Gender Composition in Contentious Collective Action: Women’s Strike Participation in Gilded Age America -- Harmful, Helpful, or Both?

• In Event: 120 - Section on Labor and Labor Movements Paper Session. Barriers and Opportunities for Building A Labor Movement across Differences of Race, Gender, and Legal Status

Abstract

The Gilded Age was a tumultuous time for organized labor in the U.S. As the labor movement continued to grow in size and intensity, it also became more heterogeneous, with more women becoming part of strike actions. Little is known about how women’s participation in the labor movement during this period might have affected outcomes. On the one hand, women might have hindered the movement by delegitimizing it or by causing factions. On the other hand, women’s participation may have been helpful to the labor movement by bringing in new standpoints, tactics, and networks. In this paper, we ask: How did the participation of women in Gilded Age strikes affect movement success? We employ a unique and comprehensive historical data source to test the impact of women’s participation on the success of every strike that took place in the Northeastern United States between 1881 and 1886. We find the relationship to be nonlinear. Over the lower range of female striker composition, women in strikes were detrimental to strike success. We argue that when the proportion of women is small, negative cultural attitudes towards women and men’s exclusion of them serve to undermine solidarity. However, when women begin to approach proportional parity with men, we find that women’s participation actually increases the chances of success. We suggest that this is because when men and women made up similar proportions of a strike, women were more likely to participate and be taken seriously by their male counterparts.

Authors

• Anna W. Jacobs, Vanderbilt University

• Larry W. Isaac, Vanderbilt University