I met with my committee (Dr. Halpin, Dr. Mollin, Dr. Schneider) this week on Thursday and Friday and discussed some changes to my research. I’ll definitely be keeping maternalism in my research, but I’ll be widening my questions and argument by focusing primarily on gender dynamics within the New York Teachers Union/United Federation of Teachers. Maternalism will surely fall in there somehow, but because I don’t yet know what the sources hold, it’s better to go into the archives with a broader question rather than a narrower one. I’ve been given some suggested reading to familiarize myself with postwar feminism, maternalism, and anticommunism, and now have a lot of reading to do this summer.

I got some pretty helpful comments on my proposal from Dr. Jones, Dr. Halpin, and Tom. I know that I have a long way to go, but I’m not as worried about writing a much more complete proposal in May. A lot of what I have to work on is just narrowing down my topic. I’m hoping that the graduate committee’s suggestion of focusing solely on teachers’ unions will prove successful. A lot of comments on my proposal were about expanding my methodology and historiography sections, which I definitely want to do, and I hope that I can expand and refine them substantially with new sources within the month. Something else that I (for some reason) didn’t think about, but need to, is defining certain terms like pronatalism, conservatism, etc., in my proposal so that readers can understand these terms in their historical context, and so my proposal can be clearer and stronger.

Next, I just have to meet with my thesis committee and work on figuring out how I’m going to focus my paper. I’m confident in the graduate committee’s choices for me: Dr. Schneider (who has already agreed) and Dr. Mollin (who I have a meeting with on Tuesday). I know that my committee will be very helpful and I feel better about going into my project knowing that I have such well-informed committee.

I found writing my thesis proposal to be harder than I initially thought it was going to be. I knew when I began writing it that it would be pretty short, a shell of what it will be next fall, but I didn’t realize how little I actually know on my topic until I began writing. I had the most trouble with my historiography and methodology, as I’ve just moved to a new topic and I only have so much information that will directly contribute to my project. I did what I could to at least outline where I want to go from here. I was nervous about writing what questions I wanted to ask and what my argument would be, but once I took a break and really thought about everything I’ve read, my questions and argument came easily to me.

For my next draft, I definitely want to have a wider historiography and a better understanding on where my own work will fit within it. As for methodology, I want to really know what I’m going to be using to analyze my sources, even though I haven’t really seen any sources yet. Overall, I just want a more complete proposal to help myself know where I am in my research and where I need to go with it.

Methdology:

Although I still see my thesis as labor history, my research methodology will place me firmly in labor and gender history, as well as in political history. I will be looking at Cold War politics concerning laboring women through a gendered lens. This is essential to my project because Cold War gender ideology was so pervasive in both society and the government, and was reflected in anticommunist attacks on labor women in the government. Studying divisions of labor and how changing gender ideology affected different organizations like the Women’s Bureau and labor unions will also shape my methodology and inform my research.

Focus Statement: 

The postwar years were a reactionary period defined by the Second Red Scare and anticommunist attacks on liberal-leftists in the both the public and private sectors. Among these attacked groups were government women like Frieda Miller of the Women’s Bureau (Dept. of Labor) Mary Keyserling of the Department of Commerce (later the Women’s Bureau). Anticommunists saw these women as vulnerable to communist influences due to their positions in the government and thus, a threat to national security. Their relative positions in the government also posed a threat to masculinity, as they defied contemporary gender norms by working outside the home and in respected government positions. I argue that because of the intense scrutiny and disloyalty charges these women faced, their attempts to pass women’s rights legislation during the postwar decades were thwarted by anticommunist crusading. Additionally,  I also argue that the working women they represented were also affected by anticommunism/antifeminism as women’s rights legislation, like an equal pay act, would have been highly beneficial to women in rapidly changing workplaces and unions, due to increasing rates of female employment and membership. I will examine how changing gender ideology impacted anticommunist/antifeminist efforts to stunt feminist legislation both in the government and in the workplace. My study will use government documents, including papers from loyalty hearings, congressional hearings regarding women’s rights legislation, as well as Women’s Bureau papers. I will also use newspapers, union papers and newsletters, and personal letters. My research will combine labor, gender, and political history in its examination of Cold War politics’ effect on redefined gender roles in the workplace and government. By combining these historical methods to reexamine postwar gender politics, my paper will place firmly place itself within the relevant historiographies.

