Working Women and Socialist Politics in France, 1880-1914 A Regional Study [Hardcover]

This enlightening study of the relations between the Marxist wing of the French socialist movement and a substantial female industrial proletariat reveals the failure of the Socialists to assimilate an important potential constituency. Hilden examines the early development of French socialism and recreates the atmosphere of everyday life for textile workers in Lille, Roubaix, and Tourcoing around the turn of the century. She shows that these women demonstrated more political militance in the face of their worsening industrial situation and their exclusion from organized labor resistance than has previously been suggested.

Ambitious, contentious, and deserving of wide circulation...Makes a provocative contribution to French history and to the study of gender politics. --French Politics and Society

[An] outstanding study of the women textile workers of Lille, Tourcoing, and Roubaix in the decades leading up to World War I...Analyzes so many of the problems fundamental to both women's studies and socialism so clearly and forcefully that it deserves a very wide readership indeed. --ContemporarySociology

Hilden's carefully researched study is particularly welcome...[She] has sharpened our understanding of the difficulties women faced within the socialist movement as male leaders progressively marginalized them in trying to establish a constituency among male workes in theNord...An important contribution to the study of women and the European left. --Journal of European Economic History

A pioneering achievement. It should be used in many social and women's history seminars. --Journal of Modern History

Hilden unites a sophisticated political analysis with the best techniques of the new social history. --CHOICE

Hilden's conclusions are interesting and challenging...[A] well-researched, well-argued study. --American Historical Review

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