Social Science Emigration & Immigration
Women, Gender, and Transnational Lives
Italian Workers of the World
- Publisher
- University of Toronto Press
- Initial publish date
- Nov 2002
- Category
- Emigration & Immigration, Italy, Women's Studies
-
Hardback
- ISBN
- 9780802036117
- Publish Date
- Nov 2002
- List Price
- $113.00
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9780802084620
- Publish Date
- Nov 2002
- List Price
- $58.00
-
eBook
- ISBN
- 9781442683594
- Publish Date
- Nov 2002
- List Price
- $114.00
Classroom Resources
Where to buy it
Description
Scholars in the United States have long defined the Italian immigrant woman as silent and submissive; a woman who stays 'in the shadows'. In this transnational analysis of women and gender in Italy's world-wide migration, Franca Iacovetta and Donna Gabaccia use international and internationalist perspectives, feminist labour history, women's history, and Italian migration history to provide a woman-centred, gendered analysis of Italian workers, and by so doing, challenge this stereotype.
Comparing the lives of women in Italy, Belgium, the USA, Canada, Argentina, and Australia, Iacovetta and Gabaccia offer a realistic and engaging portrait of women as peasants and workers, and uncover the voice of female militants. Most importantly, by using a comparative approach to the study of women's migration over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, they treat both women who stayed home during male migration, and the work and activism of those who moved. By pursuing this comparative method, they show how Italian women could become Communist militants, union organizers, or anti-fascist radical exiles in some countries while seeming to disappear into stereotypes in others. Ground-breaking and original, this erudite collection of thirteen essays will bring a fascinating new perspective to women's studies and migration history.
About the authors
Donna A. Gabaccia is Charles H. Stone Professor of American History at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
Donna R. Gabaccia's profile page
Franca Iacovetta is professor emerita of history at the University of Toronto, and a past president of the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians. A historian of women/gender, migration, and transnational radicals, she has published eleven books, including Before Official Multiculturalism: Women’s Pluralism in Toronto, 1950s-1970s. Award-winning books include Gatekeepers: Reshaping Immigrant Lives in Cold War Canada and the co-edited Beyond Women’s Words. She lives in Toronto.