W. Page Pitt School of Journalism and Mass Communications



Women of Protest: Photographs from the Records of the National Woman's Party, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.			Women’s Approaches to Resistance Janet Dooley In my Women and Work course at the University of Kentucky students were charged with creating a formal paper using the texts assigned for class. We were instructed to isolate a theme that ran through all of the texts and to construct our works around that subject using only the assigned readings. I was inspired by the text Domination and the Art of Resistance by James C. Scott. He had written powerfully about the need for resistance, but he had never examined it through a gendered lens. Though not the distinct subject of any of the texts, all of the authors had alluded to women and resistance. My task was to bring their sporadic mentions into a cohesive package discussing women and resistance. THE POWER TO OPPRESS will always meet with resistance in some form. It may be quiet mental mockery of those in control or it may manifest itself in tangible and threatening challenges. Oppression flows from many streams. Bosses dominate workers. Powerful governments oppress their citizens. Societal expectations demand conformity. And women live in a sphere of domination within domination (Scott, 1990). Roles that have been constructed for women tend to place them in subordination to men. Language privileges male forms of expression over female forms (Lakoff, in Scott, 1990). Men’s “reluctance to assume domestic responsibilities as well as their avoidance of female jobs in the occupational world reflects the low-status and low-paid or unpaid nature of women’s work” (May, 1974, p.1960). Turn of the century scholars Arthur Schopenhauer and Otto Weininger, analyzing speech patterns, described women as cunning with instinctive treachery, irredeemable tendencies to lying and swayed by sensations and perceptions of the moment instead of dominating them (Scott, 1990). In their view altering speech or actions to adjust to inequalities in power are natural characteristics of the subordinate group and justifies their continued domination by their betters. Scott described their positions as “marvelously perverse” (p.36). Women find their oppression stemming from institutionalized power and from social constructions that view men as naturally dominant over women. May (1947) observed that men have to “give up” for women to gain, and that they will not give up easily. “Only as women choose to press the conflict both at the group and individual levels will change eventually come about” (p.196). To “press the conflict” women must learn resistance, not just to male domination and privilege, but other power structures as well. Men too are confronted with situations and social expectations that require resistance, but their tactics and motivations are often dissimilar from those used by women. As Ruth Shays, a Black inner city resident stated, “The mind of the man and the mind of the woman is the same, but this business of living makes women use their minds in ways that men don’t even have to think about” (Collins, 1991, p.25). Sometimes women’s resistance will be carried out alongside men with both of them striving toward the same goal. More often, however, women find it necessary to create different tactics in trying to achieve goals similar to men’s. For instance, slave men in antebellum south were more prone to attempt escapes to the north in order to alleviate their conditions, whereas slave women were quite likely confined to simple truancy. Women’s childbearing and child rearing responsibilities spawned resistance tactics that are not available to men, such as plantation owners’ willingness to accommodate slave women of childbearing age in order to protect their ability to produce more hands for service or for sale. Other social constructions of womanhood deemed some forms of resistance simply inappropriate for women or ineffective in a male world and require creative invention of other techniques. “In the case of women, relations of subordination have typically been both more personal and intimate” (Scott, 1990, p.22), and motivations for resistance are at times rooted in their (women’s) isolation. The actions women decide to take may be subtle or “hidden” (Scott) or overt and public; they may be aimed at survival or intended to initiate change; they may be executed by an individual or by a group. Many of women’s “coping strategies” (Romero, 1992) are adaptations of tactics used by men while others may have no male parallel. Because women don’t live two lives, “one as a member of a class, the other as a man or a woman” (Cockburn in Yarrow, 1991, p. 285) class (and race) may have a bearing on tactics that women identify as effective and appropriate, but among different classes and races, gender has been a characteristic that determined the resistance strategies employed. Men and women’s approaches to muted forms of rebellion (Cock in Romero, 1992), mobility, work place strategies, union activity, sense of community and self-image are all sources of difference in resistance techniques employed by each gender. Muted Forms of Rebellion Direct confrontation with oppressors can draw severe retaliation that pushes resistance into “hidden agenda” (Scott, 1990) status in order to minimize risk and the economic