The lecture discusses women’s labour and activism in the Greek textile industry from the 1870s to the 1930s focusing on workplaces in the textile mills of Athens, Piraeus and Hermoupolis and highlighting the gender hierarchies on the shopfloor. The lecture uses a rich variety of historical sources to examine the factors that shaped and reshaped gender hierarchies at the workplace and contributed to mobilizing women into activism aimed at improving their working conditions.
Leda Papastefanaki is Professor of Economic and Social History at the Department of History and Archaeology of the University of Ioannina and collaborating Faculty Member at the Institute for Mediterranean Studies of the Foundation for Research and Technology (Greece). Since 2021, she is the Chair of the European Labour History Network (ELHN). Her research interests focus on labour and gender history in the Mediterranean and Southeastern Europe. Recently, she co-edited, together with Eloisa Betti, Marica Tolomelli, and Susan Zimmermann, the volume “Women, Work, and Activism: Chapters of an Inclusive History of Labor in the Long Twentieth Century” (CEU Press, 2022).
* Online participants are invited to attend via this Zoom link (Meeting ID: 982 6375 4852 Passcode: 387643). For questions, please contact Selin Çağatay cagatays@ceu.edu).