Library Journal
Cook died in February 1998, at the age of 94, ending a life-long career in labor activism. She is best known for her research on and programs for working women. Following early work with the YWCA, she spent nearly 30 years at Cornell Universitys College of Industrial and Labor Relations. In 1978, the Ford Foundation published her book, The Working Mother, based on international study of womens and household conditions. A 1993 film, Never Done: The Working Life of Alice H. Cook, documented her life and work. Now she has chronicled her full life story from her birth in 1903. Drawn from her own diaries and notes, this book is both graceful autobiography and perceptive social history that will be of lasting value to students of labor history and feminist studies. An important addition for both academic and public libraries.Linda V. Carlisle, Southern Illinois Univ., Edwardsville
A Lifetime of Labor: The Autobiography of Alice H. Cook
by Alice H. CookA pioneer in union organizing, worker education, and equal rights for working women, Cook's work took her across the country and around the world, across racial, ethnic, national, gender, and class lines, and across obstacles she refused to accept as impassable. In A Lifetime of Labor, Cook recounts a life of activism, teaching, and research that spanned nearly a… See more details below
Overview
A pioneer in union organizing, worker education, and equal rights for working women, Cook's work took her across the country and around the world, across racial, ethnic, national, gender, and class lines, and across obstacles she refused to accept as impassable. In A Lifetime of Labor, Cook recounts a life of activism, teaching, and research that spanned nearly a century and intersected with progressive movements at home and abroad. After serving as a member of the faculty of the newly founded School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University, Cook continued her pathblazing research with a study of working mothers in nine countries. The rest of her career would be devoted to creating just options for working women - equal opportunity, equal pay for equal work, part-time work options, child care, and other social structures to support true gender equity.
Editorial Reviews
Kirkus Reviews
A spirited autobiography by a pioneering feminist, labor organizer, socialist, and scholar. Alice Hanson Cook (1903-98) may not be a household name, but she helped change the American workplace culture by pressing for, among other things, comparable-worth legislation (whereby women earn as much as men for doing the same work) and policies aimed at bettering the lot of working women. In this autobiography, completed just before her death, she writes of her education as an activist. As a pacifist during and just after WWI, she encountered jingoist scorn, as well as the displeasure of her Spanish-American War veteran father, who "deplored my activities"; she later traveled to Weimar Germany to study, and there she witnessed the rise of Nazism, which, like so many other foreign observers, she thought a passing phase of German discontent. Converted to socialism, she returned to the US, lived in a commune informally called "Soviet House," held a great variety of odd jobs (which prepared her, she writes, to understand the true nature of "women's work"), and later became a teacher of labor history and labor education at Cornell University. As a scholar, Cook studied the economic role of working women in several cultures, traveling widely through Europe and East Asia; as an activist connected with entities like the Ford Foundation, she was able to advance her case that women should be more justly rewarded for their indispensable contributions in the workplace and at home. Her book closes with reflections on her long struggle for equality-and with a firm slap at the Republican Contract with America, which, she says, "abandoned the helpless by equating poverty with laziness." A worthy addition tothe literature of labor activism and women's studies. (b&w photos, not seen) .
Product Details
- ISBN-13:
- 9781558612570
- Publisher:
- Feminist Press at CUNY, The
- Publication date:
- 09/01/2000
- Series:
- The Cross-Cultural Memoir Series Series
- Edition description:
- REPRINT
- Pages:
- 354
- Product dimensions:
- 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.00(d)
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