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Dishing It Out

ebook

Back when SOS or Adam and Eve on a raft were things to order if you were hungry but a little short on time and money, nearly one-fourth of all waitresses belonged to unions. By the time their movement peaked in the 1940s and 1950s, the women had developed a distinctive form of working-class feminism, simultaneously pushing for equal rights and pay and affirming their need for special protections.

Dorothy Sue Cobble shows how sexual and racial segregation persisted in wait work, but she rejects the idea that this was caused by employers' actions or the exclusionary policies of male trade unionists. Dishing It Out contends that the success of waitress unionism was due to several factors: waitresses, for the most part, had nontraditional family backgrounds, and most were primary wage-earners. Their close-knit occupational community and sex-separate union encouraged female assertiveness and a decidedly unromantic view of men and marriage. Cobble skillfully combines oral interviews and extensive archival records to show how waitresses adopted the basic tenets of male-dominated craft unions but rejected other aspects of male union culture. The result is a book that will expand our understanding of feminism and unionism by including the gender conscious perspectives of working women.

| Cover Title Page Copyright Contents Preface Introduction Part 1: The Occupational Community of Waitressing 1. The Rise of Waitressing: Feminization, Expansion, and Respectability 2. Work Conditions and Work Culture Part 2: Watresses Turn to Economic and Political Organization 3. The Emergence and Survival of Waitress Unionism, 1900-1930 4. The Flush of Victory, 1930-55 Part 3: The Waitress as Craft Unionist 5. Uplifting the Sisters in the Craft 6. Waitress Unionism: Rethinking Categories Part 4: Controversies over Gender 7. "Women's Place" in the Industry 8. "Women's Place" in the Union Epilogue Appendix Abbreviations Used in the Notes Notes Index A Note on the Author | "Rich in detail, studded with telling anecdotes, Dishing It Out is just as vivid and evocative as its title suggests... This book speaks with clarity and good sense to the major debates in the history of work and gender and will become a landmark in our growing understanding of the relationships between the two."— Susan Porter Benson, author of Counter Cultures

"In this imaginative study of waitresses, work, and unionism, Cobble challenges us all to rethink the conventional wisdom about the relationship between craft unionism and the possibilities for women workers' collective action. Women's labor history will never be the same." — Ruth Milkman, author of Gender at Work: The Dynamics of Job Segregation by Sex during World War II


|DOROTHY SUE COBBLE, assistant professor in the labor education department at Rutgers University, has published articles in Feminist Studies, International Labor and Working-Class History, and elsewhere, and has also worked as a waitress and as a stevedore.

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Back when SOS or Adam and Eve on a raft were things to order if you were hungry but a little short on time and money, nearly one-fourth of all waitresses belonged to unions. By the time their movement peaked in the 1940s and 1950s, the women had developed a distinctive form of working-class feminism, simultaneously pushing for equal rights and pay and affirming their need for special protections.

Dorothy Sue Cobble shows how sexual and racial segregation persisted in wait work, but she rejects the idea that this was caused by employers' actions or the exclusionary policies of male trade unionists. Dishing It Out contends that the success of waitress unionism was due to several factors: waitresses, for the most part, had nontraditional family backgrounds, and most were primary wage-earners. Their close-knit occupational community and sex-separate union encouraged female assertiveness and a decidedly unromantic view of men and marriage. Cobble skillfully combines oral interviews and extensive archival records to show how waitresses adopted the basic tenets of male-dominated craft unions but rejected other aspects of male union culture. The result is a book that will expand our understanding of feminism and unionism by including the gender conscious perspectives of working women.

| Cover Title Page Copyright Contents Preface Introduction Part 1: The Occupational Community of Waitressing 1. The Rise of Waitressing: Feminization, Expansion, and Respectability 2. Work Conditions and Work Culture Part 2: Watresses Turn to Economic and Political Organization 3. The Emergence and Survival of Waitress Unionism, 1900-1930 4. The Flush of Victory, 1930-55 Part 3: The Waitress as Craft Unionist 5. Uplifting the Sisters in the Craft 6. Waitress Unionism: Rethinking Categories Part 4: Controversies over Gender 7. "Women's Place" in the Industry 8. "Women's Place" in the Union Epilogue Appendix Abbreviations Used in the Notes Notes Index A Note on the Author | "Rich in detail, studded with telling anecdotes, Dishing It Out is just as vivid and evocative as its title suggests... This book speaks with clarity and good sense to the major debates in the history of work and gender and will become a landmark in our growing understanding of the relationships between the two."— Susan Porter Benson, author of Counter Cultures

"In this imaginative study of waitresses, work, and unionism, Cobble challenges us all to rethink the conventional wisdom about the relationship between craft unionism and the possibilities for women workers' collective action. Women's labor history will never be the same." — Ruth Milkman, author of Gender at Work: The Dynamics of Job Segregation by Sex during World War II


|DOROTHY SUE COBBLE, assistant professor in the labor education department at Rutgers University, has published articles in Feminist Studies, International Labor and Working-Class History, and elsewhere, and has also worked as a waitress and as a stevedore.

Expand title description text