Thanks for elegantly and forcefully putting me right thus:
>I realize you don't mean this to be insulting, but your ignorance of history
>is showing. NONE of the earliest walkouts, strikes, and labor unions in the
>United States involved men. Early labor history in the USA is one of women
>and children striking and forming unions. Granted, none of these unions
>survived very long, and the longer standing ones were destroyed by the Civil
>War, but in fact women workers in the US have a longer history of struggle
>against capital than men. Norman Ware in the Industrial Worker hypothesises
>that this is because women were wage workers with no aspirations due to the
>legal and social limits on women's rights to own property or run businesses.
>The few men who did work for wages, did so seasonally as an adjunct to
>agricultural labor, or were crafts with aspirations to small shop ownership.
>Men do not begin striking and walking out until 20 years after women.
>Historys about this can be found in some of Thomas Dublin's work, Mary
>Blewett, Mary Ryan, Norman Ware, etc.
>
> In short, women have a very long and honorable history as labor fighters, men
>and leftists just don't recognize it.
I now find myself wondering if there's evidence for this history (of which I was entirely ignorant) in the UK and Oz. If you happen to have any cites on this, I'd much appreciate 'em.
Cheers, Rob.