STORY OF REMARKABLE WOMEN
WHO SHAPED EARLY FIGHT
FOR GENDER EQUALITY
‘“Breadwinners” reads almost like a prequel to “When Everything Changed,” a history of American women since 1960 by Gail Collins, an Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times.’
—Sam Roberts, NY Times, “Bookshelf”, 11/29/09
“Vapnek chronicles the labor movement through capsule biographies of largely forgotten individuals who had a profound impact on the lives of working women.
Vapnek’s account is national in scope, but New York women figure in it prominently. Among them was Leonora O’Reilly, who left school at age 11 to work in a garment factory and support her widowed mother and family. She would emerge as a leader of the 1909 shirtwaist makers’ strike and as a suffragist.”
Breadwinners reveals women’s groundbreaking struggle for workplace equality — a full century before the 1960s.
From the end of the Civil War through the winning of woman’s suffrage, working women in the nation’s industrializing cities launched a series of campaigns to gain economic independence and political equality. Vapnek details the personal and political struggles of these remarkable women.
Breadwinners: Working Women and
Economic Independence, 1865-1920
Paper, ISBN 978-0-525-07661-9 $25.00
232 pages, 10 photographs.
Contact: Michael Roux 217.244.4689 mroux@uillinois.edu
“Women, whether you wish it or not, your first step must be to gain equal political rights with men. The next step after that must be equal pay for equal work.”
- Lenora O’Reilly