Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-9q27g Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-21T02:38:40.021Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Gender Composition in Contentious Collective Action: “Girl Strikers” in Gilded Age America—Harmful, Helpful, or Both?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 October 2019

Anna W. Jacobs  and
Larry W. Isaac
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The Gilded Age was a tumultuous period for US labor and capital: the labor movement grew in size and intensity, strikes mushroomed, and women’s labor force and strike participation grew in tandem. Yet little is known about how women’s participation influenced strike efficacy. On the one hand, women may have added numerical force, militant energy for gendered solidarity and therefore contributed to strike success. On the other hand, women’s participation may have hindered the cause by delegitimizing it or by producing harmful internal factionalism. In this article, we ask: How did women’s participation in Gilded Age strikes influence strike success? We use a unique data source to test the impact of women’s participation relative to men on the success of every strike that took place in the Northeastern United States from 1881 to 1886. We find that striking gender composition ratios matter and are reflected in a nonlinear pattern: for male-dominated and female-dominated strikes, greater numbers of female strikers reduce the chances of success. However, when gender composition approaches approximate parity, the effect of female strikers enhances strike success. We suggest that in approximate proportional parity range, women were more likely to participate and also be taken more seriously by male co-workers. We supplement quantitative findings with qualitative accounts from specific strikes. Our findings have important implications for diversity in contentious collective action in general and strike success in particular.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Science History , Volume 43 , Issue 4 , Winter 2019 , pp. 733 - 763
Copyright
© Social Science History Association, 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abrams, Dominic, Joanna, Thomas, and Hogg, Michael A. (1990) “Numerical distinctiveness, social identity, and gender salience.” British Journal of Social Psychology 29 (1): 87–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aronowitz, Stanley (1973) False Promises: The Shaping of American Working-Class Consciousness. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Barker-Benfield, G. J. (2004) The Horrors of the Half-Known Life: Male Attitudes toward Women and Sexuality in 19th Century America. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Burstein, Paul (1999) “Social movements and public policy,” in Giugni, Marco, McAdam, Doug, and Tilly, Charles (eds.) How Social Movements Matter. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press: 1–21.Google Scholar
Cameron, A. Colin, and Miller, Douglas L. (2015) “A practitioner’s guide to cluster-robust inference.” Journal of Human Resources 50 (2): 317–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Card, David and Olson, Craig A. (1995) “Bargaining power, strike duration, and wage outcomes: An analysis of strikes in the 1880s.” Journal of Labor Economics 13 (1): 32–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carson, Clayborne (1981) In Struggle. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Clawson, Dan, and Clawson, Mary Ann (1999) “What has happened to the US labor movement? Union decline and renewal.” Annual Review of Sociology 25: 95–119.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clemens, Elisabeth S. (1993) “Organizational repertoires and institutional change: Women’s groups and the transformation of US politics, 1890–1920.” American Journal of Sociology 98 (4): 755–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clemente, Deirdre (2009) “Dressed for defiance: The clothing of female strikers, 1910–1935,” in Brenner, A., Day, B., and Ness, I. (eds.) The Encyclopedia of Strikes in American History, New York: M. E. Sharpe: 95–102.Google Scholar
Cornfield, Daniel B. (1989) Becoming a Mighty Voice. New York: Russell Sage.Google Scholar
Cota, Albert A., and Dion, Kenneth L. (1986) “Salience of gender and sex composition of ad hoc groups: An experimental test of distinctiveness theory.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 50 (4): 770–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, Mike (1986) Prisoners of the American Dream. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Davidson, Sue (1984) “Introduction,” in Jensen, J. M. and Davidson, S. (eds.) A Needle, a Bobbin, a Strike: Women Needleworkers in America. Philadelphia: Temple University Press: xi–xxii.Google Scholar
Edwards, P. K. (1981) Strikes in the United States, 1881–1974. New York: St. Martin’s.Google Scholar
Enstad, Nan (1999) Ladies of Labor, Girls of Adventure: Working Women, Popular Culture, and Labor Politics at the Turn of the Twentieth Century. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Fielding, Anthony, and Goldstein, Harvey (2006) “Cross-classified and multiple membership structures in multilevel models.” Research report RR791, University of Birmingham. www.education.gov.uk/publications/eOrderingDownload/RR791.pdf.Google Scholar
