- Email: [email protected]
Union maids not wanted: Organizing domestic workers 1870–1940
480
Book Reviews
the effectiveness of development policies which seek to improve the lot of women by raising their incomes without considering the ideological constraints on the dependent position of women in the poor and working class populations of the Third World. Taking an unusual perspective for economists, Beneria and Roldan combine statistical sociology with participant observation and structural economic analysis to reveal the links between Mexican working class gender constructs, the segmentation of labor markets, and the fragmentation of the production process. Their findings suggest that the formation of Mexico City’s proletariat is not only a product of migration, but also of the subproletarianization (salaries of less than minimum wage, no benefits, absorbtion of production costs) of wives, heads of households, and daughters who facilitate the proletarianization of spouses, sons, and fathers. Industrial homework is becoming a major source of employment for urban Mexican women whose “reliability, careful manual work, discipline and patience” according to contractors, makes them ideally suited for the boring, repetitive tasks involved in homework. While Beneria and Roldan provide an interesting theoretical discussion of how subcontracting links rather than separates informal and formal economic spheres, the unique contribution of the book is a rejection of dualist analyses which separate gender ideology and the material conditions under which women labor. Their most important chapters explore the ways in which women use non-economic resources such as unpaid domestic work, sexuality, and companionship along with their income from homework to negotiate the boundaries of their independence within the institution of marriage. What emerges from their analysis is sobering. While women engaged in homework have an individual awareness of conjugal oppression, this is not accompanied by consciousness of long-run gender interests. The recognition of a wife’s economic contribution may prompt a redefinition of joint decision-making and women’s control over their whereabouts, but the fundamental world views of women remain unchanged. In addition, while Beneria and Roldan found that women were not against unionization, most were afraid of its practical consequences. As they point out, a drive for unionization would probably eliminate the practice of sub-contracting, making it unprofitable for employers. In their concluding pages, in what is the only weak section of the book, Beneria and Roldan propose a long list of development priorities for women including changes in socialization processes affecting the formation of gender traits, improvements in educational systems, equal sharing by men and women in child care and other domestic services, and improved services for birth control and family planning. Their important, but brief discussion of the importance of reproduction in the development processes resonates with other recent analysis of the effects of state development policies on women in Latin America. Recent works such as Carmen D. Deere and Magdalena Leon’s Rural Women and State Policy (Westview, 1987) conclude that the reproductive duties of women have not been addressed systematically by any government seeking to target women, with the possible exception of Cuba where equal sharing of childcare and housekeeping by men and women is legislated in the Cuban Family code. Beneria and Roldan’s book would
benefit from a comparative discussion of development policy targeted for women in countries such as Cuba and Nicaragua. Beneria and Roldan provide an important study in their analysis of women who are not activists, but seem bound by the constraints of working class gender ideology and the evolving contradictions of world capitalism. The next step is to compare the homeworkers with other groups of proletarian women to see if there are particular circumstances which are conducive to a gendered struggle for changing working conditions. Patricia Fernandez-Kelly’s analysis of women in maquiladoras suggests that they are not conducive to unionization, while the formation of the September 19th Garment Workers Union in 1985 raises hope. Most importantly, Beneria and Roldan have confirmed a research style which allows women space as self-motivated political actors who struggle within the confines of their lives. LYNN STEPHEN NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY,Bosm~, MA, U.S.A.
UNION MAHIS Nar WORKERS 1870-1940,
pages. Praeger USS39.95 cloth.
