Book review: Susan Zimmermann, Frauenpolitik und Männergewerkschaft: Internationale Geschlechterpolitik, IGB-Gewerkschafterinnen und die Arbeiter- und Frauenbewegungen der Zwischenkriegszeit

Autor(en): Birgitta Bader-Zaar
Abstrakt: Susan Zimmermann, professor of history and gender studies at Central European University in Vienna, pursues two goals with her study of policies for women in international trade unionism. Her major aim is to (re)write the marginalized history of the women's committee of the social democratic International Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU, or “Amsterdam International”) and the IFTU's international labor women's conferences from the mid-1920s to the late 1930s. Her discovery of the archive of the—officially named—International Committee of Trade Union Women or International Committee of Women Trade Unionists among the papers of the British Trades Union Congress at the University of Warwick served to realize this project. On the other hand, Zimmermann uses the case study to illustrate her approach to an integrative history of women's political activism that overcomes two strands of historiography: one arguing that women's involvement in masculinist labor unions only hampered their battle for women's interests and made them “hesitant and ambivalent” (650), even “pathetic,” as a contemporary argued; and the other portraying opposition to male union leaders as heroic. Instead, she makes a case for a fresh perspective that carves out the “independent political concepts” of the women activists without “assuming per se their readiness to make compromises and ‘conservatism’ regarding women's policies or, conversely, an unflinching commitment to the interests of working women” (651).
Organisation(en): Institut für Geschichte
Journal: Aspasia
Band: 17
Seiten: 219-223
ISSN: 1933-2882
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3167/asp.2023.170111
Publikationsdatum: 2023
ÖFOS 2012: 601028 Geschlechtergeschichte
Link zum Portal: https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/6e0320ef-5343-4f27-8218-d718ebfc8d22