hardship that generally accompanies punishment. Creative and disguised expressions of animosity toward slave owners are the root of many of the muted resistance techniques still used in contemporary work places that empower workers as they vent, maintain their integrity and take for themselves some degree of control. They are generally directed at survival rather than at initiating long-term change. Though used by both men and women, women had special adaptations to suit their particular situations. Rascality Franklin (1991) contends that resistance of slaves was more common than is usually acknowledged, and existing literature tends to reinforce his position. “Rascality,” identified by Deborah Gray White (1985) as women’s schemes to control their work situations, includes activities such as chicanery, cajolery, and trickery exemplified by Dinah, a sharp, clear witted, and cunning woman who purposely acted a “fool” to take advantage of her mistress. Many of the women’s “stories of resistance” (Romero, 1992) involved simple deceptions that diverted control from master to slave. Contrary to popular conceptions, working in the master’s house “offered no shelter from the brutal manifestations of slavery” (Jones, 1947). Infractions such as burning bread or falling asleep while singing to a baby could evoke sanctions from jabs with pins to disfiguring beatings. Women slaves detested the close control and careful movements required of house servants. They were expected to be available 24 hours a daywhich required frequent separation from their families. Women resisted through sassiness that irritated their mistresses, and some devised schemes for having themselves transferred to field work. Alcey Burleigh, a Virginia plantation slave, found that disobeying orders, stealing and serving ill prepared food earned her a transfer to fieldwork where she could share the day’s work with her husband (White, 1985). Movement out of the master’s house is a form of “changing the structure of work” described by Cobble (1991), Collins (1991), and Romero (1992). Maids interviewed by Romero felt freed by their change from live-in to day work as did the waitresses described by Cobble when they traded in-home service for commercial restaurants. Collins noted that domestics would relocate to larger markets in order to make the same transition into regular daytime employment. Like latter day Alcey’s they too found ways to distance themselves from the watchful eyes of their oppressors. One of the greatest differences between male and female slave’s use of trickery was the women’s ability to feign illness or “play the lady” (Jones, 1987; White, 1985) in order to gain respite from their work. Playing the lady largely revolved around women’s reproductive cycles and capabilities. Childbearing was an expectation that slave owners had of slave women because of the profitability involved, so to ensure that no damage was done to the women’s reproductive systems their illnesses were often accommodated with a break from regular work schedules or reassignment to lighter tasks. Poor living conditions may have precipitated some genuine sickness, but because that was difficult to ascertain the women’s passive resistance was generally effective. Sarah, a slave on Landon Carter’s eighteenth century Virginia plantation, laid up 11 months before delivering her baby, and in Louisiana, at the Bayside plantation, Milly missed 38 consecutive days because of sickness (White, 1985). In the slave tradition of rascality, Sarah Tucker (in Romero, 1992) more recently observed that one way African American domestics in the south dealt with feelings of powerlessness was by tricking white employers, and manipulating situations in which they were perceived as childlike, lazy or inferior. The domestics’ knowledge of white’s expectations of them helped them fool their employers. Disguise and Anonymity At the heart of muted rebellion is the requirement of anonymity. Situations in which “protest would be exceptionally dangerous” (Scott, 1990, p.141) validate disguises or other actions that protect the perpetrators. For women in particular, spirit possession is a form of social protest during which a woman can “openly make known her grievances against her husband and male relatives, curse them, make demands and in general violate the powerful norms of male dominances. …she may cease work, be given gifts and generally be treated indulgently” (p.141). Because possession is involuntary and never directly challenges the domination at which it is aimed, it permits a critique of power that might otherwise never be voiced. In an unusual twist on women and disguised resistance, men found that an effective deception was to dress as a woman. Rebels, mimicking carnival, dressed like women or wore masks as they broke machinery and made political demands (Scott, 1990). Men resisting Stalin’s collectivization program creatively used the “marginal apolitical status of women in a patriarchic order” (p.150), giving women the lead in public opposition realizing that the worst forms of punitive retaliation might be avoided. Men could then intervene on behalf of their threatened women. It was believed that the women would serve as a screen that protected the more vulnerable male peasants whose opposition might suffer serious consequences. Anonymity also fostered a sense of security when, during the