
The Library
A job like any other? Feminist responses and challenges to domestic worker organizing in Edwardian Britain
Tools
Schwartz, Laura (2015) A job like any other? Feminist responses and challenges to domestic worker organizing in Edwardian Britain. International Labor and Working-Class History, 88 . pp. 30-48. doi:10.1017/S0147547915000216 ISSN 0147-5479.
![]() |
PDF
WRAP_1073649-hi-080816-ilwch_schwartz_final.pdf - Accepted Version - Requires a PDF viewer. Download (702Kb) |
Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0147547915000216
Abstract
This article focuses on the Domestic Workers’ Union of Great Britain and Ireland (est. 1909–1910), a small, grassroots union organized by young female domestic servants in the years leading up to the First World War. This union emerged against a backdrop of labor unrest as well as an increasingly militant women's movement. The article looks at how the Domestic Workers’ Union drew inspiration from the latter but also encountered hostility from some feminists unhappy with the idea of their own servants becoming organized. I argue that the uneven and ambivalent response of the women's movement toward the question of domestic worker organizing is significant not simply as an expression of the social divisions that undoubtedly characterized this movement, but also as reflecting a wider debate within early twentieth-century British feminism over what constituted useful and valuable work for women. Attitudes toward domestic worker organizing were therefore predicated upon feminists’ interrogation of the very nature of domestic labor. Was it inherently inferior to masculine and/or professional forms of work? Was it intrinsically different from factory work, or could it be reorganized and rationalized to fit within the industrial paradigm? Under what conditions should domestic labor be performed, and, perhaps most importantly, who should do it?
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Subjects: | D History General and Old World > DA Great Britain H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman |
||||||
Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > History | ||||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Feminism -- Great Britain -- History -- 20th century, Feminism -- Ireland -- History -- 20th century, Labor unions -- Women -- Great Britain -- History -- 20th century, Labor unions -- Women -- Ireland -- History -- 20th century, Household employees | ||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | International Labor and Working-Class History | ||||||
Publisher: | Cambridge University Press | ||||||
ISSN: | 0147-5479 | ||||||
Official Date: | 24 September 2015 | ||||||
Dates: |
|
||||||
Volume: | 88 | ||||||
Page Range: | pp. 30-48 | ||||||
DOI: | 10.1017/S0147547915000216 | ||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 9 August 2016 | ||||||
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 9 August 2016 |
Request changes or add full text files to a record
Repository staff actions (login required)
![]() |
View Item |
Downloads
Downloads per month over past year