Coreen Derifield, We Were Still Ladies Gender and Industrial Unionism in the Midwest after World War II, University of Iowa Press, July 2025.

Thank you, NetGalley, for providing me with this uncorrected proof for review.

The combination of a wealth of industrial information with a focus on women’s work, comments from women about their work and their relationships at work, and the integrity of the writing – warm but never missing a precise description or analysis of the events – makes this a work to read with enjoyment as well as to absorb new information.

Chapter 1, The Industrial Development of Iowa, provides a detailed background to the work, social environment, and industrial opportunities that women were eventually to join. Eventually, because as well as their own soil searching, they contended with expectations of wives and mothers. This is fully taken up in Out of the Home and into the Workplace and The Crucible of the Workplace. Union history with its emphasis on male members and their rights as workers and the ‘breadwinners’ (a familiar history this, of course) is laid bare in its sexism, but also its concern about the way in which society operated, with its gender roles clearly outlined. The latter, of course, so much more easily emulated if economic reality did not force some women into paid work. Negotiating Gender Roles in the Union, An Education in Workplace Rights and Encounters with Feminism are excellent chapters, concentrating on analysis as well as evoking the situations faced day to day by women in the workplace.

The conflicts, often leading to the idea behind the ‘We Were Still Ladies’ part of the title make fascinating and enlightening reading. This part of the book is so valuable, with Derifield’s sensitivity to the women’s feelings, backgrounds, and desire to join the workforce but to continue emulating the mores which they had been taught made them acceptable as women. The epilogue, looking at the way in which Iowa was changed after 1981, demonstrates how the changes that sent women back to their homes were approached by the women. Conservatism appeared to have won, despite the valuable work undertaken by unions and women as individuals questioning their former roles. However, Derifield shows that the significant changes had a lasting impact in some instances, with the changes initially imposed on patriarchal family accepted as the two-income family survived. As she also notes, this was not universal, nor seamless. The contradictory understandings that women had of their position as ladies and workers remained. Tellingly she refers to the easy dismissal of women’s self-identities as being harmful to understanding of both them and history. It is this feeling for her subject and the women’s lives she wrote about that makes this a significant book.

The book ends with notes (often detailed) for each chapter and an excellent bibliography and an index.

An excellent look at gender in the Organized Labor movement. Brilliantly illustrates the centrality of women in (certain) unions and how they were able to mobilize gender discourses in defense of Labor's aims. Derifield shows the power of female militancy and how it could accelerate calls for fair pay and fair working conditions, despite the entrenched patriarchy of male-dominated unionism

I find it very difficult to get my mind around what women have been through all these years,. Fortunately, there are books like t his that give me a clearer picture of where we have been, and what we can do to make a difference.