civil rights movement, women in the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) anonymously petitioned their male colleagues regarding the treatment of women in the organization (Evans in Scott, 1990). Their memo stated, “Think about the kinds of things the author, if made known, would have to suffer because of raising this kind of discussion. Nothing so final as being fired or outright exclusion, but the kinds of things which are killing to the insides, insinuations, ridicule, over-exaggerated compensations” (p.148). Beyond Rascality Resistance becomes less muted but not yet confrontational as it moves beyond simple expressions through trickery and chicanery. In stronger, but still largely covert, pushes for survival, women resorted to poisoning and withholding of fertility and adaptations of shifting and foraging. Poisoning Women officiating as cooks and nurses on southern plantations found poisoning readily available as a means of resistance (Collins, 1991; White, 1985). Barbara Christian (in Collins) found southern “mammys,” unlike the stereotypical white southern images, to be cunning, not at all pleased with their lot and “prone to poisoning” (p.73). The women may have intended to kill their victims or to induce chronic illness, but above all they needed to avoid detection because punishment was swift and severe. Burning at the stake was often the retaliation judged appropriate for such action. When a slave woman and two male accomplices suspected their slow poisoning of Dr. Kermit had been discovered, they murdered him outright. The men successfully escaped, but she was caught and hanged (White). Withholding Fertility Because many miscarriages and infertility problems could be attributed to strenuous work and poor health practices, it is difficult to ascertain conclusively whether slave women practiced either birth control or abortion, but Collins (1990) has posited that refusal of women to bear children and cases of Black infanticide can be interpreted as acts of resistance. It is clear that slave women withheld childbearing for at least two years, but it is unclear whether the practice was intentional or due to poor health conditions (White, 1985). According to Jones (1992) and Smith (1987), as medicine evolved to better serve women, withholding fertility became a conscious decision of women wishing to limit their family size in order to more efficiently use family income, raise a family’s standard of living and provide education for offspring. Though decisions to bear children are considered a joint accommodation between husbands and wives, as an act of resistance it is possible for women alone to chose to limit fertility. Shifting and Foraging Rarely recognized as such by plantation owners, movement from farm to farm was an empowerment technique that allowed sharecroppers to escape tyrannical overseers and try to improve their condition in another place. In the postbellum south “shifting” (Jones, 1992) was typically initiated by husbands and fathers as they searched for a better owner with whom to share the family’s labor or as they sought paid employment in emerging industries. For women the shifting tradition has followed them into the arena of paid employment, particularly in the low paying job market. Cooper (1987), and Romero (1992) identified shifting, though not always by that name, as a means of controlling one’s own work conditions. Cooper cited turnover in the women’s cigar making industry as a form of protest. It was fairly easy to quit one job where working conditions may not have been satisfactory and find employment readily in another. Similarly Chicana domestics in Romero’s study could move among employers, and sometimes “left the occupation as soon as other job opportunities became available,” because “employers outside domestic service do not demand the same level of deference and servility” (p.90). Both slave and sharecropper survival depended on foraging, supplementing supplies earned through farm labor with natural food sources from the land. While foraging typically referred to men who would hunt game in nearby forest areas, women “picked a precarious living out of the assets of the community, fruit, fish, fowl and game” (Jones, 1992, p.94). Women were known for “muddying for eels,” picking berries and earning “patch money” by marketing small surpluses of vegetables raised in plots of land near their homes. “White women sometimes helped make whiskey that provided families with their only source of cash income” (p. 93). Vestiges of foraging can be noted in contemporary ghetto life with small vegetable gardens tended to in vacant lots, rummaging through trash cans for food, searching for redeemable aluminum cans and checking pubic phones for forgotten change (Jones, 1992). Mobility and Running Running from slave masters was one of the boldest statements of resistance in the antebellum south, but it was a successful means of liberation denied to women much more often than to men. Collins (1991), Jones (1992) and White (1985) have recounted the difficulty with which women could free themselves from the confines of the plantation as slaves and as sharecroppers. Sexual divisions of labor on plantations afforded male slaves some degree of mobility as they traveled assisting in the sale of crops and as they were hired out as artisans and craftsmen. They were witness to a small world of