Women, Work, and Activism

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

List 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 I. 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 II. 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 III. 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