and accents. Indeed, working women in America were eagerly participating in the burgeoning consumer culture available to them. While the leading activists, organizers, and radicals feared that consumerist tendencies made working women seem frivolous and dissuaded them from political action, these women, in fact, went on strike in very large numbers during the period, proving themselves to be politically active, astute, and effective. In Ladies of Labor, Girls of Adventure, historian Nan Enstad explores the complex relationship between consumer culture and political activism for late nineteenth- and twentieth-century working women. While consumerism did not make women into radicals, it helped shape their culture and their identities as both workers and political actors. Examining material ranging from early dime novels about ordinary women who inherit wealth or marry millionaires, to inexpensive, ready-to-wear clothing that allowed them to both deny and resist mistreatment in the workplace, Enstad analyzes how working women wove popular narratives and fashions into their developing sense of themselves as "ladies." She then provides a detailed examination of how this notion of "ladyhood" affected the great New York shirtwaist strike of 1909-1910. From the women's grievances, to the walkout of over 20,000 workers, to their style of picketing, Enstad shows how consumer culture was a central theme in this key event of labor strife. Finally, Enstad turns to the motion picture genre of female adventure serials, popular after 1912, which imbued "ladyhood" with heroines' strength, independence, and daring.

Indigenous Women and Work

Indigenous Women and Work PDF Author: Carol Williams
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252094263
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 322

Get Book Here

Book Description
The essays in Indigenous Women and Work create a transnational and comparative dialogue on the history of the productive and reproductive lives and circumstances of Indigenous women from the late nineteenth century to the present in the United States, Australia, New Zealand/Aotearoa, and Canada. Surveying the spectrum of Indigenous women's lives and circumstances as workers, both waged and unwaged, the contributors offer varied perspectives on the ways women's work has contributed to the survival of communities in the face of ongoing tensions between assimilation and colonization. They also interpret how individual nations have conceived of Indigenous women as workers and, in turn, convert these assumptions and definitions into policy and practice. The essays address the intersection of Indigenous, women's, and labor history, but will also be useful to contemporary policy makers, tribal activists, and Native American women's advocacy associations. Contributors are Tracey Banivanua Mar, Marlene Brant Castellano, Cathleen D. Cahill, Brenda J. Child, Sherry Farrell Racette, Chris Friday, Aroha Harris, Faye HeavyShield, Heather A. Howard, Margaret D. Jacobs, Alice Littlefield, Cybèle Locke, Mary Jane Logan McCallum, Kathy M'Closkey, Colleen O'Neill, Beth H. Piatote, Susan Roy, Lynette Russell, Joan Sangster, Ruth Taylor, and Carol Williams.

Gendering Labor History

Gendering Labor History PDF Author: Alice Kessler-Harris
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252073932
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 394

Get Book Here

Book Description
The role of gender in the history of the working class world