Women on Strike

Common Sense and a Little Fire focuses on the urban working woman. These women are pictures as militant and radical for their time. They fought for change every step of the way. Time with friends and family were sacrificed in order to organize picket lines and unions. The crowds of the city fostered the ability for these women to reach a wide variety of people while speaking on their soapboxes. When the women chose to strike there were consequences even for those not involved. The women were impossible to ignore, especially in the urban settings that were political, economic, and cultural settings. “And these crowds keep no hours. Early in the morning they are already at the street corners; late at night the flickering light of the lamppost reveals their animated faces.” (Orleck, 60).

There were strikes at the Kalamazoo Corset Company, the Triangle Shirwaist factory, boycotts of white goods, kimono makers, and even meat. Today, little is heard about women unions are women strikers. If the women in the 1920s-1930s had the power to organize strikes and boycotts with thousands of participants when means of communication were little, why can women of today not succeed in a much “smaller” world.

This led me to think of the images surrounding women strikers. What is good and bad about them? What has changes as the decades have passed and how has that affected the general beliefs about unions and strikes. Are the images we are given positive or negative towards women, towards workers, and towards the ideas of strikes as an acceptable political action?

In our society there are mixed feeling about unions and strikes. Some people see them as a workers right, as a citizen’s right to voice their concern and unhappiness. So while there is mental support and sympathy for workers who choose to go on strike there is little support from those not involved. Perhaps, if there were more women who went on strike together, as a women’s movement and a women’s issue, more people would band together in support and sister hood that Schneiderman, Cohn, Lemlich, and Newman experienced.                                                                              

Most of these pictures are from a few decades ago. With the increased media coverage I was both surprised and unsurprised. It could be that women as a different, specialized group aren't banding together in the way they used too. Perhaps today men and women work together, no single sex working for one agenda.

But, why aren't women banding together? There was so much talk in the past presidential election that it would be the women who decided the vote. If women as a group were seen to have such a powerful voice in an election, imagine what could be done for social change.