Who Needs to "Protect" Women? The Question of Night Work [1919-1934]

As shown by the successive laws passed to govern it, female salaried work, a common phenomenon in the 19th & 20th centuries, has been a combated or an encouraged reality according to both the economic climate & the necessary legitimization of social order. Under the auspices of capitalistic & patriarchal prerogatives, the prohibition of female night work, ratified by a convention of the International Work Organization in 1919, crystallizes struggles between national authorities, the adequacy of a young international institution, trade unions, employer organizations & feminist movements. The article shows the perpetuation process of gendered division of labor in the industrial & the service sectors, which were in transition from 1919 to 1934, the year the Convention was revised. References. Adapted from the source document.