Sisters in the Brotherhoods: Working Women Organizing for Equality in New York City (Palgrave Studies in Oral History) Review

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Sisters in the Brotherhoods: Working Women Organizing for Equality in New York City (Palgrave Studies in Oral History) ReviewRosie's Daughters
Nowadays, to find a woman CEO leading a Fortune 500 company is no longer a novelty. The most recent list has a dozen, including the bosses of Pepsi, ADM, Kraft, Xerox and Wellpoint. A couple of years ago, a woman was elected Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. And perhaps, if she'd she taken her underdog rival more seriously, a woman would now be the Democratic Party's nominee for the Presidency.
But some barriers - seemingly a lot lower and less elite -- remain formidable. Anyone who reads Jane LaTour's revelatory Sisters in the Brotherhoods, will come to understand why it's not unlikely that Pakistan, a conservative Muslim country, will have another woman president before a woman is ever elected president of a national blue collar construction union in the U.S.A.
LaTour, a former Teamster herself, as well as a union democracy activist and award winning labor journalist, has produced the most illuminating history yet written of America's most embattled and undeservedly obscure civil rights movement.
Beginning in the late 70's, there began a dramatic, sometimes violent battle by ordinary women to vault over the parapets of blue-collar male privilege. But why are most of us just learning of these battles? Even on the Left, the claims of far smaller groups - think of the transsexual and the transgendered -- are more often invoked than the rights of blue-collar women to pursue a vocation in the trades without risking humiliation, beatings or social isolation.
True, not all of Sisters is unfamiliar territory. Some was explored in the 2005 film North Country (working title "Class Action"). It starred Charlize Theron in the fictionalized story of Lois Jenson who battled against sexual harassment and union indifference in the mines of Minnesota. Eventually, Theron/ Jensen prevailed after decades of legal struggle.
LaTour's stories in Sisters are altogether darker, richer and more diverse. Hollywood's working class heroines are stunningly beautiful individuals whose struggle - generally pursued through the courts -- elevates and isolates them from other women. They triumph because of their greater endowment of character and charisma - and beauty contest looks. Think of Erin Brockovich, the ex-model and unemployed single mom without a B.A. who almost single-handedly takes on and defeats PG&E.
In the beautifully crafted stories of Sisters, there actually are some tradeswomen who have movie star looks. Most don't. There are white graduates of elite colleges and black welfare moms; some strive to be good Marxists others just want to be crackerjack plumbers; there are lesbians and heterosexuals; inspirations range from those who dreamed as little girls of a career in the trades to those who simply liked the prospect of making three times the median wage.
LaTour follows a dozen women who got past the trade union barriers - past apprenticeship programs that favor relatives and co-ethnics; who got by -- at least temporarily --hiring hall favoritism; and on the job harassment --- to become journey plumbers, iron workers, electricians, carpenters.firefighters, telephone technicians, truckers and electronic technicians..Sisters is about women who adopted - after the main cycle of 60's and 70's radicalism had passed -- social movement building as their survival strategy. It's about the difficulties of trying to fight the institution you want to be part of. About how to build a social movement without any real resources or sources of outside support. And about the way a big swath of American labor unionism has adopted solidarity for the few, the white and the male.
All this, Sisters shows, helps to explain why compared to middle class and professional women, blue collar women have had a much harder time making their way. Like the troops who landed on the Omaha Beach, despite their bravery and capacity for organization, they've had a hard time getting off the beach, Thirty years ago, women were radically underrepresented in the trades - only 2%. Since then, there's been some progress, but they still haven't hit 3%.
But does it even matter that there are huge and even brutal obstacles to women becoming plumbers, operating engineers, or working on high iron? Why can't these women just stay in their job segregated ghettos - working in traditional women's fields of health, education and welfare? Or go to law school if they're serious about making money?
Reading the stories in Sisters, you're able to appreciate why - beyond the abstract questions of rights and justice - because the tone of the stories isn't what you'd expect. The women have suffered a great deal, but this is no festival of resentment. Those who've survived have the same pride in their craft that men do. Rather than simply rehearsing their humiliations; we hear expressions of gratitude - like the woman who paid tribute to the guy who watched her back when threatened by a knife wielding "brother." What finally persuades is the common decency and deservedness of the women pursuing these difficult vocations.Sisters in the Brotherhoods: Working Women Organizing for Equality in New York City (Palgrave Studies in Oral History) OverviewSisters in the Brotherhoods is an oral-history-based study of women who have, against considerable odds, broken the gender barrier to blue-collar employment in various trades in New York City beginning in the 1970s. It is a story of the fight against deeply ingrained cultural assumptions about what constitutes women's work, the middle-class bias of feminism, the daily grinding sexism of male coworkers, and the institutionalized discrimination of employers and unions. It is also the story of some gutsy women who, seeking the material rewards and personal satisfactions of skilled manual labor, have struggled to make a place for themselves among New York City's construction workers, stationary engineers, firefighters, electronic technicians, plumbers, and transit workers.Each story contributes to an important unifying theme: the way women confronted the enormous sexism embedded in union culture and developed new organizational forms to support their struggles, including and especially the United Tradeswomen.

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