Women workers and the trade unions

Sarah Boston, Lawrence & Wishart, 448 pages, paperback, £20

First published in 1980, Sarah Boston has updated this classic text.

The book has with new chapters on the years 1987-1997 and 1997-2010 which explore the specific struggles of that period and women’s ongoing fight for equal rights and equal pay in the post-Thatcher period and under New Labour.

Boston recounts the story of women workers from the early nineteenth century to the present day: the struggles and strikes, successes and failures in their strenuous efforts to organise and win recognition from employers and male trade unionists.

Sarah Boston argues that male trade unionists’ exclusionary treatment of women workers contradicted not only the socialist aims of most trade unions but also the very logic of trade unionism itself.

The account is essential reading for anyone concerned with the history of industrial relations, but also with the history of feminism and of women in the workplace.

This new edition includes a preface by TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady.

Reviews contributed by the Bookmarks socialist bookshop.

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