towns, mills, blacksmith shops and tanneries, and in abroad marriages it was the husband who was permitted to travel to neighboring plantations for Sunday visits. Women, confined to sedentary domestic services, field work and childbearing were limited to a narrow, plantation-bound existence. Clandestine northbound travel was enticing to slave women, but their limited mobility was aided by maternal responsibilities in restricting them to the plantation. Linda Brent knew her grandmother would “keep a watchful eye” (White, 1985, p.74) on her children, but it was that same grandmother’s admonition to “stand by your children and suffer with them ’til death” (p.74) that prohibited her travel. Her grandmother further warned, “Nobody respects a mother who forsakes her children, and if you leave them you will never have a happy moment” (p.74). Similarly, Harriet Jacob expressed the sentiments “I could have made my escape alone, but it was more for my helpless children than for myself that I longed for freedom. Though the boon would have been precious to me, above all price, I wouldn’t have taken it at the expense of leaving them in slavery” (Collins, 1990, p. 136). Fear of the repercussions their children would have suffered kept many women from running, and for those who did, as reported by White (1985) “the physical relief which freedom brought was limited compensation for the anguish they suffered” (p.71). Had it been possible to leave with their husbands and children many more women would have done so, but traveling as a family made the journey difficult and increased chances of capture (White, 1985). Women traveling with only their children were an even greater risk. William Still, chairman of the Vigilance Committee of the Philadelphia Underground Railroad said, “females undertook three times the risk of failure that males are liable to. …none of these can walk so far or so fast as scores of men that are constantly leaving” (p.72). Truancy seemed to be the more viable form of protest for slave women who reconciled their desire to flee with their need to stay close to their children. Women would often take to the woods for a short time, two or three days, then return, some leaving so frequently so as to make it a way of life. Celeste, a Louisiana woman, was repeatedly truant, and during one absence built a rude hut from dead branches and lived for the better part of a summer on the edge of a swamp (White, 1985). Motivations for northern travel both before and after emancipation drove men and women differently. Men went north for independence and manhood, but women, Black and white, often had an aversion to the isolation of rural life and to the physical burden of field work. Other women resented the additional domestic weight they bore when their husbands traveled away from home to work temporarily in a saw mill camp or port-city dock (Jones, 1992). Differences between male and female mobility are noted currently through figures enumerating single female heads of household (Morrissey, 1987). Whether heading the household through necessity or by choice the number of single females in that position attest to the continued greater mobility of men over women. Resistance in the Work Place Tradeoffs that slave women faced in their decisions to flee oppressive plantation life parallel closely the choices women must make when entering the paid work force. A change precipitated by entering into paid labor can alleviate isolation, but also stimulate concerns about family obligations, particularly child care. As stated by Gerson (1987), “…tradeoffs are built into the structure of choice” (p. 276). She adds that women experience psychic conflict over the choice between family and paid work, but that women have responded in creative ways that, when taken together, are changing the social order as well as their own lives. Despite routinization and bureaucratization of work, women have gained much from their expanded opportunities, and “paid work has met the needs for accomplishments, service and association that cannot otherwise be satisfied” (Hunt & Hunt, 1987, p.199). Scott (1990) related the story of Darlene Stille, a women, who when denied supervisory posts because of her sex, let go her feelings of anger and “barked back.” He noted that it is difficult to hear her description and similar accoiunts- without “being struck by the strong sense of recaptured human dignity” (p. 209). Men are rarely faced with the structural choices fobbed off on women by virtue of motherhood (though sometimes parenthood forces choices) and family management, and their entrenchment in higher-paid, higher-status jobs insulate them from much of the denigration endured by women at work. Women’s resistance in the work place is carried out in a multitude of occupations and with a variety of innovative methods, and tends to combine elements of hidden, public and survival tactics, but ultimately resistance in the work place has aimed for change. Domestic workers and union efforts provide two excellent areas for examination. Domestic Service Despite perceptions of domestic service as an occupation replete with domination, deference and subordination, it has evolved, largely through the efforts of the employees themselves, into a job choice that offers some possibility of control. Although many of the muted rebellious activities of slavery are still present in