Perspective: How women are transforming organized labor
Teachers, students and their supporters rally in February at Frank Ogawa Plaza in Oakland, Calif. By Kim Kelly Kim Kelly is a freelance writer and labor organizer based in Brooklyn whose writing on labor, radical politics, and culture has appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, the New Republic, Teen Vogue, Pacific Standard and other publications. April 22 at 6:00 AM “Whatever the fight, don’t be ladylike.
This renewed energy is coming disproportionately from women. In fact, women — and particularly women of color — remain on the front lines of worker-organizing in a variety of industries, including those our patriarchal society has long coded as “women’s work.” Workers in a slew of traditionally feminized labor sectors — from education and domestic work to food service and sex work — have driven some of the movement’s most important victories.
Sexual violence also is an issue that has become a rallying point for many in the movement, especially as #MeToo highlighted how pervasive it is across industries. Domestic workers and agricultural workers experience a disproportionate level of sexual harassment and sexual violence on the job. A 2010 survey in the California Central Valley reported that 80 percent of women who do farm work had experienced sexual harassment or assault on the job.
The decades-old effort to decriminalize sex work has finally reached national prominence thanks in part to Sen. Kamala D. Harris reversing her earlier positions and coming out in favor of the idea. The U.S. labor movement, however, has not yet made a concerted effort to support them. Other education workers — from graduate students and adjunct professors to cafeteria workers — also joined the fight, organizing around demands for higher wages, safer workplaces and better working conditions.That trend has continued into 2019. Teachers in Los Angeles, Denver and Oakland, Calif., have grabbed headlines, and the movement shows no signs of slowing. But those in education are far from the only workers who have had enough.
A poster with Mary Harris’s familiar exhortation to not be ladylike hangs in her office, and Nelson has proved to be one of the most militant and effective labor leaders in decades. As she said in a Twitter thread of other inspirational women in labor, “Let them underestimate you, but never let them dictate how you can fight!”
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