This essays in this book are an examination of the ways in which gender proved a divisive and constiutiative factor within labour movements "This book demonstrates how the study of gender both transforms the ways we think about working-class history and reinvigorates the study of topics that have long been of interest to labor and social historians" (p. 1). The editors signal the explicit challenges mounted to the masculine assumptions of the old, heavily Marxist, and dominantly male labor history when scholars include women's paid and unpaid labor in analytical comparison with that of men and explore the gendered aspects of organized labor movements and their politics.