Foner, Philip S. (1979) Women and the American Labor Movement: From Colonial Times to the Eve of World War I. New York: The Free Press.Google Scholar
Foner, Philip S. (1981) Organized Labor and The Black Worker, 1619–1981. New York: International Publishers.Google Scholar
Form, William Humbert (1985) Divided We Stand: Working-Class Stratification in America. Champaign: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Gamson, William A. (1975) The Strategy of Social Protest. Homewood, IL: Dorsey Press.Google Scholar
Gamson, William A. (1991) “Commitment and agency in social movements.” Sociological Forum 6 (1): 27–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ganz, Marshall (2000) “Resources and resourcefulness: Strategic capacity in the unionization of California agriculture: 1959–1966.” American Journal of Sociology 105 (4): 1003–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gelman, Andrew (2006) “Multilevel (hierarchical) modeling: What it can and cannot do.” Technometric 48 (3): 432–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ghaziani, Amin (2008) The Dividends of Dissent. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Glenn, Susan A. (1991) Daughters of the Shtetl: Life and Labor in the Immigrant Generation. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Hofstader, Eric (1955) Age of Reform. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Isaac, Larry (2002) “To counter ‘the very devil’ and more: The making of independent capitalist militia in Gilded Age America.” American Journal of Sociology 108 (September): 353–405.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Isaac, Larry (2008) “Counterframes and allegories of evil: Characterizations of labor by Gilded Age elites.” Work and Occupations 35 (4): 388–421.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Isaac, Larry W., and Christiansen, Lars (2002) “How the civil rights movement revitalized labor militancy.” American Sociological Review 67 (5): 722–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jensen, Joan M. (1984a) “Needlework as art, craft, and livelihood before 1900,” in Jensen, J. M. and Davidson, S. (eds.) A Needle, a Bobbin, a Strike. Philadelphia: Temple University Press: 3–19.Google Scholar
Jensen, Joan M. (1984b) “The great uprisings: 1900–1920,” in J. M. Jensen and S. Davidson (eds.) A Needle, a Bobbin, a Strike. Philadelphia: Temple University Press: 83–87.Google Scholar
Jensen, Joan M. (1984c) “The great uprising in Rochester,” in Jensen, J. M. and Davidson, S. (eds.) A Needle, a Bobbin, a Strike. Philadelphia: Temple University Press: 94–113.Google Scholar
Kanter, Rosabeth Moss (1977) “Some effects of proportions on group life: Skewed sex ratios and responses to token women.” American Journal of Sociology 82 (5): 965–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Katznelson, Ira, and Zolberg, Aristide R., eds. (1986) Working-Class Formation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Kessler-Harris, Alice (1976) “Organizing the unorganizable: Three Jewish women and their union.” Labor History 17 (1): 5–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kessler-Harris, Alice (1982) Out to Work. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Laslett, Barbara, and Brenner, Johanna (1989) “Gender and social reproduction: Historical perspectives.” Annual Review of Sociology 15: 381–304.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Levine, Susan (1984) Labor’s True Women: Carpet Weavers, Industrialization, and Labor Reform in the Gilded Age. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Lewis, Jan, and Lockridge, Kenneth A. (1988) “‘Sally has been sick’: Pregnancy and family limitation among Virginia gentry women, 1780–1830.” Journal of Social History 22 (1): 5–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lipold, Paul, and Isaac, Larry (2009) “Striking deaths: Lethal contestation and the ‘exceptional’ character of the American labor movement, 1870–1970.” International Review of Social History 54 (August): 167–205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lucia, Carmen (1996) “First a troublemaker, then a troubleshooter: Carmen Lucia, United Hatters, Cap and Millinery Workers International Union (1902–1985),” in O’Farrell, Brigid and Kornbluh, Joyce L. (eds.) Rocking the Boat: Union Women’s Voices, 1915–1975. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press: 34–57.Google Scholar
Malkiel, Theresa S. (1990 [1910]) The Diary of a Shirtwaist Striker. Ithaca, NY: ILR Press.Google Scholar
Marx, Karl, and Engels, Friedrich (1967 [1848]) The Communist Manifesto. New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
McAdam, Doug (1982) Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930–1970. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
McCammon, Holly J., Campbell, Karen E., Granberg, Ellen M., and Mowery, Christine (2001) “How movements win: Gendered opportunity structures and US women’s suffrage movements, 1866 to 1919.” American Sociological Review 66 (1): 49–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meier, August, and Rudwick, Elliott (2007) Black Detroit and the Rise of the UAW. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Michels, Roberto (1962 [1911]) Political Parties. New York: Hearst International Library Company.Google Scholar
Milkman, Ruth (1980) “Organizing the sexual division of labor: Historical perspectives on ‘women’s work’ and the American labor movement.” Socialist Review 49 (1): 95–150.Google Scholar