WASTED: ORGANIZING DOMESTK
by Donna L. van Raaphorst, 336 Publishers, New York, 1988. Price
The lack of organization of domestic servants throughout the world has been well documented. For example, Aban Mehta’s study of domestics in India (The Domestic Servant Class), Jacklyn Cock’s study in South Africa (Maids and Madams), Elsa Chaney’s work on South America (Servants and Sellers), and writers on American servitude from Lucy Salmon (Domestic Service) to David Katzman (Seven Days a Week) to Evelyn Glenn (Issei, Nisei and War Bride) have all pointed out the lack of unions among domestics. Donna L. van Raaphorst’s Union Maids Not Wanted, however, is the first study to focus exclusively on the topic of the lack of unionization in the USA and to historically detail the causes for this failure from 1870 to 1940, a period when most other categories of American workers were becoming organized. Her effort is highly successful in covering the complex forces that worked against domestics’ organizing: women workers and unskilled workers were not courted by unions, and domestic workers in particular were considered “marginal, nonessential” (p. 252) members of the labor force. The fact that domestics have also been disproportionately women of color-Afro-American, Asian American, Latina and Native American-and unions have been ambivalent, at best, about inclusion of minorities is an additional factor mitigating against this sector’s becoming a part of organized labor. Van Raaphorst makes it clear, however, that domestics have not been passive workers. In one of the most interesting, if problematic, chapters in the book, “Against All Odds,” van Raaphorst documents repeated efforts on the part of domestics to improve their situations collectively. Most such efforts were short-lived and unsuccessful in achieving even limited goals. But the chapter is important because it illustrates worker assertiveness and self respect, and how societal forces (including unions) moved against domestics’ progress. It is problematic, however, because van Raaphorst makes no distinctions between those efforts emanating from do-
Book Reviews
mestics alone, from reformers who were not domestics or from employers working with domestics. Such distinctions are important because, as van Raaphorst herself recognizes, the motives for employers and even some reformers to take part in such organizing were undoubtedly different from and, at times, contrary to the motives of domestics. “For some [employers, these groups] were an alternative to more militant labor organizations” (p. 194). The difference in motives and goals had to be a factor contributing to the lack of worker participation in some efforts. There are cases cited (e.g., that of “Miss I.” on p. 208) in which the background of the organizer is not even given in the text. To treat the effort at organizing domestics by these various segments of the population as though they were the same is not to recognize the existence of different class interests among women. In one of her strongest sections, van Raaphorst details the lack of impact New Deal labor legislation had on this occupation. While the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), the National Labor Relations Act (the “Wagner Act”), and the Fair Labor Standards Act simply neglected domestic service, the Works Project Administration (WPA) created training programs in twenty-six states and the District of Columbia designed to give domestics more skills and thereby upgrade the occupation. Though over 15,000 women went through the eight-week courses from 1936 to 1938, the program did not improve the status of the occupation overall because “ the basic operating assumption of the program-that training in housekeeping skills would upgrade the esteem of domestic work-was naive” (p. 236). Lack of worker skills has never been the essential problem of the occupation; as van Raaphorst well documents throughout this book, low pay, long hours, lack of benefits, and degrading treatment have been. Thus, solutions such as the WPA training program that aimed at changing the behavior of domestics missed the point that it was employers’ behavior that needed changing. In this section, van Raaphorst shows that efforts at changing employers’ behavior-whether by forcing them to pay a minimum wage, to limit hours, to pay into social security, or to reconsider their interpersonal treatment of domestics-were deliberately excluded from New Deal legislation that forced employers of most other types of workers to improve. The only weakness of the book is the copy editing. The unclear references, the missing locales of events (e.g., pp. 193 and 207), the incorrect subject-verb agreement (e.g., p. 178) the wrong table cited (p. 174), words omitted (e.g., p. 212), the numerous poorly constructed sentences are all errors that should have been corrected before the book went to press. The high quality of the research deserves not to have been compromised by poor copy editing. Nevertheless, this is a book rich with information for those interested in Women’s Studies, Labor Studies, American History and Race Relations. By bringing these formerly invisible workers more clearly into focus and by documenting the government’s and the unions’ behavior toward them, van Raaphorst has retrieved and illuminated an important aspect of American labor history. JUDITH ROLLINS SiMMONS COLLEGE, BOSTON, MA,U.S.A.
481
HARD HATTED WOMEN: STORIESOF STRUGGLE AND SucCESS IN THE TRADES, edited by Molly Martin, 265 pages.
Seal Press, Seattle,
1988. Price IJS$10.95
pb.
