The Rising of the Women Feminist Solidarity and Class Conflict, 1880-1917

How working-class socialist women changed the course of American history, with a foreword by labor journalist Sarah Jaffe.

In this landmark study, Meredith Tax charts the actions of women in working-class, feminist, and socialist movements during the first upsurge of the American labor movement. From the pioneering efforts of Chicago women in the 1880s to the unprecedented New York City shirtwaist strike in 1909 to the 1912 “bread and roses” strike of immigrant textile workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and from the Socialist Party to the Industrial Workers of the World, Tax gives us a rich narrative of women workers’ struggles.

Caught between the hostility of male trade unionists, the sexism of male socialist organizers, and the assumptions of middle-class feminists, women workers forged their own demands for economic and political justice. In doing so, Tax argues, a unique form of socialist-feminist class consciousness was created, whose ripples touched the suffrage movement. First published in 1980, The Rising of the Women is a classic of feminist labor history, presented here with a new introduction by the author and a new foreword by Sarah Jaffe.

Meredith Tax is a leading figure in the US women’s liberation movement, and the author of several books including the novel Rivington Street and the children’s book Families. A pioneering campaigner for reproductive rights, she also helped to establish the PEN American Center Women’s Committee and advocates for global free speech and secular voices.
 
Sarah Jaffe is the author of Work Won’t Love You Back and Necessary Trouble, and an independent journalist covering the politics of power, from the workplace to the streets. She is a reporting fellow at Type Media Center.