Dorothy Sue Cobble is Professor of Labor Studies, History, and Women's and Gender Studies at Rutgers University where she directs the Institute for Research on Women. She is the author of Dishing It Out: Waitresses and Their Unions in the Twentieth Century and Women and Unions: Forging a Partnership.
This [book] ... shows the results of prodigious research... Cobble believes that labor feminism learned from second-wave feminism and that later the new feminism learned from the old. She outlines steps that must be taken for labor feminism to be revitalized. Library Journal Dorothy Sue Cobble has recovered ... a feminist legacy that in its embrace of female difference refused to conform to 'men's ways.' She provides a usable past for those of us who wish to revalue women's labors... Cobble's stunning reinterpretation persuasively shows that we've been looking in the wrong place for a mass movement after suffrage and before women's liberation. She names this movement 'labor feminism.' -- Eileen Boris Women's Review of Books A rich contribution to the history of American women and American labor from the 1930s to the 1980s. Choice In this meticulously documented and richly characterized book ... [Cobble] provides a detailed and lively account ... of the aspirations of an often-overlooked movement within what is commonly considered a monolithic American [feminism]. Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review [A] sweeping new history of working-class feminism... Future studies of post-World War II labor activism, politics, and feminism will build on this crucial work. -- Annelise Orleck Reviews in American History Meticulously researched and beautifully written. The kind of history that causes us radically to rethink what we thought we knew about the relationship between feminism and social class. We cannot afford to ignore the lessons of the past she so cogently analyzes for today's activists and scholars. -- Mary Margaret Fonow British Journal Of Industrial Relations [A] remarkable ... fascinating new history of the 'other,' forgotten feminism. -- Sarah Blustain The American Prospect The unheralded advocacy and pivotal role of working-class women in the labor movement in the decades following the Depression are illuminated for the first time in this work... This book scrutinizes intersections and divergences in the history of the labor movement and American feminism. Noteworthy Books in Industrial Relations and Labor Economics, Firestone Library, Princeton Dorothy Sue Cobble's book is a tour de force of feminist historical research and scholarship. -- Sue Ledwith Industrial Relations Journal