Contenu du sommaire : Métiers. Corporations. Syndicalisme

Trades statutes in the XIIIth century, the great Ordinance of Jean le Bon and the statute of linen-clothing women workers mark out the history of the parisian women who earned living in workshops and in shops. Female work is recognized and obeys the same rules as male work. It is to be found both in female trades and in trades where men and women work together. Present day research is unable to say whether in the course of three centuries the freedom done by women at work was extended or curbed.

As independant artisans, apprentices or wage-earning, women highly contribute to Montpellier's economic activity between the XIIIth and the XVth century, particulary in the making and sale of provisions and in textile crafts. But this female workers are neglected by guild statutes and though they seem to be bound by the same duties than their male companions, their position into the hierarchy remains subordinate, their activity is badly protected and in long time threatened. First victims of the city's crisis as early as 1348, and of economical, social, political and juridical alterations following, women are slowly excluded from charities and reduced to minor importance or domestic tasks.

The article briefly reviews scholarship on women's work in guilds and compares the socio-economic status of a variety of female and « mixed » guilds in old regime Paris. After guild reorganization in 1776 women could become merchant-mistresses in some new trades, but their « public » voice and role in these guilds was restricted. The essay ends with an analysis of the printed protest and female trades againts the 1776 guild abolition. Guildswomen and their lawyers were among the first to articulate a critique of the gendered division of labor and its positve and negative consequences for women. In sum, guild mistresses's work identity was more distinct and lasting than that of most women workers, but gains were limited by cultural construction of gender, by women's exclusion from assemblies and office holding in male dominated trades, and by the inequities inherent in the guild system itself.

This article describes the struggle of female workers for economic emancipation between 1868/69 and 1890. Women tested different types of organization before they decided to join the trade unions dominated by male workers. Working women paid for this integration by putting aside female demands like better protection of motherhood or nursingrooms in factories. This abandonment can be seen as a proof for a strong class-consciouness among female workers. Its existence makes it necessary for historiography to rethink the normative model of class-formation, which is still dominated by male experiences.

At the turn of century, American labor politics represented Chinese immigrants as a principal threat to the survival of white union worker. Through an analysis of discourses of racial danger, public health, and the gender roles that ensure family security, this article examines how the imagery of the Chinese medical menace became incorporated in consumer campaigns orchestrated by US labor unions.

Women's Free Trade Unions find their inspiration in social catholicism, and they took up the ideas developed in the Encyclique Rerum novarum by Leon XIII. For example, the search for class collaboration was achieved when female workers and middle-class women joined forces in the unions, the former called upon and instructed by the latter. In theses organisations aimed at defending the specific interests of salaried employees, the presence and action of the unions only came to full meaning and fruition by including an ethical and moral dimension. Female workers were catered for both inside and outside the factory. Attention was paid to their lifestyle, thir social and family ties, and even their personal future became the basis of a larger political project.

Fearing their negative influence on the husbands on strike, the trade unions have sometimes tried to attract the housewives. From the years 1930 on, new associations, issued from the communist and social-catholic currents, try to organize those housewives within a structure similar to a local tradeunionism (Women world committee, Family popular association, French women union). Organisms of assistance, defense and claim, they become interlocutors of the professional trade unions as well as elements of gestation and expression of a solidarity. By the way, they facilitate the emergence of subject-women. The relations between the non wage-earners, isolated or organized in their associations, and the professional tradeunionism, essentially male, keep anyway a certain mark of ambivalency.

The coordination committees, or « coordinations » as they are known in French, first appeared after the Mai 68 events in high schools, and later in universities. They became one of the central components of the repetoire of collective action of the youth movement. In the mid 80's, the coordination committees appeared in working class sectors, notably among railworkers, nurses, and post-office agents. Nonetheless, they failed to become institutionalized and to generate long-term collective action. The upsurge of these workers « coordinations » was linked to conjunctural events, but more particularly to their exemplary mobilization of students against the Devaquet Law in 1986. An important factor has been the presence in worker sectors of former university students or high school pupils who participated in protest movements in the 70's, which sought to change traditional forms of trade union action. Lastly, the growth of the coordinations is linked to workers rising qualification and educational levels. The convergence of these factors in the public sector explains why the coordination committees developed. In this sense, the nurses coordination committees are not to be seen as gender-specific but as part of the larger phenomenon discussed in the paper.