Overview
Updated with new chapters on 1987-1997 and 1997-2010 In this highly-praised book, Sarah Boston recounts the story of women workers from the early nineteenth century to the present day: the struggles and strikes, successes and failures in their strenuous efforts to organise and win recognition from employers and male trade unionists. Women Workers and the Trade Unions - now republished with the addition of two new chapters - is the only comprehensive account of this neglected overlap of women's history and labour history. In this enlightening history, Sarah Boston argues that male trade unionists' exclusionary treatment of women workers contradicted not only the socialist aims of most trade unions but also the very logic of trade unionism itself. The account is essential reading for anyone concerned with the history of industrial relations, but also with the history of feminism and of women in the workplace. This new and updated edition includes a new preface by Frances O'Grady, as well as the two new chapters by Sarah Boston. The new chapters cover the period from 1987 to 2010, exploring the specific struggles of that period, and women's ongoing fight for equal rights and equal pay in the post-Thatcher period and under New Labour.
Full Product Details
Author: Sarah Boston
Publisher: Lawrence & Wishart Ltd
Imprint: Lawrence & Wishart Ltd
Edition: 2nd Revised edition
ISBN: 9781910448038
ISBN 10: 1910448036
Pages: 448
Publication Date: 21 May 2015
Audience:
General/trade
,
General
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
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Reviews
'Sarah Boston's classic study of women workers and trade unions from the 1830s to the present is an exhilarating and essential history for those who want to understand the economic conditions in which we live today. The book is peopled with pioneer factory and homeworkers, shop assistants and clerical workers who led shopfloor struggles, negotiated with employers and - when necessary - their fellow trade unionists to raise women's status at work. Through the lens of women workers, we learn how the capitalist economy works. Indispensable.' Sally Alexander, Emeritus Professor of Modern History, Goldsmiths, University of London 'It is very good news for anyone interested in British trade unionism that Sarah Boston has updated in depth her excellent history of women workers and the British trade unions. Well-researched, shrewd and lucid, it fills a major gap in the history of modern British trade unionism providing a detailed and reliable account.' Chris Wrigley, Emeritus Professor of History, Nottingham University
Author Information
Sarah Boston is an award winning documentary film maker and author and has been a trade union member (ACTT/BECTU) since 1967. Her experience in the early 1970s when she, with a small group of women, challenged their union's discriminatory practices, led her to embark on research into other unions and their history.