domestic service, it is attractive in comparison to other low-paying jobs because of its flexibility of hours and because of its autonomy. Increasingly women are resisting the psychological impositions of the job and the unreasonable demands on their time and performance. Mary Romero (1992) found that “since the status of motherhood is much higher than that of a domestic worker, identifying with traditional family roles minimizes the stigma attached to the work role” (p. 43). Chicana women in particular have diligently resisted the low-status implications of their work by systematically structuring a more humanistic environment and granting themselves greater control at work. Their strategy has been to create a small business atmosphere which included negotiating a work structure that provided autonomy and independence in planning and organizing housework, reduced contact with and close supervision by employers, switched employers from time based compensation to a flat rate for tasks, diminished the possibilities for extraction of unpaid labor, and positioned the domestic employee as an expert in her field, i.e., a professional (Romero, 1992). Unionization Union men, resisting their own oppression, have always had a role for women in their organizations. They were generally welcome supporters at strikes and women’s auxiliary arms were attached to the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP), the United Auto Workers (UAW), the Steel Workers’ Organization and others (Jones, 1992). At the birth of the CIO affiliated steelworkers in Youngstown, Ohio, women were beaten by police (Jones). Yet in spite of their episodic inclusion in strike activity, women were not welcomed at union meetings and were not thought of as part of the group (Yarrow, 1991). Union calls for brotherhood could be interpreted accurately to mean inclusion of men only. Entering the work force with less status, lower wages and greater marginality at the outset, women found the formation of their own unions and occupational affiliations effective bulwarks against oppression, though their tactics once again took a approach different from those of men’s. They were subtle, they were covert, they strove for survival, but most of all they fought for change. Cigar Making Women A vision of union perfection in its time, the Cigar Makers International Union (CMIU) touted class rights, supported wage battles, cultivated brotherhood, and argued for favorable working conditions, but their union fraternity, despite some good intentions and exceptions, was a world of insiders where women workers were alien (Cooper, 1987). In stark contrast to their tight-knit brotherhood, CMIU members resisted the inclusion of women, viewing them as threats to their own security. The CMIU charged that employers believed women were “more tractable and docile than men,” and manufacturers explained that they wanted women because they “don’t drink,” were “better adapted,” “cheaper,” “more reliable,” “more careful,” and “more easily controlled” (Cooper, 1987, p.162). An 1886 cigar manufacturer commented that cigar making was a vocation fit only for women and that if women became the industry’s workers “then the business will be pursued without these constant strikes and interruptions (p. 18). Except for their brief alliance during the War in the Cigar Industry from 1917-19, men and women cigar makers moved in different worlds. While both men and women drafted strategies for better working conditions and wages, their executions bore little resemblance to one another. Men were ready to strike when lockers were installed, not because they did not appreciate the storage areas placed on the premises for their own use, but they were angered at not having been consulted about their desires ahead of time (Cooper, 1987). Women, on the other hand, during the work day stored personal belongings in a box upon which they sat rather than a chair furnished by their employers, therefore claiming a modicum of private space on their employers’ property. While men were granted, without charge, a supply of personal “smokers,” women pilfered cigars for their boyfriends, fathers and husbands. Employers’ logic, of course, was that women didn’t smoke and, consequently, would not require smokers. A threat to withhold labor could involve costly delays for manufacturers during and after the strike (Cooper, 1987). “Union cigar makers’ reputation for striking was surpassed only by that of Tampa cigar makers” (p. 135). One of the most powerful forms of resistance, striking possessed a different tenor when called by men than when called by women. Among other more serious charges, men would walk out to assert their manhood, as a reaction to personal affronts, in support of an insulted craftsman, or for the perception of a foreman getting out of line. Women struck over wages, changes in production methods that might interfere with their wages, dismissal of foremen and complaints of poor stock with which to work. Union men’s support of the women’s strikes was generally avoided because men saw the women as “losers” and blamed them for returning to work under old conditions. “Allowing such indignities was unmanly” (Cooper, 1987, p.255). Women cigar makers in New Jersey, between 1901-17, lost 15 of 24 strikes. With one compromise, and one unknown outcome, the women came back with only 7 wins. Though women cigar