Women, Work, and Activism : Chapters of an Inclusive History of Labor in the Long Twentieth Century

The 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.

Susan Zimmermann is University Professor at Department of History and Department of Gender Studies, Central European University. Her research has focused on the history of the Habsburg Monarchy, international women’s organizations in the 20th century, the ILO, and women and trade unions in state-socialist Hungary. She is President of the International Conference of Labour and Social History (ITH).

Dr. Eloisa Betti is Adjunct Professor of Labor History at the University of Bologna.

Marica Tolomelli is Associate Professor at the University of Bologna. Her research focuses on social conflicts, social movements, and political cultures since the end of WWII until the end of the 20th century, and the history public spheres and the circulation of ideas in the “long 20th century” from a global perspective.

Leda Papastefanaki is Associate Professor of Economic and Social History at the University of Ioannina and Collaborating Faculty Member at the Institute for Mediterranean Studies – FORTH (Greece). She has published on the social and economic history of industrialization and labor in the Mediterranean context, and gender history.