Making Feminist Politics

Book excerpt: In this timely and detailed examination of the intersections of feminism, labor politics, and global studies, Suzanne Franzway and Mary Margaret Fonow reveal the ways in which women across the world are transforming labor unions in the contemporary era. Situating specific case studies within broad feminist topics, Franzway and Fonow concentrate on union feminists mobilizing at multiple sites, issues of wages and equity, child care campaigns, work-life balance, and queer organizing, demonstrating how unions around the world are broadening their focuses from contractual details to empowerment and family and feminist issues. By connecting the diversity of women's experiences around the world both inside and outside the home and highlighting the innovative ways women workers attain their common goals, Making Feminist Politics lays the groundwork for recognition of the total individual in the future of feminist politics within global union movements.