Book Review: Sisterhood and Solidarity: Feminism and Labor in Modern Times. By Diane Balser. Boston: South End Press, 1987. 247 pp. $10, paper
Abstract
Book ReviewSisterhood and Solidarity: Feminism and Labor in Modern Times. By Diane Balser. Boston: South End Press, 1987. 247 pp. $10, paper SAGE Publications, Inc.1990DOI: 10.1177/0160449X9001500208 Barbara L.Tischler Queens College, CUNY Sisterhood and Solidarity analyzes constructive responses to the oppression of women on the basis of both gender and class. Balser profiles three women's trade union groups, the Working Women's Association of 1868, the Union Alliance to Gain Equality (Union WAGE) of the 1970s, and the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW). The advantages of an institutional approach are apparent in this volume. Balser effectively documents the positions of her groups on major issues, and she traces the impact of internecine political battles on membership and organizational policy. The structure of Sisterhood and Solidarity is problematic, however, with a lacuna of a century between the Working Women's Association and Union WAGE and CLUW. This gap could suggest to inexperienced readers the absence of struggle against the "double oppression" between the 1860s and the 1960s, something that the author clearly does not intend. A discussion of women who fought gender discrimination and struggled to establish basic workers' rights in the early twentieth century might have provided a more felicitous