Working-Class Women: On the Front Lines of Feminism

http://blog.aflcio.org/2006/09/03/working-class-women-on-the-front-lines-of-feminism/

Working-Class Women: On the Front Lines of Feminism

When we think of 20th century U.S. women’s movements, the events that come to mind are the feminist battles of the 1960s and before that, the suffragettes of the early 20th century.

But in between those two eras, working women were not silent. And many of the women in the 1940s and 1950s who agitated for fair pay, equal access to jobs and other fundamental workplace rights not only laid the groundwork for the gains of the recent years, they did so from a strong foundation: Their unions.

These women, largely forgotten in popular memory, were instrumental in maintaining the drumbeat for a workplace environment that benefited women and men, and set the stage for the successes that followed.



Although active on the picket lines and on the forefront of organizing workers in industries with some of the most vicious employers in areas hostile to unions such as the South and West, their efforts have not captured popular imagination as have events such as the “Bread and Roses” strike. In that 1912 walkout, 30,000 primarily female textile workers protested a cut in wages in Lawrence, Mass., were attacked by state militia that sought to prevent them sending their children out of state to safety.

But as steadfast champions of low-wage women, they were the critical link between women in the Progressive era and the modern day women’s movement. Betty Friedan, the ultimate modern-day champion of women who died earlier this year, was among those inspired by their struggles on the picket lines and in the political process.

In the late 1940s, after working for The Federated Press, a news association for labor and progressives, Friedan became a reporter for the United Electrical Workers (UE, a union that exists today). It was while covering a strike at a New Jersey plant, where nearly all the workers were women, that Friedan suddenly realized what it meant to be a low-paid working woman.

In her autobiography, Life So Far, Friedan wrote:

I discovered, with a strange sense of recognition…that the women were getting paid much less than the men for that job….There was nothing I had studied, at economics class at Smith or in the classes on radical economics I now took…that explained or even described the special exploitation of women.

This “Other Women’s Movement,” according to labor historian Dorothy Sue Cobble, whose 2004 book of the same name brings to light these women’s struggles, carried forth an agenda for social reform. While many scholars have portrayed this era as time when unions were “engines of reaction,” Cobble takes issue with this notion, arguing that in part because of the role of women, the union movement was anything but “tamed” and conservative.

FULL story at link.

women have always been on the forefront of the fight. not just for fair working conditions but for environmental, nuclear and child safety

Texas is getting worse by the day. Lawmakers refuse to raise the minimum wage,
and in a couple of weeks a new law goes into force whereby minor women seeking
an abortion have to provide a notarized consent form signed by their parents. This
is a six page document which includes information on alternatives to abortions and
its dangers. Doctors will be compelled to actively screen patients using this form.

I just don't understand how people in this state have gone from being so liberal just
twenty years ago to being so tight-assed and retrogressive now.

has largely been forgotten - not just the women.

Much of what is taken for granted now is the result of the worker class' struggles, at the expense of much blood, sweat and tears; 40 hr work week, overtime pay, pensions, social services. At some point there even was a decent minimum wage, etc.
Many people don't realize that the worker class is where "the left" originates.


Many of these struggles including those that involved women are documented, and are the basis for Howard Zinn's book A People's History of the United States
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0060528370?v=glance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_People's_History_of_the_United_States

Which in turn is the basis for
Readings From Howard Zinn's "Voices of a People's History of the United States"
as broadcast by Democracy Now on February 20th, 2006
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/20/148251&mode=thread&tid=25
Today we spend the hour with readings from a Voices of a People's History of the United States edited by historian Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove. It is the companion volume to Zinn’s legendary People’s History of the United States – which has sold over a million copies.