210138 SE M8: The Gender of Labour Struggle, Past and Present (2025S)

Some of the greatest advancements in international labour law recently are meant to improve working conditions in jobs historically done by women (for example, ILO C189 – Domestic Workers Convention, 2011). Major trade unions have been prioritizing the combating of sexual harassment and bullying at work (as in the ETUC Women’s Committee led 2024 Resolution “On the offensive to combat gender-based violence in the world of work”). Both harassment and bullying have historically affected women and queer workers disproportionately. Yet the labour rights of these workers still require more political attention and commitment. How do gender and sexuality become visible to the institutional stakeholders of labour politics? How do gender and sexuality interact with ethnicity, race or migration status to co-produce specific labour demands?

These questions are worth posing especially as, historically, women and LGBTQ+ workers have faced difficulties advancing their demands within movements dedicated to advancing working class interests. Late 19th century trade union suspicion towards wage-depressing women workers or more recent labour movements’ reluctance to engage with queer issues are cases in point. Classed constructions of masculinity and cultures of male sociability shaped labour organizing – we need only think that until the late 20th century organizing required the post-working-day leisure time few women had, considering the ‘double burden’ of domestic work. At the same time, some innovative organizations and inclusive unions or associations have made place for women and queer workers, in explicit and implicit ways. Distinctly gendered forms of struggle and participation emerged in these contexts, in dialogue and clash with dominant ideologies, discourses and policies.

This seminar explores the historical practices and key concepts of gendered work and labour struggles globally, with Europe in focus, from the late 19th century to the early 21st century. It aims to equip students with the analysis and interpretation tools which would enable them to spot new developments as well as durable trends in how gender and sexuality impact labour politics.

Over the course of 14 sessions, we will be discussing gendered work, labour politics and labour organizing of women especially, as well as of LGBTQ+ workers, and the role of masculinity in such organizing. We will be looking labour politics and struggle in the service and industrial sectors, in care work and among seemingly isolated servants or ‘badly-integrated’ guest workers. We will try especially to go beyond Cold War-influenced paradigms in understanding developments in Europe. We will be employing classical contributions to the social theory conceptual toolbox (such as ‘intersectionality’) as well as newer ones (such as ‘intimacy work’ [Boris and Salazar Parreñas 2010]).

At the core of the course is a historical, long-term approach to gendered labour struggles. The course foregrounds historical interpretation as way of understanding current political phenomena. Consequently, students should expect to read a fair number of historical texts and engage with sources dating from the late 1890s to the 2020s. For some graded tasks, students will identify and use online repositories of published and archival sources covering this entire long period. Final papers can deal with both historical and more recent case studies related to topics covered in the course.