Through the Prism of Gender and Work

Women’s Labour Struggles in Central and Eastern Europe and Beyond, 19th and 20th Centuries

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This book examines women’s activism in and beyond Central and Eastern Europe and transnationally within and across different historical periods, political regimes, and scales of activism. The authors explore the wide range of activist agendas, repertoires, and forums in which women sought to advocate for their gender and labour interests.

Women were engaged in trade unions, women-only organizations, state institutions, and international and intellectual networks, and were active on the shopfloor. Rectifying geopolitical and thematic imbalances in labour and gender history, this volume is a valuable resource for scholars and students of women’s activism, social movements, political and intellectual history, and transnationalism.

Contributors are: Eloisa Betti, Masha Bratishcheva, Jan A. Burek, Selin Çağatay, Daria Dyakonova, Mátyás Erdélyi, Dóra Fedeles-Czeferner, Eric Fure-Slocum, Alexandra Ghiț, Olga Gnydiuk, Maren Hachmeister, Veronika Helfert, Natalia Jarska, Marie Láníková, Ivelina Masheva, Jean-Pierre Liotard-Vogt, Denisa Nešťáková, Sophia Polek, Zhanna Popova, Büşra Satı, Masha Shpolberg, Georg Spitaler, Jelena Tešija, Eszter Varsa, Johanna Wolf and Susan Zimmermann.
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Selin Çağatay, Ph.D. (2016), is a postdoctoral researcher at Central European University. She studies past and present gender politics and equality struggles. Her publications include Feminist and LGBTI+ activism in Russia, Scandinavia, and Turkey: Transnationalizing Spaces of Resistance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) (co-authored).
Alexandra Ghiț, Ph.D. (2020), is a postdoctoral researcher at Central European University. Her research interests include women's labour history (focusing on twentieth-century Eastern Europe and activism in the tobacco industry), social policy history and the social history of state socialisms.
Olga Gnydiuk, Ph.D. (2018), is a postdoctoral researcher at Central European University. She studies women’s trade union activism and the gendered welfare state, and has published on displaced children, labour politics and women’s work in Ukraine in the post-1945 period.
Veronika Helfert, Ph.D. (2018), is a postdoctoral researcher at Central European University. She studies women’s activism in Austria and transnationally. She published Women, stand up! A women’s and gender history of the Austrian revolution and council movement, 1916–1924 (in German) (Unipress, 2021).
Ivelina Masheva, Ph.D. (2015), is a researcher at Central European University and at the Institute for Historical Studies – Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. She co-edited Commercial Law in Southeastern Europe: Legislation and Jurisdiction from Tanzimat Times until the Eve of the Great War (Böhlau, 2022).
Zhanna Popova, Ph.D. (2019), is a postdoctoral researcher at the ZARAH project at Central European University, where she works on women’s labour activism in the lands of Polish partition, interwar Poland, and internationally.
Jelena Tešija, MA (2014), is a doctoral researcher at Central European University. In her doctoral project, she examines the history of women’s activism in the co-operative movement in and beyond the Yugoslav lands. She has studied women organizing in Socialist Yugoslavia.
Eszter Varsa, Ph.D. (2011), is a postdoctoral researcher at Central European University. She studies the history of welfare and agrarian socialism. She published Protected Children, Regulated Mothers: Gender and the “Gypsy Question” in State Care in Postwar Hungary, 1949-1956 (CEU Press, 2021).
Susan Zimmermann, Ph.D. (1993), is a Professor at Central European University. She published Women’s politics and men’s trade unionism. International gender politics, female IFTU-trade unionists and the labor and women’s movements of the interwar period (in German) (Löcker Verlag, 2021).
List of Figures, Maps and Tables

Abbreviations

Notes on Contributors

1 Women’s Labour Struggles in Central and Eastern Europe and Beyond Toward a Long-Term, Transregional, Integrative, and Critical Approach
   Selin Çağatay, Mátyás Erdélyi, Alexandra Ghiț, Olga Gnydiuk, Veronika Helfert, Ivelina Masheva, Zhanna Popova, Jelena Tešija, Eszter Varsa and Susan Zimmermann

Part 1
Women’s Struggles and Men-Dominated Trade Union and Labour Movements: Rethinking a Complex Relationship
2 On Unity and Unions St. Petersburg Women Printers and Labour Activism in the Trade Union Paper The Printers’ Herald, 1906
   Sophia Polek

3 Women’s Labour Activism The Case of Bank Clerks in Central Europe, 1900–1920
   Mátyás Erdélyi

4 “Approached as a Force for Labour” Communist Women’s Fight for Women Workers’ Rights in the Comintern, the Profintern, and Eastern Europe in the 1920s
   Daria Dyakonova

5 Forgotten Women Slovak Communist Women’s Struggle for Reproductive Rights on the Pages of Proletárka in the 1920s
   Denisa Nešťáková

6 “Women as Workers” Discussions about Equal Pay in the World Federation of Trade Unions in the late 1940s
   Johanna Wolf

7 Women’s Activism, Vocational Training, and Cultural Exchanges between East and West The Case of Cold War Italy (1948–1962)
   Eloisa Betti

8 “Long Live Our Father” The Culture of Solidarity, Kinship, and Marriage in Labour Unions, 1964–1965
   Büṣra Satı

Part 2
Women’s Ways of Action: New Perspectives on Repertoires and Agendas
9 From Anonymity to Public Agency The Women’s Publishing Cooperative in St. Petersburg, 1863–1879
   Masha Bratishcheva

10 “Each Woman Must Join the Trade Union of Her Profession!” Women’s Labour Activism in the Austro-Hungarian Bourgeois-Liberal, Feminist Associations and their Press
   Dóra Fedeles-Czeferner

11 Women Workers’ Protests Outside the Trade Union Framework The Case of the Spinners in Żyrardów, Poland, 1918–1951
   Jan A. Burek

12 Trade Union Activists, Expertise, and Gender Inequalities in the Workplace in Post-1956 Poland A Struggle to Reveal Unequal Pay
   Natalia Jarska

13 The Czechoslovak Women’s Union, Labour Activism, and Expertise under Socialism, 1960s and 1970s
   Marie Láníková

14 Filmmaking as Activism Documenting the “Double Burden” in Late Socialist Poland
   Masha Shpolberg

Part 3
Activist Travels through Changing Political Landscapes: The Uses of Life Histories
15 Just Around the Corner Women’s Self-Organized Care for the Elderly before and after 1989 in East Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic
   Maren Hachmeister

16 “The Most Important Thing Is That a New Society Can Come Into Being” Anna Kéthly (1889–1976), a Stubborn and Stalwart Fighter in the Struggle for Democratic Socialism, Women’s Rights, and Trade Union Rights
   Jean-Pierre Liotard-Vogt

17 A Croatian American Woman’s Path to Labour-Left Racial Egalitarianism in the Industrial City, 1922–1944
   Eric Fure-Slocum

18 Hilde Krones and the “Generation of Fulfillment”
   Georg Spitaler

Index

The volume is intended primarily for the academic audience (academic libraries, scholars and students) with an interest in gender history, labour history, social history and the history of Central and Eastern Europe.
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