Overall, I think this year’s conference went very smooth. From the discussions I had with prospective students, a few presenters, and faculty, it seems like everyone enjoyed themselves. I think the GLC is a great location for the conference, and I’m glad we’re planning on using it again next year. I also think that the panels worked out pretty well, even though we had a few two person panels, which I know we initially wanted to avoid. There are a few things, small things, really, that we need to remember to make things run better next year. One of them is just making sure that small details on things like programs, name tags, etc. are correct. Another is probably planning for things like prospective student dinners in advance, trying to make reservations for a small group of grad students to accompany them to a place that caters to a variety of dietary needs. I also want to stress trying our best to let presenters know about registration times. I know that travel plans can change at the last minute, but to avoid unnecessary stress, I think we should really stress arriving for the conference as early as possible.

I have to admit, when I first added this book to my list, I wasn’t so sure how helpful it would be. But I’m glad I started reading it. Kathleen Laughlin’s Women’s Work and Public Policy: A History of the Women’s Bureau, Department of Labor, 1945-1970 (2000), examines the feminist activism stemming from the federal and grassroots partnerships between the Women’s Bureau and organizations like the Women’s Trade Union League and the National League of Jewish Women. Laughlin argues that “the Women’s Bureau’s practice of ‘linking government and the grassroots’ helped to sustain the political milieu for women’s rights’ activism during the post-WWII era and for resurgent feminism in the 1960s” (4). Like other works that I’ve read by Dorothy Sue Cobble and Cynthia Harrison, Laughlin counters the idea that feminist activity subsided during the postwar decades, and instead shows how economic and labor activism paved the way for a larger, more organized women’s movement in the 1960s.

What I really enjoyed about this book was how Laughlin centers the early part of her book on how Cold War gender roles played a part in the Women’s Bureau’s fight to keep women in jobs with good pay. Like Storrs, Laughlin argues that the Women’s Bureau and their grassroots partners were not able to pass any significant legislation due to anticommunism/feminism and conservative politics. It fell easily in line with the articles that I read, and only encourage me further to pursue this focus for my research. Laughlin looks at how the different directors of the Women’s Bureau, starting with the second one, Frieda Miller, dealt with economic, labor, and social equality issues (including the ERA) during their tenures. Laughlin explores the Women’s Bureau’s early opposition to the ERA, with its acceptance of the “codification of sexual difference as economically responsible in the welfare state” governments of Roosevelt and Truman. There was some familiar information and some new information in this book. I particularly liked how Laughlin situated the fight for equal pay and job security within changing gender roles, highlighting not just the statistics of women in the public sphere, but also the social aspect of their work. She discusses “momism” (mothers staying home to care for their children, following the parenting advice of Dr. Spock) and how this anticommunist gender ideology contrasted with the goals of the Women’s Bureau and its grassroots affiliates. I’ll definitely be keeping this book around for future reference.

(I’ll write about the book I read in another post to prevent this one from being any longer than it’s going to be)

Over break, I decided to switch up the focus of my research. Instead of just reading about labor feminists and their views on the ERA, I decided to start looking to Cold War American society, particularly changing gender ideology. I started off with two Landon Storrs articles focusing on antifeminism and anticommunism during the 1940s and 1950s. The articles are rather similar, but have different focuses and were both very helpful in helping me situate my research into something larger. Based on what I’ve read, I definitely think I’ve found how I’m going to focus my research.

Methodology article:

The first article I read, “Red Scare Politics and the Suppression of Popular Front Feminism: The Loyalty Investigation of Mary Dublin Keyserling” (2003) argues that anticommunists like Senator Joseph McCarthy stunted New Deal policies and feminist activity in the 1940s and 50s through their antifeminist attacks on government women like Keyserling, who served in the Commerce Department. Accusing left-liberal government women of being communists (though they often had ties or relations to communists) was a way of preventing women from policy-making. Keyserling, Storrs shows, had a long history of public service. She was active in education, labor, and civil rights. She was a New Dealer and economic reformer who championed a larger government presence in business and society to curb economic and social inequality. These liberal politics, her position in the government, as well as her relationship with various grassroots communists made Keyserling the perfect target for anticommunist, antifeminist attacks.