Women who have gone on before have paved my path . Now I can help build the bridge for all those who will follow. (Laura Deane Mason, Rural Contractor)
Hard Hatted Women is a book about building bridges, both literally and figuratively. It takes the reader to construction sites where women earn their living, .and to union halls where they fight for the rights of women who work in the trades. The women whose stories appear on these pages are often recognized in academe as little more than statistics-the 1.1% of construction workers in the US, the 8% of precision production craft and repair workers. Their adventures in a world of men are heartwarming and gutwrenching, frightening and funny. Editor Molly Martin, an electrician and organizer of women in the trades, has collected a group of stories from women in a wide range of non-traditional jobs whose backgrounds differ in age, race, class, level of education, sexuality, and geographic location within the United States. Each woman speaks in her own voice telling of her life, her work and her struggles on the job. Their struggles vary from meeting the physical challenges of a miner or a drywall rocker to the emotional challenges of coworkers who don’t want them there or of finding the privacy to express milk on a job site. These women are remarkable and ordinary. They use humor, anger, magic, and denial to cope with the situations they face while they dare to earn a decent wage. In her introduction, Martin gives a brief history of women working in the trades in the US. The first wave of hiring occurred during World War II when women were wooed into a variety of “men’s jobs” while men were off to war. At war’s end it was women’s patriotic duty to give men their jobs back and become wives and mothers. Those women who attempted to keep their jobs were excluded from labor unions and systematically forced out. The second wave was sparked by legislation. Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act made race and sex discrimination by employers and labor unions illegal. In 1978 Executive Order 11246 amended this act setting up specific goals and timetables for women in the construction industry and requiring employers to commit themselves to affirmative action programs. Also apprenticeship programs (based on the medieval guild system) are administered jointly by the federal and state governments, so regulations setting numerical goals for women apprentices have helped open the door and keep it open this time around. Though Martin stresses women’s need to earn good pay due to the increasing number of female heads of household, many of these women truly love their work. That it pays well is an extra perk, but for many after years of teaching or doing clerical work the satisfaction gained from seeing a finished product-be it cabinetry, a new roof, a sprinkler system or a day’s catch -and knowing it came from her own two hands is exhilarating. The stories I like best are of women encouraging other women to seek non-traditional jobs. For example, there’s the drywall finisher who does a lot of public
Book Reviews
the effectiveness of development policies which seek to improve the lot of women by raising their incomes without considering the ideological constraints on the dependent position of women in the poor and working class populations of the Third World. Taking an unusual perspective for economists, Beneria and Roldan combine statistical sociology with participant observation and structural economic analysis to reveal the links between Mexican working class gender constructs, the segmentation of labor markets, and the fragmentation of the production process. Their findings suggest that the formation of Mexico City’s proletariat is not only a product of migration, but also of the subproletarianization (salaries of less than minimum wage, no benefits, absorbtion of production costs) of wives, heads of households, and daughters who facilitate the proletarianization of spouses, sons, and fathers. Industrial homework is becoming a major source of employment for urban Mexican women whose “reliability, careful manual work, discipline and patience” according to contractors, makes them ideally suited for the boring, repetitive tasks involved in homework. While Beneria and Roldan provide an interesting theoretical discussion of how subcontracting links rather than separates informal and formal economic spheres, the unique contribution of the book is a rejection of dualist analyses which separate gender ideology and the material conditions under which women labor. Their most important chapters explore the ways in which women use non-economic resources such as unpaid domestic work, sexuality, and companionship along with their income from homework to negotiate the boundaries of their independence within the institution of marriage. What emerges from their analysis is sobering. While women engaged in homework have an individual awareness of conjugal oppression, this is not accompanied by consciousness of long-run gender interests. The recognition of a wife’s economic contribution may prompt a redefinition of joint decision-making and women’s control over their whereabouts, but the fundamental world views of women remain unchanged. In addition, while Beneria and Roldan found that women were not against unionization, most were afraid of its practical consequences. As they point out, a drive for unionization