Call for Articles for the special issue “Gendered labour history in Europe and beyond”
The Feminist Labour History Working Group of the European Labour History Network (ELHN) invite submissions for a special issue of Labour History: A Journal of Labour and Social History to be published in Nov. 2025.
Labour History is an Australian-based journal, keen to bring research from the ELHN to an international English-language readership (primarily the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada). The special issue’s focus on Europe and beyond during the 19th and 20th centuries will show how recent research in feminist/gendered labour history contributes to current global
labour history. Feminist/gendered approaches have transformed the field of labour history over the past forty years by addressing forms of organizing beyond the traditionally studied realms of parties and unions, expanding the categories of work/labour, worker and workplace and the sites, agendas and repertoires of labour activism. The rise of a new global labour history in the 21st century has further enhanced regional coverage, and promoted the inclusion of many types of labour relations and forms and levels of labour activism.
Guest editors Leda Papastefanaki (University of Ioannina & IMS/FORTH) and Eszter Varsa (Central European University) and an advisory editorial committee (Eloisa Betti, Eileen Boris, Natalia Jarska, Diane Kirkby, Françoise Laot and Susan Zimmerman) seek to highlight these new directions. We welcome papers addressing the intersection of class/caste and gender with other categories of difference, including age, citizenship, global inequality and the global division of labour, nationality, race/ethnicity, religion, sexuality, and social status. Within this common overall framework, papers may address the following themes, among others:
- Migration, mobility and migrant workers
- Unfree and coercive labour
- The feminization of work and occupations
- The relationship between paid and unpaid or subsistence-oriented work
- Commodification and decommodification of domestic and care work, reproductive labour/social reproduction
- The role gender has played in shaping labour law and practice of regulating labour and the impact of labour law and labour practices on gender and gender relations
- Trade unions and cooperatives locally, nationally and internationally.
- Legacies of colonialism
- Labour Feminist and women’s networks within and outside of unions
Submission details and timetable
Expressions of interest in being considered for the special issue should be sent to the guest editors by July 25th 2024. Please submit a file (no longer than 1–2 pages) which includes the paper title, an initial paper abstract, and a very short bio. We are interested in papers presented within the ELHN context and papers based on work not yet presented here. Articles conforming
to Labour History’s usual referencing style and length, with an Abstract and short author bio, are to be emailed, clearly marked ‘Europe and Beyond Special Issue’, to the guest editors and directly to the journal, admin@labourhistory.org.au, by Nov. 10th 2024. Following the usual reviewing process, revisions will need to be completed May 2025 for final editing.
Authors who can’t meet this deadline may still have their articles considered for publication in a subsequent issue of Labour History. For further information on the special issue, please contact the guest editors, Leda Papastefanaki (lpapast@uoi.gr ) and Eszter Varsa (VarsaE@ceu.edu). For other questions about the journal please contact the Editor, Diane Kirkby (diane.kirkby@uts.edu.au) cc’d to admin@labourhistory.org.au.