The reason I like this article’s methodology so much is because it uses Keyserling’s trial as a case study to show how anticommunism stunted liberal and feminist policy making during the postwar decades. I can use this to see how the larger government, not just the labor feminists in the Women’s Bureau, felt about women’s rights legislation, particularly the ERA. Obviously opposition towards the ERA wasn’t just coming from the labor feminists, so I’d like to explore this more to see how other governmental groups campaigned against the amendment. I’m also wondering if I can use this methodology to explore gender relations and support/opposition to women’s rights legislation within labor unions, as I definitely see this playing a part in my thesis somehow. At this point, I can see my own thesis being a case study to examine larger gender ideology related to work and policy during the postwar era, as well. Overall, Storr’s methodology was practical, efficient, and will probably one that I adopt in my own work. She situates herself within the historiography very early on, and is consistent with her argument throughout the article. By breaking down the trial and Keyserling’s professional history, Storrs allows readers to really understand why Kesyerling was a prime target for anticommunist crusades, and why her disloyalty trial is particularly important for understanding larger feminist political issues during the postwar years. Even though she doesn’t use as much gender theory as she does in her other article that I read, it’s still apparent through her writing that changing gender ideology played a role in the anticommunism and antifeminism that targeted federal women policy makers.

The second article I read by Storrs, “Attacking the Washington ‘Femmocracy’: Antifeminism in the Cold War Campaign against ‘Communists in Government'” (2007), focuses more on the gender aspect of popular antifeminism in crusades against left-liberals in the government during the early Cold War. Storrs explores how male civil service workers had become associated with homosexuality due to their service to other men, and how combining this with increased rates of women (particularly married women) in government positions created a “new” crisis in masculinity that had to be addressed.  Working women, especially working women with considerable influence, were seen as threats to American safety and society by fervent anticommunists in the government. Storrs argues that anticommunists saw “G-girls”, or “government girls,” women who worked in federal government positions in D.C., as easy targets for communist organizers and thus, a threat to national security. They could influence their male partners and coworkers, and if those partners/coworkers had higher positions in the government, then it became easier for communist sympathies to make their way to the president.  To the anticommunists, Storrs states, this started with purging the government of left-leaning feminist women workers, like Mary Keyserling, who had a disloyalty hearing herself in the late 40s/early 50s. By adhering to Cold War gender ideology that saw men as the sole breadwinners of the family and women as housewives, anticommunists believed that women could be saved from communism’s influence and the threat to national security could be combated. They applied this rhetoric to their attacks on women government workers, and used popular anticommunist fears to fuel their attacks. By condemning women policy makers, Storrs argues, they were also undercutting women’s ability to hold jobs in the government and to pass women’s rights legislation. This antifeminism stemming from anticommunism was, according to Storrs, one of the factors leading to the stunting of liberal and New Deal policy during the postwar decades (like I described above).

This article took a larger, more gendered look at the issue of anticommunism’s opposition to, and undercutting of feminist and New Deal policy. I found it to be even more useful than the first one in terms of content because it illuminated how changing ideas of gender were employed to garner popular support for anticommunist/feminist activity in the government during a reactionary period of conservative politics. This is definitely something that I’m going to find useful when examining larger governmental and even grassroots opposition to the ERA. I like how easy it was for me to understand Storrs’ argument and situate myself into the topic. I still have a long way to go with understanding exactly how I’m going to be using Cold War gender ideology, but these two articles were a great start.

Bear with me, this is a new focus for me:

During the postwar decades, women’s groups at both the federal and grassroots levels worked diligently to pass women’s rights legislation. Although political feminist groups maneuvered to pass policy like an equal pay act and the Equal Rights Amendment, nevertheless they were not successful because conservative gender roles and anti-feminism stemming from anti-communist crusades promoted a gender ideology in contrast to the goals of these groups.The Women’s Bureau, part of the Department of Labor, was at the forefront of women’s activism at the federal level. From 1945-1953, under the direction of Frieda Miller, the Bureau’s strong ties with labor unions and other grassroots groups gave it the funding and the support it needed to try to pass equal pay legislation, while also opposing the National Women’s Party backed Equal Rights Amendment. The Women’s Bureau and DOL saw the ERA as a threat to protective labor legislation for working women. At the same time that Miller and the Women’s Bureau sought to create and protect jobs and better wages for working women, other political groups in Washington saw the increase of women, particularly married women,  in the workforce as a threat to both American masculinity and national security. The Second Red Scare of the 1940s and 1950s saw liberal and leftist government women attacked by anti-communist crusaders in both congress and public journalism. Key figures such as Miller and Mary Dublin Keyserling (who would go on to serve as the Women’s Bureau director in the mid-1960s) were targeted by anti-communist congressmen, who focused on their pro-union, pro-civil rights stances, as well as their status and influence in the federal government. Because many members of the Women’s Bureau and its affiliates had connections to communism, they were easy targets for anti-communists. This second red scare had foundations in both politics as well as changing gender roles. Fifties conservatism, Kathleen Laughlin and Landon Storrs both argue, saw a push towards “momism”-an ideology that encouraged married women to remain in the home to take care of their children. Feminist activity, then, threatened this ideology. In a period when most of the women in the workforce were married, this gender ideology created considerable tension between organizations pushing for women’s rights in the workforce, and those trying to keep women home.

