Threads of Solidarity

by Berger, Iris

• ISBN13: 9780253207005
• ISBN10: 0253207002
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1992-04-01
• Publisher: Indiana Univ Pr

Summary

"... enables us to deepen our understanding of the organization of working women."  -- International Journal of African Historical Studies"... an impressive piece of scholarship." -- American Journal of SociologyVirtually ignored by labor historians are the black and white women in South African industries. Drawing on comparative labor history and feminist theory, this important study traces the history of women as industrial workers and trade unionists in South Africa during most of the twentieth century.

Author Biography

IRIS BERGER is Associate Professor of History, African Studies, and Women's Studies and Director of the Institute for Research on Women at the State University of New York at Albany. She is author of the award-winning book Religion and Resistance: East African Kingdoms in the Precolonial Period and co-editor (with Claire Robertson) of Women and Class in Africa.

Table of Contents

Preface
Abbreviations
Gender and Industrialization
Gender, Community, and Working-Class History	p. 3
Dependency and Domesticity: Women's Wage Labor, 1900-1925	p. 16
Women in the New Industrial Unions
Patterns of Women's Labor, 1925-1940	p. 47
Daughters of the Depression	p. 70
Commandos of Working Women	p. 90
A Lengthening Thread	p. 105
A New Working Class and the Challenge of Diversity
Nimble Fingers and Keen Eyesight: Women in Wartime Production	p. 131
A New Working Class, 1940-1960	p. 153
Solidarity Fragmented: Garment Workers in the Transvaal	p. 170
Food and Canning Workers at the Cape: The Structure of Gender and Race	p. 190
Standing United	p. 204
Never Far from Home: Family, Community, and Working Women	p. 222
Decentralization and the Rise of Independent Unions
City and Periphery, 1960-1980	p. 249
Repression and Resistance	p. 264
Epilogue: Common Threads, Past and Present	p. 291
Notes	p. 301
Documentary Sources and Interviews	p. 356
Index	p. 359
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