Collective identity, solidarity, and sisterhood in the ASAB cleaning women’s strike in Sweden and the Women’s Day Off in Iceland

ABSTRACT

In recent years feminist movements have increasingly employed the form and rhetoric of strikes in framing their protests. The rise of the women’s strike movement has been seen as an indicator of an invigorated wave of feminist activism that focuses, to a greater extent, on structural economic injustices. The aim of this article is to provide a historical aspect to the growing research on strikes as a multifaceted form of protest. The article analyses articulations of collective identity, solidarity, and sisterhood in two different kinds of ‘women’s strikes’ that took place in the Nordic region during the mid-1970s; the ASAB cleaners’ strikes in Sweden during 1974–1975 and the Icelandic Women’s Day Off that took place on October 24, 1975. The article explores how the relationship between gender and class was conceptualized by participants, organizers, and bystanders. We employ these cases to study how solidarity and sisterhood across differences among women might have appeared in practice while at the same time reflecting internal tensions and varying interests. Moreover, the article reflects on the specific form of the strikes and the potential impact their respective form might have had on the political articulations that came out of them.

KEYWORDS:

• solidarity
• sisterhood
• collective identity
• women’s strikes
• labor history
• feminist history
• Marxist feminism

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank colleagues who have read and commentend on this article at different stages in the process, the editor Prof. Craig Phelan and the two anonymous reviewers for their feedback and comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Several of the cleaners had preserved great amounts of material from the strike in the form of press clippings, flyers, and support telegrams that helped them to recall events and their experiences of them.

2. In Iceland, there was a tradition of specific women’s labor unions, dating back to the beginning of 20th century when the traditional unions (representing male workers) were skeptical of taking women on board. Furthermore, members of the Icelandic Women’s Rights Association were pivotal in encouraging working women to organize and establish labor unions (Magnúsdóttir, 1991).

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Icelandic Research Fund (Rannís), grant no. 218064-051.

Notes on contributors

Valgerður Pálmadóttir

Valgerður Pálmadóttir holds a Ph.D. in History of Ideas from Umeå University (Sweden). Pálmadóttir is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Historical Institute at the University of Iceland. Her research interests include social movement rhetoric and ideas from a historical perspective, the relationship between political activism and ideas about power, identities, and liberation in a historical context, and the relationship between social movements and historical change. Pálmadóttir’s current research project is about women’s strikes as a political strategy and is funded by the Icelandic Research Fund. Dr. Pálmadóttir’s research has been published in Nora: Nordic Journal of Gender and Feminist Research, and she is the co-editor of Feminist Philosophy: Time, History and the Transformation of Thought, Södertörn studies in Intellectual and Cultural History, Stockholm: Södertörn Academic Studies, 2023.

Evelina Johansson-Wilén

Evelina Johansson Wilén holds a Ph.D. in Gender Studies from Gothenburg University (Sweden) and is an assistant professor at Halmstad University (Sweden). Her research interests include feminist and anti-feminist movements, the political implications of vulnerability and marginalization, experiential knowledge in various political movements, the intersection of ethics and politics within contemporary feminist thought and activism, and feminist epistemology. Currently, she is involved in two research projects. The first project, funded by Riksbankens jubileumsfond, examines the integration of sex and gender perspectives as a quality measure by Swedish state-funded research councils and how this integration relates to different conceptualizations of the relationship between science and politics. The second project, funded by the Swedish research council, examines the incel movement and the epistemological tropes that this movement mobilizes. Dr. Johansson Wilén has published her research in journals such as Feminist Theory, NORA, Social Inclusion, Journal of Resistance Studies, and Tidskrift för genusvetenskap.

Eva Schmitz

Eva Schmitz is a retired senior scholar at Halmstad University (Sweden). Schmitz defended her doctoral thesis in sociology, Systerskap som politisk handling: kvinnors organisering i Sverige 1968-1982 (Sisterhood as a political action: women’s organizing in Sweden 1968-1982), at Lund University in 2007. She has written extensively on the feminist movement and the female worker’s role in the rise of the labor movement in Sweden until the 1930s. In addition, she has studied women’s strikes in Swedish history from the point of view of gender and class and the history of the struggle for abortion in Sweden and internationally.