//T'll tell you the biggest trouble about the women, retired United A Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA) officer Virgil Bankson said in a 1978 interview, after the Civil Rights Law was signed. Thaf s when we had trouble with women.1 Bankson's observation was accurate. His Ottumwa, Iowa, union local was one of hundreds across the country charged with violating Title VTi of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. law, banning sex cascrimination in the workforce, challenged employment arrangements by which women were discriminated against in wages, layoffs, and seniority. Women's response to the law's passage was dramatic and unexpected: by August 1967,2,500 sex discrimination complaints had been filed by women workers against unions and employers.2 WhA1⁄4e all unions were affected by Title VII, its impact on each varied widely. Some industrial unions, among them the UPWA, the United Rubber Workers, and the International Chemical Workers, were embroiled in lawsuits; others, such as the United Automobile Workers (UAW), not only faced fewer charges but actually joined with women unionists to fight for vigorous Title VfI enforcement.3 Such differences suggest that Ruth Milkman's call for scholars to examine the historically specific economic, political, and social factors that molded the industrial workforce structure ought to be heeded. The interests of male workers, she notes, rather than being determined outside the workplace by a hegemonic patriarchy can work for or against women workers depending upon the characteristics of the industrial setting.4 Ascribing women's subordinate status to patriarchy, Milkman claims, offers too fixed and static a picture of a male-dominated labor movement that dealt with women's issues