A Higher "Standard of Life" for the World

U.S. Labor Women's Reform Internationalism and the Legacies of 1919

Datos Bibliográficos

ID7308055
AutoresDorothy Sue Cobble (0000-0002-9943-8226, Rutgers Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, autor de correspondencia)
Año2014
Volumen100
Número4
Páginas1052-1085
Fecha de publicación2014-03-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of American History (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314
EditorialOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1093/jahist/jau005
OpenAlexW2322264278
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas5

In 1919, in the immediate aftermath of World War I, women labor reformers from nineteen nations and three continents gathered in Washington, D.C., to hammer out a set of international labor standards and worker rights. The ten-day International Congress of Working Women (icww), called by the National Women's Trade Union League of America (nwtul), with the counsel and encouragement of British and French labor women, was timed to coincide with the inaugural meeting of the International Labor Organization (ilo), the body charged by the Treaty of Versailles with formulating international labor policies in the postwar world. The two hundred women who responded to the call demanded a voice for working women in shaping a new world order. Through international labor legislation and worker organization, they believed, “the standard of life of women workers throughout the world” could be raised. They met at a time of heady possibility. Women's suffrage in the United States and in much of Europe was imminent. The Bolsheviks had seized power in Russia in 1917; socialist movements and labor parties were on the rise across Europe, Asia, and elsewhere. The 1919 icww adjourned on a high note with plans for a permanent organization, the International Federation of Working Women (ifww).1

Economic history · Internationalism (politics · League · Legislation · Political science · Politics · Suffrage · Treaty · World War II · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies · History · International Labor and Employment Law · Labor Movements and Unions · Law