Publication date: 26 August 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781800089303
Number of illustrations: 35
Women’s Labour Activism in Eastern Europe and Beyond
A new transnational history
Selin Çağatay (Author), Mátyás Erdélyi (Author), Alexandra Ghiț (Author), Olga Gnydiuk (Author), Veronika Helfert (Author), Ivelina Masheva (Author), Zhanna Popova (Author), Jelena Tešija (Author), Eszter Varsa (Author), Susan Zimmermann (Author)
Series: Work Around the World
This collaborative monograph presents a deeply researched, inclusive history of women’s labour activism in Eastern Europe, Austria, Turkey and transnationally, from the age of empires to the late twentieth century. It explores women’s activism and organizing to improve the working conditions and living circumstances of lower-income and working-class women and their communities in the region and internationally.
Moving beyond the celebratory or partisan perspectives of many classical and some feminist labour histories, Women’s Labour Activism in Eastern Europe and Beyond provides a careful historicization of women’s actions in a multiscalar perspective. Through a study of diverse contexts, the authors follow women aligned with a wide range of political persuasions, highlighting unexpected elements and continuities of women’s labour activism. Women’s activities are seen in the workplace, in the everyday, within and across social movements and organizations, and inside the state, all presented through a framing that spotlights long-term developments and bridges the divide between the literatures on state socialist and capitalist societies concerning gendered labour politics and activism. Combining a regional focus and transnational perspectives, the authors examine the sources of women’s labour activism in the region and the role of activists from the region within international women’s, labour and inter-state organizations. Moving women’s labour activism from the margins of labour, gender and European history to the centre of historical study, the volume makes an innovative contribution to the new global histories of labour and gender.
List of figures
List of maps
List of tables
List of abbreviations
Notes on authors
Foreword
Acknowledgements
A reader’s guide
Vocabulary of concepts and terminology: a contribution to global labour history
Chronology of political geography: maps
Chronology in pictures: a very short history
A transnational and inclusive history of women’s labour activism: general introduction
Part I: Women in mixed-gender labour movements: transgressing and confronting limitations
1 Economy, education, re-evaluation: women in the co-operative movement, 1900s to 1940s
2 Trade unions: gender politics and women’s organizing, 1900s to 1980s
3 Radical women: gendered social critique in anarchist, communist and New Left movements, 1890s to 1980s
4 Regional awareness and international engagement: social democratic women, 1890s to 1930s
Part II: Women’s gendered activist agendas and repertoires: from margins to centre
5 The power of education: improving women’s status in the world of work, 1900s to early 1990s
6 Exit and action: migrant women workers, 1890s to 1980s
7 Lines of division, lines of solidarity: minoritized women, 1880s to 1980s
8 Beyond the workplace: activism and the everyday in the twentieth century
Part III: Women’s labour activism across class and political divides: gender at the core?
9 Women addressing women workers: revisiting the class divide, 1860s to 1930s
10 Women addressing working mothers: trade unionists and the welfare state during the Cold War
Towards new global histories of gendered labour activism: a concluding essay
Tables
Appendix 1: Glossary of select organizations
Appendix 2: Glossary of select protagonists
Bibliography
Index
DOI: 10.14324/111.9781800089303
Number of illustrations: 35
Publication date: 26 August 2025
PDF ISBN: 9781800089303
EPUB ISBN: 9781800089327
Read Online ISBN: 9781800089297
Hardback ISBN: 9781800089280
Paperback ISBN: 9781800089297
Selin Çağatay (Author) 
Selin Çağatay is a research affiliate on the ZARAH project at the Central European University
Mátyás Erdélyi (Author)
Mátyás Erdélyi is a research affiliate on the ZARAH project at the Central European University. He will be a postdoctoral researcher in the FWF-funded project “Uses of Civil Justice in Central Europe, 1895-1938” at the University of Vienna (from 2025).
Alexandra Ghiț (Author)
Alexandra Ghiț is postdoctoral researcher at Vienna University in the ERC-funded project “The History of Feminist Political Thought and Women’s Rights Discourses in East Central Europe 1929-2001” and research affiliate on the ZARAH project at the Central European University. She has won a Marie Skłodowska-Curie (MSCA) fellowship at the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO) Leipzig (from 2026).
Olga Gnydiuk (Author)
Olga Gnydiuk is a research affiliate on the ZARAH project at the Central European University. She is investigator in the project “Ukrainian History Global Initiative”.
Veronika Helfert (Author)
Veronika Helfert is a research affiliate on the ZARAH project at the Central European University and Visiting Professor at the Department of History at the University of Vienna.
Ivelina Masheva (Author)
Ivelina Masheva is Assistant Professor at the Institute for Historical Studies, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, and research affiliate on the ZARAH project at the Central European University.
Zhanna Popova (Author)
Zhanna Popova is a research affiliate on the ZARAH project at the Central European University.
Jelena Tešija (Author)
Jelena Tešija is a PhD candidate and research affiliate on the ZARAH project at the Central European University. As a Marietta Blau Grant recipient, she has been on a one-year research stay at the Institute of Contemporary History in Ljubljana in 2024/2025.
Eszter Varsa (Author)
Eszter Varsa is a research affiliate on the ZARAH project and visiting lecturer at the Central European University. She is investigator in the project “Women experts and the production of feminist knowledge in post-war Central and Eastern Europe (1945-1989)” at Institute of History at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw.
Susan Zimmermann (Author)
Susan Zimmermann is University Professor, and principal investigator for the ZARAH project at the Central European University.
‘Women’s Labour Activism in Eastern Europe and Beyond tackles the class biases of women’s history as deftly as it does the gender blindnesses of labour history. It asks: on whose lives do we build our theories of collective action and social change? The unwaged become as significant as the waged; the informal, community and household spheres emerge from the shadows. We have been underestimating resistance because we have been ignoring the activism of the majority of workers.’
From the foreword by Dorothy Sue Cobble
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