Woman’s Labours and the Definition of the Worker: Legacies of 1919

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the legacies of the 1919 International Labour Conference that defined Western industrial male workers as the norm, with woman distinguished by maternity and family labour. It considers four legacies: promotion of labour standards; co-presence of cultures of protection addressing sexuality and the civilising mission; construction of geographical difference exemplified by women in the Global South; and privileging of industrial employment as work over home-based and informal labour. Standards established at the first International Labour Conference set the framework for future International Labour Organization (ILO) instruments. Where once care and household labour appeared as women’s obligations that required fewer hours of wage work to accommodate, a century later the ILO determined that carework, paid as well as unpaid, was essential for obtaining ‘decent work’.