Educated, white collar professional women carried the most visible banners of feminism. But working class women were a powerful force in the campaign for gender equality. Dennis A. Deslippe explores how unionized wage-earning women led the struggle to place women's employment rights on the national agenda, decisively influencing both the contemporary labor movement and second-wave feminism. 

Deslippe's account unravels a complex history of how labor leaders accommodated and resisted working women's demands for change. Through case studies of unions representing packinghouse and electrical workers, Deslippe explains why gender equality emerged as an issue in the 1960s and how the activities of wage-earning women in and outside of their unions shaped the content of the debate. He also traces the fault lines separating working-class women--who sought gender equality within the parameters of unionist principles such as seniority--from middle-class women--who sought an equal rights amendment that would guarantee an abstract equality for all women. 

Thoughtful and detailed, "Rights, Not Roses" offers a new look at the complexities of working-class feminism.

Acknowledgements   ix
Introduction   1
1. Beyond the Doldrums: Postwar Organized Labor and "Women's Issues," 1945-63   11
2. Prospects for Equality: Union Women, Equal Pay Legislation, and National Politics, 1945-63   11
3. The Roots of Discontent: Gender Relations in the United Packinghouse Workers, 1945-63   43
4. Accounting for Equality: Gender Relations in the International Union of Electrical Workers, 1945-63   89
5. Organized Labor, National Politics, and Gender Equality, 1964-75   114
6. Rank-and-File Militancy in the Service of Anti-Equality: Title VII and the United Packinghouse Workers, 1963-75   146
7. "A Genuine Good Faith Effort": Women and Equal Employment Opportunity in the International Union of Electrical Workers, 1964-80   166
Conclusion: From Equality to Equity   191
Notes   197
Index   253
Illustrations follow page 88