would probably eliminate the practice of sub-contracting, making it unprofitable for employers. In their concluding pages, in what is the only weak section of the book, Beneria and Roldan propose a long list of development priorities for women including changes in socialization processes affecting the formation of gender traits, improvements in educational systems, equal sharing by men and women in child care and other domestic services, and improved services for birth control and family planning. Their important, but brief discussion of the importance of reproduction in the development processes resonates with other recent analysis of the effects of state development policies on women in Latin America. Recent works such as Carmen D. Deere and Magdalena Leon’s Rural Women and State Policy (Westview, 1987) conclude that the reproductive duties of women have not been addressed systematically by any government seeking to target women, with the possible exception of Cuba where equal sharing of childcare and housekeeping by men and women is legislated in the Cuban Family code. Beneria and Roldan’s book would
benefit from a comparative discussion of development policy targeted for women in countries such as Cuba and Nicaragua. Beneria and Roldan provide an important study in their analysis of women who are not activists, but seem bound by the constraints of working class gender ideology and the evolving contradictions of world capitalism. The next step is to compare the homeworkers with other groups of proletarian women to see if there are particular circumstances which are conducive to a gendered struggle for changing working conditions. Patricia Fernandez-Kelly’s analysis of women in maquiladoras suggests that they are not conducive to unionization, while the formation of the September 19th Garment Workers Union in 1985 raises hope. Most importantly, Beneria and Roldan have confirmed a research style which allows women space as self-motivated political actors who struggle within the confines of their lives. LYNN STEPHEN NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY,Bosm~, MA, U.S.A.
UNION MAHIS Nar WORKERS 1870-1940,
pages. Praeger USS39.95 cloth.
WASTED: ORGANIZING DOMESTK
by Donna L. van Raaphorst, 336 Publishers, New York, 1988. Price
The lack of organization of domestic servants throughout the world has been well documented. For example, Aban Mehta’s study of domestics in India (The Domestic Servant Class), Jacklyn Cock’s study in South Africa (Maids and Madams), Elsa Chaney’s work on South America (Servants and Sellers), and writers on American servitude from Lucy Salmon (Domestic Service) to David Katzman (Seven Days a Week) to Evelyn Glenn (Issei, Nisei and War Bride) have all pointed out the lack of unions among domestics. Donna L. van Raaphorst’s Union Maids Not Wanted, however, is the first study to focus exclusively on the topic of the lack of unionization in the USA and to historically detail the causes for this failure from 1870 to 1940, a period when most other categories of American workers were becoming organized. Her effort is highly successful in covering the complex forces that worked against domestics’ organizing: women workers and unskilled workers were not courted by unions, and domestic workers in particular were considered “marginal, nonessential” (p. 252) members of the labor force. The fact that domestics have also been disproportionately women of color-Afro-American, Asian American, Latina and Native American-and unions have been ambivalent, at best, about inclusion of minorities is an additional factor mitigating against this sector’s becoming a part of organized labor. Van Raaphorst makes it clear, however, that domestics have not been passive workers. In one of the most interesting, if problematic, chapters in the book, “Against All Odds,” van Raaphorst documents repeated efforts on the part of domestics to improve their situations collectively. Most such efforts were short-lived and unsuccessful in achieving even limited goals. But the chapter is important because it illustrates worker assertiveness and self respect, and how societal forces (including unions) moved against domestics’ progress. It is problematic, however, because van Raaphorst makes no distinctions between those efforts emanating from do-
Book Reviews
mestics alone, from reformers who were not domestics or from employers working with domestics. Such distinctions are important because, as van Raaphorst herself recognizes, the motives for employers and even some reformers to take part in such organizing were undoubtedly different from and, at times, contrary to the motives of domestics. “For some [employers, these groups] were an alternative to more militant labor organizations” (p. 194). The difference in motives and goals had to be a factor contributing to the lack of worker participation in some efforts. There are cases cited (e.g., that of “Miss I.” on p. 208) in which the background of the organizer is not even given in the text. To treat the effort at organizing domestics by these various segments of the population as though they were the same is not to recognize the existence of different class interests among women. In one of her strongest sections, van Raaphorst details the lack of impact New Deal labor legislation had on this occupation. While the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), the National Labor Relations Act (the “Wagner Act”), and the Fair Labor Standards Act simply neglected domestic service, the Works Project Administration (WPA) created training programs in twenty-six states and the District of Columbia designed to give domestics more skills and thereby upgrade the occupation. Though over 15,000 women went through the eight-week courses from 1936 to 1938, the program did not improve the status of the occupation overall because “ the basic operating assumption of the program-that training in housekeeping skills would upgrade the esteem of domestic work-was naive” (p. 236). Lack of worker skills has never been the essential problem of the occupation; as van Raaphorst well documents throughout this book, low pay, long hours, lack of benefits, and degrading treatment have been. Thus, solutions such as the WPA training program that aimed at changing the behavior of domestics missed the point that it was employers’ behavior that needed changing. In this section, van Raaphorst shows that efforts at changing employers’ behavior-whether by forcing them to pay a minimum wage, to limit hours, to pay into social security, or to reconsider their interpersonal treatment of domestics-were deliberately excluded from New Deal legislation that forced employers of most other types of workers to improve. The only weakness of the book is the copy editing. The unclear references, the missing locales of events (e.g., pp. 193 and 207), the incorrect subject-verb agreement (e.g., p. 178) the wrong table cited (p. 174), words omitted (e.g., p. 212), the numerous poorly constructed sentences are all errors that should have been corrected before the book went to press. The high quality of the research deserves not to have been compromised by poor copy editing. Nevertheless, this is a book rich with information for those interested in Women’s Studies, Labor Studies, American History and Race Relations. By bringing these formerly invisible workers more clearly into focus and by documenting the government’s and the unions’ behavior toward them, van Raaphorst has retrieved and illuminated an important aspect of American labor history. JUDITH ROLLINS SiMMONS COLLEGE, BOSTON, MA,U.S.A.
481
HARD HATTED WOMEN: STORIESOF STRUGGLE AND SucCESS IN THE TRADES, edited by Molly Martin, 265 pages.
Seal Press, Seattle,
1988. Price IJS$10.95
pb.
Women who have gone on before have paved my path . Now I can help build the bridge for all those who will follow. (Laura Deane Mason, Rural Contractor)
Hard Hatted Women is a book about building bridges, both literally and figuratively. It takes the reader to construction sites where women earn their living, .and to union halls where they fight for the rights of women who work in the trades. The women whose stories appear on these pages are often recognized in academe as little more than statistics-the 1.1% of construction workers in the US, the 8% of precision production craft and repair workers. Their adventures in a world of men are heartwarming and gutwrenching, frightening and funny. Editor Molly Martin, an electrician and organizer of women in the trades, has collected a group of stories from women in a wide range of non-traditional jobs whose backgrounds differ in age, race, class, level of education, sexuality, and geographic location within the United States. Each woman speaks in her own voice telling of her life, her work and her struggles on the job. Their struggles vary from meeting the physical challenges of a miner or a drywall rocker to the emotional challenges of coworkers who don’t want them there or of finding the privacy to express milk on a job site. These women are remarkable and ordinary. They use humor, anger, magic, and denial to cope with the situations they face while they dare to earn a decent wage. In her introduction, Martin gives a brief history of women working in the trades in the US. The first wave of hiring occurred during World War II when women were wooed into a variety of “men’s jobs” while men were off to war. At war’s end it was women’s patriotic duty to give men their jobs back and become wives and mothers. Those women who attempted to keep their jobs were excluded from labor unions and systematically forced out. The second wave was sparked by legislation. Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act made race and sex discrimination by employers and labor unions illegal. In 1978 Executive Order 11246 amended this act setting up specific goals and timetables for women in the construction industry and requiring employers to commit themselves to affirmative action programs. Also apprenticeship programs (based on the medieval guild system) are administered jointly by the federal and state governments, so regulations setting numerical goals for women apprentices have helped open the door and keep it open this time around. Though Martin stresses women’s need to earn good pay due to the increasing number of female heads of household, many of these women truly love their work. That it pays well is an extra perk, but for many after years of teaching or doing clerical work the satisfaction gained from seeing a finished product-be it cabinetry, a new roof, a sprinkler system or a day’s catch -and knowing it came from her own two hands is exhilarating. The stories I like best are of women encouraging other women to seek non-traditional jobs. For example, there’s the drywall finisher who does a lot of public