Gender, class, and the structure of intersectionality: working-class women and the Pittston Coal strike

Abstract

In the context of a working-class movement, how do sex, gender, and class intersect to effect mobilization, participation, voice, and outcome? When working-class communities engage in strikes, what are the participatory consequences for working-class women? Employing the case of the United Mine Workers of America's strike against Pittston Coal Group (1989–1990) to examine working-class women's activist participation, this article considers the gendered aspects of decision-making and strike resolution by analyzing the legal and union constitutional contexts within which the strike developed and the gendered constraints these imposed upon activist women. In the US working class, opportunities for activism and for advancing specific class and gender issues are structured by law, legal contracts, and court decisions, and enforced by state and other authorities. Inclusive discourse, political will, community identity, and concerted leadership may serve to create community solidarity around gendered and class issues; yet legal structures that constrain labor unions have strongly gendered (and hence class) consequences in a male-dominated industry.