The First International and the Question of Women’s Work

While many activists in the International shared a common ideological background and some hostility to the way the modern textile industry relied on low-paid female labor, they often differed on how this converted into practical attitudes and policies, depending on national situations, occupational differences, and political leanings. This article first tries to assess how the International discussed female labor centrally, in the congresses, but also in the General Council, using the minutes of the proceedings. It then moves on to a few general points about the attitudes of the British trade unions on women’s work, before focusing on how the question was handled practically at the local level by the London tailors: To do this, it focuses on the way the tailoring trade used both male and female labor. It tries to document the trajectory of Matthew Lawrence, the secretary of the London Operative Tailors, who at the Congress of the International Workingmen’s Association (IWMA) in Lausanne in 1866 argued against a ban on women’s work and who, in April 1867, led a strike of the London tailors, both men and women. The article ends with the debate in France in the labor movement and in the IWMA in the 1860s, when the Proudhonian male breadwinning stance was challenged by feminists and socialists. One example is that of bookbinders in Paris, including Nathalie Le Mel, Eugène Varlin, and Marie Iatskévitch, who opposed any ban on female labor and advocated equal wages.