Making the Woman Worker

Eileen Boris's Making the Woman Worker offers a fundamentally important contribution to the thriving research on twentieth-century global feminisms, to histories of the changing conditions of (women's) work, and to understandings of supranational organisations and the UN system. * Maud Anne Bracke, Journal of Contemporary History *
This book delivers a clear and detailed account of women in paid and unpaid work based on ILO's century-long history and its transformation, focusing mainly on women who have been more disadvantaged than others in terms of definition, recognition, equal treatment, and empowerment... this outstanding work promises to present a solid narrative of the challenges, failures, victories, and oppositions in the process as well as support, conflict, and tensions among actors involved in the "making of the woman worker" during ILO's 100 years, and the author keeps this promise. * Aslı Ermiş-Mert, Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work *
On the centennial of the International Labour Organization (ILO), the transnational body founded after World War I to create global labor standards covering a wide range of workers, Eileen Boris gives us a sweeping 100-year history. She charts the evolution of this crucial body from its almost entirely white, Euro-American, male-dominated origins through the post-World War II era when women from across the Global South began to demand representation and regulation, to the 21st century when women are the majority of activists in a resurgent global labor movement. With verve, keen analysis, and scrupulous attention to detail, Boris takes us inside complex, heated negotiations over the course of the long 20th century that shed light on the ways that, before corporate globalism, labor activists, governments and grass roots workers sought to make a more just world—and, in it, a place for all kinds of woman workers. * Annelise Orleck, author of We Are All Fast Food Workers *
Boris has written a lively, interesting, and timely study of women's precarious informal work and intimate labors. Covering a century's worth of documents from the ILO archive, she situates her account within the broader historical forces of cold war, decolonization, and globalization. At the same time, she provides an analytic framework for understanding the successes and limits of the ILO's efforts to reform the world of work. The rapid expansion of precarious labor across all types of work and the assault on international institutions by right-wing populist forces makes this an even more compelling achievement. * Mary Margaret Fonow, Norton and Ramsey Professor of Social Transformation and Professor Women and Gender Studies, Arizona State University *
In this ambitious, insightful, and provocative book, Boris uses the ILO to reveal how notions of who is a worker and what work deserves recognition and reward have changed over the last century. She shows how women shaped this discourse despite their marginalization from decision-making and she makes the case forhow notions of difference - across sex, region, race, and occupation - disadvantaged some and privileged others. Thoroughly grounded in primary sources, her analysis draws from astute readings of multiple scholarly literatures, including the newest research on gender, global labor, and women's history. * Dorothy Sue Cobble, Distinguished Professor of Labor Studies and History, Rutgers University *