Abstract
Making Feminist Politics offers a compelling hundred-plus year history of organizing by union women within and across unions and borders, and between feminists in organized labor and the women’s movement more broadly. Franzway and Fonow analyze and guide the reader through example after example of trade union women seeking each other out and making use of (or creating) international structures to deploy resources and advance discourse to influence unions, employers, and governments around key feminist platforms, including childcare, pay equity, workplace harassment, precarious work, reproductive choice, and violence against women.
From their case study on the International Metalworkers Federation to their review of intra-movement and transnational organizing at the Porto Allegre World Social Forum, Franzway and Fonow provide a wealth of references for readers interested in the making of trade union feminist politics. But as Franzway and Fonow note at the beginning of the book, “whatever gains were made for women in the past now seem quite tenuous. Such losses of specific women’s positions and resources reveal the limits of a political strategy aimed at intervening in hierarchical structures of power, rather than transforming them” (p. 4).
Making Feminist Politics begins with a call for a return to a more explicit sexual politics in trade union activity and analysis at local, national, and transnational levels. They name the challenges/dangers inherent in union “family campaigns” (where “family” is framed in heteronormative terms), in “gender” policies (which risk erasing/neutralizing both women and sexism), and in lesbian/gay/bisexual/trans union organizing (where queer politics are sanitized/de-sexed/etc.). Franzway and Fonow aren’t purists, they’re simply keen to point out the slippery slopes of political pragmatism, and rightly insist on a recommitment to sexual politics that understands “complex gender relationship of power expressed as domination, resistance, alliances, and pleasures that are central to all social institutions, including the trade union movement” (p. 9). And, picking up from Franzway’s introduction of “the laboring body” in Sexual Politics and Greedy Institutions, they call on feminists and unionists to recognize the fourth element of women’s labor (the invisible reproductive self-care work women do, essential to their triple roles of social reproduction, paid work, and activism).
For students and teachers of social movement theory, Franzway and Fonow offer concrete examples and initiate meaningful discussions on framing, resource mobilization, networks, and intra-social movement (as well as transnational movement) organizing. For students and teachers of labor, women’s, and queer studies, Making Feminist Politics builds a much-welcomed historical memory. Those interested particularly in separate organizing will find the book rich in historical and international references to women-only caucuses, committees, education programs, and of course, women’s unions.
Bringing feminist politics into the trade union movement at all levels is a hard slog. Some readers will recognize that behind each of the book’s references to what are, in many cases, transnational “go around” strategies, are local and national stories of struggle and compromise, of more or less intense sexual and racial politics, personal and collective battles.
Unfortunately, this is a slim volume—more space might have allowed the authors to detail some of their examples. In my mind, here are some of the tough questions that still call for answers about the mechanics of transnational organizing and working across “many lines of difference”: How do sexual and racial politics influence who attends international events on behalf of their unions, or how decisions are made at these levels? How, and to what degree, are issues of racial in/justice as well as north/south dynamics articulated, integrated, negotiated into trade union feminist politics and activity at transnational levels? How do dynamics of organizing between trade union feminists and the broader women’s community at the international level compare (and integrate) with coalition work at the local, state, and national levels? What are the limits of transnational organizing? How exactly does “what happens in Geneva” come home to women workers in local unions?
Making Feminist Politics offers a broad and theoretically rich accounting of trade union feminist cross-border efforts to build and win policies and campaigns at the level of global union federations, the ILO, and the World Social Forum, and leaves us with the important challenge of how to bring it home to the local level.