Milkman, Ruth (2006) L.A. Story: Immigrant Workers and the Future of the US Labor Movement. New York: Russell Sage.Google Scholar
Miller, Frederick D. (1983) “The end of SDS and the emergence of Weatherman,” in Freeman, Joan (ed.) Social Movements of the Sixties and Seventies. London: Longman: 279–97.Google Scholar
Montgomery, David (1979) Workers’ Control in America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Morgan, Carol E. (1997) “Gender constructions and gender relations in cotton and chain-making in England: A contested and varied terrain.” Women’s History Review 6 (3): 367–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morris, Aldon, and Staggenborg, Suzanne (2002) “Leadership in social movements,” in Snow, David, Soule, Sarah, and Kriesi, Hanspeter (eds.) The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing: 171–98.Google Scholar
Oegema, Dirk, and Klandermans, Bert (1994) “Why social movement sympathizers don’t participate.” American Sociological Review 59 (5): 703–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olzak, Susan, and Ryo, Emily (2007) “Organizational diversity, vitality and outcomes in the civil rights movement.” Social Forces 85 (4): 1561–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perlman, Selig (1928) A Theory of the Labor Movement. New York: AM Kelley.Google Scholar
Piven, Frances Fox, and Cloward, Richard A. (1979) Poor Peoples’ Movements. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Primo, David M., Matthew, L. Jacobsmier, and Milyo, Jeffrey (2007) “Estimating the impact of state policies and institutions with mixed-level data.” State Politics and Policy Quarterly 7 (4): 446–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quillian, Logan (1995) “Prejudice as a response to perceived group threat: Population composition and anti-immigrant and racial prejudice in Europe.” American Sociological Review 60 (4): 586–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Randel, Amy E. (2002) “Identity salience: A moderator of the relationship between group gender composition and work group conflict.” Journal of Organizational Behavior 23 (6): 749–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Raudenbush, Stephen W., and Bryk, Anthony S. (2002) Hierarchical Linear Models. New York: SAGE Publications.Google Scholar
Ridgeway, Cecilia (2014) “Why status matters for inequality.” American Sociological Review 79 (1): 1–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rose, Sonya O. (1988) “Gender antagonism and class conflict: Exclusionary strategies of male trade unionists in nineteenth-century Britain.” Social History 13 (2): 191–208 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rose, Sonya O. (1992) Limited Livelihoods. Gender and Class in Nineteenth-Century England. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Rosenblum, Gerald (1973) Immigrant Workers: Their Impact on American Labor Radicalism. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Scharf, Lois (1984) “The great uprising in Cleveland: When sisterhood failed,” in Jensen, J. M. and Davidson, S. (eds.) A Needle, a Bobbin, a Strike. Philadelphia: Temple University Press: 146–66.Google Scholar
Sombart, Werner (1976 [1906]) Why Is There No Socialism in the United States? New York: Sharpe.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spero, Sterling D., and Harris, Abraham L. (1968) The Black Worker. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, Veta, and Whittier, Nancy E. (1992) “Collective identity in social movement communities,” in Morris, Aldon D. and Mueller, Carol M. (eds.) Frontiers in Social Movement Theory. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press: 104–29.Google Scholar
Todd, John (1867) Woman’s Rights. Boston: Lee & Shepard.Google Scholar
Turbin, Carole (1987) “Beyond conventional wisdom: Women’s wage work, household economic contribution, and labor activism in a mid-nineteenth century working-class community,” in Groneman, Carol and Norton, Mary Beth (eds.) To Toil the Livelong Day. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press: 47–67.Google Scholar
US Bureau of the Census (1975) Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970. Part I. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
US Bureau of Labor (1888) Third Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor: Strikes and Lockouts. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
US Bureau of Labor Statistics (2015) “News Release: Major Work Stoppages in 2014,” www.bls.gov/news.release/wkstp.nr0.htm (accessed April 10).Google Scholar
Voss, Kim (1993) The Making of American Exceptionalism: The Knights of Labor and Class Formation in The Nineteenth Century. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Voss, Kim and Sherman, Rachel (2000). “Breaking the Iron Law of Oligarchy: Union Revitalization in the American Labor Movement.” American Journal of Sociology 106: 303–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weiner, Lynn Y. (1985) From Working Girl to Working Mother: The Female Labor Force in the United States, 1820–1980. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Wertheimer, Barbara M. (1977) We Were There: The Story of Working Women in America. New York: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
Zald, Mayer N., and Ash, Roberta (1966) “Social movement organizations: Growth, decay and change.” Social Forces 44 (3): 327–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar