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Gendered Activism and the Politics of Women's Work: Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 March 2010

Silke Neunsinger
Silke Neunsinger
Affiliation:
Labour Movement Archives and Library, Stockholm
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Extract

It is often said that labor history is in decline. Yet other interpretations are possible. The flourishing of labor history from the 1960s to the 1980s could instead be regarded as exceptional and the situation during the last twenty years as the more typical state of affairs. A second interpretation, which I favor, is that labor history has, in fact, not declined. Rather, the content of labor history has shifted. There may be less scholarship on many of the traditional or original objects of research, but there is new research, in history and other disciplines, on topics that arguably fall under a new, expanded understanding of “labor history.” This second explanation is supported by the continued vitality of scholarship on women's work and women's activism.

Type
Gendered Activism and the Politics of Women's Work
Information
International Labor and Working-Class History , Volume 77 , Issue 1 , Spring 2010 , pp. 3 - 7
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 2010

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References

Notes

1. The committee consisted of Yvonne Svanström and Ulla Wikander, both from Stockholm University; Anna Thoursie from the Swedish Municipal Workers Union; Ebba Witt-Brattström from Södertörn University; and Perihan Aydin, the conference secretary.

2. The pressure on historians to specialize also has meant that few are willing to speculate about historical events outside their particular time period, which is often the twentieth century. Only two of the sessions were concerned with early modern times. There was also no attempt to discuss women's work in a longue durée perspective, which, in my opinion, would have been particularly illuminating.

3. For the Swedish SAP, see Thorsson, Inga et al. , “Framåt i SSKF: en redovisning av uppgifter och arbetsformer inom den socialdemokratiska kvinnorörelsen: Sveriges socialdemokratiska kvinnoförbunds 9:e kongress 6–9 maj 1956” (Stockholm, 1956)Google Scholar. For the German SPD, see Hagemann, Karen, Frauenalltag und Männerpolitik: Alltagsleben und gesellschaftliches Handeln von Arbeiterfrauen in der Weimarer Republik (Bonn, 1990), 561 ffGoogle Scholar. For the Canadian CCF, see Sangster, Joan, Dreams of Equality: Women on the Canadian Left, 1920–1950 (Toronto, 1989), 226CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4. The socialist Women's Guild of Empire was active in the 1930s and tried to improve the situation of the working class. It included Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, and British organizing committees. See Woollacott, Angela, To Try Her Fortune in London: Australian Women, Colonialism, and Modernity (New York; Oxford, 2001), 110Google Scholar. The Women's Guild of Empire was founded by Flora Drummond and Elise Bowerman. See Gordon, Peter and Doughan, David, Dictionary of British Women's Organisations, 1825–1960, Woburn Education Series (London, 2001), 168Google Scholar.

5. Sangster, Joan, “Political Tourism, Writing and Communication: Transnational Connections of Women on the Left, 1920s–1940s,” in Crossing Boundaries: Women's Organizing in Europe and the Americas, 1880s–1940s, ed. Jonsson, P., Neunsinger, S., and Sangster, J. (Uppsala, 2007), 111–114Google Scholar. LAC Marjorie Mann's papers, vol. 2. Letter from Mary Sutherland to Marjorie Mann, September 1947.

6. International Information 1935, i.i. 309; IISH SAI, vol. 3401 Executive, January 16–17, 1938; vol. 4367; Meeting in Brussels, August 27–28, 1936.