As I keep reading, I’m trying to find out how I can situate my topic. I’m still thinking about labor union activities during the postwar years, as well as changing perceptions of women workers. I’m admittedly confused as to where I want to take my topic, what kinds of questions I want to ask and what argument I want to make, but I’m hoping to figure all of that out within the next few weeks.

This week, I looked at Nancy Gabin’s Feminism in the Labor Movement (1990). Like most of the books I’ve been reading, it’s an older one. Gabin looks at “women’s relationship to and experience of unionism” in the United Auto Workers (UAW) from 1935-1975. Gabin uses the UAW as a case study, since it is historically one of the most liberal labor unions in the U.S. They did, however, as Gabin argues, have their own issues with gender relations, despite their liberal character. Reading Gabin’s book did help me with thinking about my own project. Not just with the content of her book, but with the way she frames it and the goals that she has for the book. I can see myself examining relationships between labor feminists/unions and legislation such as the ERA, to put it roughly. There’s a lot to be examined with changing roles for women in the postwar years and how these ideas coupled with labor issues impacted the anti-ERA movement. Even though Gabin only briefly talks about the ERA, the way that she analyzes her topic has been helpful.

The Next book I looked at was Alice Kessler-Harris’s Out to Work (1982). I’ve used Kessler-Harris’s book for an assignment last semester, so it isn’t entirely new to me. Most of the information I had already read in other sources, though there were some details that were new to me (generally minor details about different labor feminists and their activities). I don’t think I’d use Kessler-Harris’s framework, as it’s more a synthetic history, but it was something that I wanted to revisit to see if there would be anything new that could help me with my research.

I have a lot to think about these coming weeks, but I’m hopeful that I can figure out where I want to direct my research and what kinds of arguments I want to make.

This week, I decided to do some broader reading, focusing on books about the history of the ERA and union activity during the 1940s. I started off with Mary Frances Berry’s, Why E.R.A. Failed (1986). Berry’s book uses an interesting approach to examine the efforts to pass the ERA. She looks at other “controversial” amendments from late 19th century (Income Tax, child labor laws, prohibition, to name a few) through the final push to pass the ERA in the 1970s to see why some of them passed and why some failed. Examining patterns of support and opposition, Berry argues that successful amendment campaigns happen during times of reform, not reaction. This could actually help me with situating anti-ERA efforts in the post-war decades into a larger social and political climate.

Next, I turned to Andrew E. Kersten’s Labor’s Home Front (2006).  A more recent publication, Kersten’s book looks at the activities and internal issues of the AFL during World War II. I checked out this book to see what was going on with women and labor on a larger scale during the 1940s. I thought it would be interesting to see how women workers fared in the conservative AFL. Clearly, ideas of femininity are being redefined by the war, and this is causing tension within labor unions as more and more women join the workforce. Most of the information I wanted was in one chapter. Kersten argues that the AFL accepted millions of female workers during the war to fulfill an urgent need for workers, “under the stress of necessity,” as Mary Robinson of the Women’s Bureau put it (Kersten, 100). As expected, women laborers faced prejudice and antagonism from male workers, were largely kept out of leadership positions, and struggled to be taken seriously as workers. Protective legislation that labor feminists in the early 20th c. worked diligently for were essentially nonexistent during the war, resulting in the “wartime fight” to regain women’s protective labor standards. Kersten also explores male unionists’ views of women as potential strike breakers and job stealers, illuminating other possible reasons for labor unions’ opposition to the ERA. There was a lot in this chapter that put all of the information that I’m getting from other books into perspective for me. I can see now why there was such a strong post-war push to stop the ERA, especially among labor feminists still reeling from wartime loss of PLL. It was good to really get a glimpse of the social climate of the era.

The primary source I’ll be presenting this week is a testimony before the Senate Committee of the Judiciary, presented by Myra Wolfgang and Ruth Miller, both labor feminists opposed to the ERA. The source itself has been transcribed-I don’t have access to the original as it’s archived. The testimony was given in 1970, which is almost a decade after I want to end my project. This does not, however, diminish the importance of source. Both women were active in anti-ERA campaigns during the post-war years, and both have experience as women laborers to testify to their reasons for not supporting the ERA. This source is also interesting in that it shows anti-ERA labor feminists were still worried about the threats the amendment posed to protective labor legislation even into the 1970s. This testimony was given only a few years before many labor unions changed their stance on the ERA, and began to actively support it.