In 2019, the International Labour Organization (ILO) celebrated its centenary. The event occasioned new historical research into the organization, fostered by the ILO's own “Century Project”.Footnote ¹ Eileen Boris's Making the Woman Worker is placed in this context, though it was not published in cooperation with the ILO, unlike another volume on “Women's ILO” that Boris co-edited in 2018.Footnote ² A specialist in gender studies, labour history, and ILO history, Boris's latest book provides for the first time a comprehensive account of the history of the woman worker within the ILO. Spanning the whole century from the organization's founding in 1919 to the present, the book shows how the category of the woman worker was constructed and how its perception changed over time, thereby tracing fights and debates on protection and standard setting as well as on equality and human rights.

The starting point of Boris's excellent and pioneering study is the conceptualization of the woman worker as “a special kind of worker” (p. 4) that is grounded in the “basic contradiction” (p. 13) of being both equal to and different from the male worker. Especially when working in domestic work (i.e. care and housework), closely linked to and associated with subsistence and reproductive labour, the woman worker has often been exposed to precariousness, lacking the labour standards and social security of formal employment.Footnote ³ Organized in three parts, each highlighting a distinct historical phase, the book traces the feminist fight for global standards and the recognition of female labour.

The first part covers the interwar years to the first decade of the Cold War. During this period, despite its constitutional equality standard, labour feminists within the ILO often advocated special protection for women, emphasizing their biological and social difference (as potential mothers), thereby pointing to the indispensability of female reproductive labour. Cultural and moral norms often facilitated protective standards for women – for example, when special conventions aimed to prevent women from sexual danger. Some feminists, however, saw special protection as a barrier to legal equality, merely reinforcing existing hierarchies and workplace discrimination. They fought for equal rights and remuneration, thus challenging the dominant Western male industrial breadwinner ideal. Trade unionists formally supported calls for equality but also feared employer use of cheap female labour. To maintain men's jobs and wages, they generally approved special treatment for women, although this might reproduce the gendered division of labour.

In the second part of her book, covering the second half of the twentieth century, Boris focuses on female labour in the Global South. During the years of development, modernization, and decolonization, “women in developing countries” represented a new category within that of the woman worker, not only differing from the male worker but also from women in Western industrial countries. To generate new sources of income and advance self-employment initiatives, the ILO promoted handicraft and other home-based work thought to be most suitable for women in the “Third World”. This focus linked women to domestic work and, thus, located them in their conventional social roles and traditional cultural spheres. Mostly informal and with no social security, handicraft work and work in the cottage industry allowed women to earn for the family while still being responsible for social reproduction. Hence, in the decades following World War II, the ILO's approach to supporting poor rural women in the Global South was distinct from the standard setting and equality measures envisioned for urban women working in the formal economy.

Local activists and ILO development feminists, too, often argued for a distinct path to gender equality for women in the Global South, embracing context-specific programmes rather than universalist approaches. Most notably, they emphasized the significance of reproductive labour and homework not only for family survival but also for the world economy. The increased outsourcing and outplacement of production to countries in the Global South towards the end of the twentieth century also made global labour federations realize that outwork performed by industrial homeworkers in the informal sector should be subject to protective standards, leading to the “Home Work Convention” in 1996.

The third part of Boris's book elucidates the most recent developments, from the 1990s onwards. Against the backdrop of neoliberal globalization, discussions on migrant work and the informal economy gained momentum within the ILO as well as within organized labour and some governments. Domestic work was at the heart of these debates, with the migrant woman regarded as most affected by the informality and precarity of paid care and housework. With the standard employment relationship eroding, the ILO was willing to broaden the scope of its standard-setting efforts to work performed outside the formal economy. Global union federations came to support household workers, although they were not organized in traditional ways. The Domestic Workers Convention of 2011 reflected this shift towards formalizing the informal sector on the one hand and recognizing reproductive labour as work central to the global economy on the other. While the 2011 convention focused on commodified forms of household and care work, the ILO's International Conference on Labour Statisticians in 2013 went a step further and also recommended including unpaid reproductive labour as “work” in official statistics.

Boris's study shows that the key issue underlying the fight for global standards for female labour was the question of whether difference or equality between women and men and between women in the Global South and North should be stressed – and, consequently, whether ILO initiatives should be grounded in universalism or particularism. Boris elaborates on how, during the course of the twentieth century, different feminist answers and positions to this key question were voiced, and how the ILO often acted in a dualistic manner as well. But Boris also argues that, in the long run, a transformation from special protection to equality took place. With the concept of gender mainstreaming entering the ILO around 1980, the dominant view within the organization changed, now aiming at replacing women-specific protections with gender-neutral ones and limiting special protection to maternity. At the beginning of the new century, recognizing domestic work and reproductive labour as “work” entitled to global standards should further advance gender equality. Boris makes clear, however, that fundamental problems have not changed. Housework and care work, whether paid or not, predominantly remain female labour. As such, domestic work is either still considered an obstacle for women's participation in the workforce, or conceptualized as a feminized realm of work that allows women to have an income without competing for male jobs and wages.

Boris's seminal study amplifies our understanding of the construction and politics of the woman worker and feminized labour of the last century in substantial ways. Among the plethora of findings crucial for global labour, gender, and women's history, three points should briefly be mentioned. First, Boris points to the importance of knowledge production. Not only a definitional arena, but also a prime site for labour studies, the ILO fostered research. Innovative programmes like the “Programme on Rural Women”, directed at the woman worker in the Global South, led to pathbreaking research, embracing novel and unconventional approaches. Launched in the mid-1970s when traditional development economics was losing ground, the programme focused on the new method of “participatory research”, striving to “decolonize knowledge” by actively involving the rural women themselves as experts.

Second, Boris's book reveals how political ideologies shaped the making of the woman worker. After World War II, Cold War rivalries and the era of decolonization influenced female labour politics within the ILO. A more fundamental transition, however, was the global spread of neoliberal ideology that took shape in the 1980s and 1990s. Since then, “unholy alliances” between feminist claims for gender equality and neoliberal calls for more flexibility have resulted in an erosion of protective standards for both male and female workers.

Third, Boris's study shows how changing strategies of trade union federations proved crucial for gaining recognition for female labour. For the “Home Work Convention” in 1996 as well as the “Domestic Workers Convention” in 2011, the support of traditional labour federations for the women's cause was essential to get access to ILO's negotiation and lobbying processes. Whereas trade unions in the decades before often felt that they needed to protect male work and avoid female competition from the informal sector, in the heyday of neoliberal globalization they were willing to embrace a new regime of worker solidarity.

The strength of Eileen Boris's well-composed and dedicated book lies in her detailed account and insightful analysis of the political fights and debates within and around the ILO's tripartite organization, involving governments, employers, and workers. Grounded in an impressive number of primary sources, Boris carves out the ambivalences and inconsistencies of this organization but also demonstrates its potential to make the world a better place for the woman worker. With its close focus on the international dimension and transnational networks, the book can fruitfully inspire further research that interconnects the international level with developments in local, regional, and national contexts, thereby illuminating how global labour standards and globally circulating labour knowledge are transformed in and adapted to local settings, which, in turn, reflect back to the international arena.

The most important political lesson from Boris's book is that the global labour movement must avoid the trap of playing off reasonable feminist claims for both difference and equality against each other, as this might divide the movement in its joint fight for more freedom and autonomy for all workers of the world. Demands for gender equality should not neglect differences and specific contexts, acknowledging that sometimes an emphasis on difference may lead to more equality, and that the fight against precarious work and for global standards always and everywhere needs the support of many allies.