makers’ affiliations aided them in many instances they were clearly not the imposing vision of male camaraderie represented by the CWIU. Waitress Unions Sue Cobble’s (1991) account of waitress unions paints a picture of a solid and long running affiliation of women, proficient in “raising the moral status of women toilers” (p.125) and establishing waiting as a genuine craft while employing innovative tactics that blazed a path not yet discovered by male unionists. Women comprised both membership and leadership of the waitress unions. While, unlike male unions, they generally found negotiating worked more effectively for them than striking, their strike tactics were inventive and fruitful. Traditional strike tactics had little effect on small shop owners who could restaff with family members temporarily, so pickets would not pull the “inside crew” (Cobble, 1947, p.93). Picketing alone could discourage customers or halt deliveries of supplies, but it was often difficult to fill the picket lines. To encourage area residents to join their effort, union members distributed score cards at the Stanford-UCLA football game inscribed with “Hold that Line” and instructing interested individuals how to join the pickets. Men’s records have rarely recorded such reliance on creative innovation to garner support. A Sense of Community One of the strongest distinctions between men’s and women’s forms of resistance, lies in women’s reliance on community. Africans resisted the dehumanizing effects of slavery by recreating familiar structures of family and extended kin units (Collins, 1991). Slave households provided a weapon for resistance, and sharecroppers, even when agricultural life failed to reward their hard work, were satisfied being at home anywhere they went among their mothers’ and father’s folks (Jones, 1992). Freed people resisted whites’ conviction that Black women should be servants or cotton pickers first and family members only incidentally. Black women reclaimed their labor for the benefit of their own families (Jones, 1992). Scholars currently argue “the African American community provides resources to enhance self image and offers domestic workers nonstigmatized roles” (Romero, 1992, p.137). “Safe spaces” (Collins, 1991, p. 95), couched within extended families, churches and African American community organizations, furnish a prime location for resisting objectification. Romero has proposed “West Indian domestics… are able to maintain psychological and material independence by defining themselves not by the occupation, but in terms of family, church, organizations and community” (p.138). Women who maintain that they have elected poverty over oppression rely on community to help them through (Morrissey, 1987). Female relatives are an important resource for women whose extended families live in proximity to them, with grandmothers and sisters who are called upon to care for children during the day, to aid in crisis, and to help prepare food for holidays (Allen, 1989; Romero, 1992). Without a substantive network of community support, trapped in the isolation of the women’s sphere or the cult of domesticity, women find resistance nearly impossible. Women’s unions crafted a sense of “occupational community” (Cobble, 1991, p.132) that extended beyond the members’ association at work. Waitresses wanted their unions to function as social clubs as well as labor organizations, and they often hosted open houses, annual balls, dances and other affairs that cultivated a warm feeling among the workers. Attractive headquarters and meeting rooms contrasted the “boisterous and unruly activities” (p.135) of male unionists. Waitress locals were places for “social and intellectual stimulation, and places of rest” (p.135). The Women’s Label League arranged for a suite in the Chicago Labor Temple, and established a rest area and library for waitresses to use when caught between shifts. Although they could not match the benefits offered by their brother unions, waitress organizations managed considerable funds for their members and offered mutual aid to one another on a personal level. Laura MacDonald, during a stay in a hospital, listed the Waitresses’ Union as her next-of-kin. Affiliations of men and women cigar makers furnish again a striking contrast with regard to their sense of community. Beyond just working together, the men of the CWIU paid special attention to their clothes, wearing the finest garments and taking pride in being well dressed. Proper clothing, they believed, demonstrated their positions as craftsmen and placed them visually on the same level as their employers. The male unionists would cluster at the saloon after work and swap tramping stories and exploits. Tramping was a CWUI support system that virtually ensured members employment in any cigar making city to which they traveled. They worked in solidarity to monitor their compensation, their investments of time, the conditions of the tobacco and their relationship to foremen (Cooper, 1992). Yet for all of its togetherness, the CWIU supplied camaraderie more than community. Women, too, were concerned about their work environment and wages. They lacked rules and protective unionism, but they developed internal, informal ways to establish acceptable production averages in resistance to the feverish pace expected by manufacturers. They would quietly share tobacco and arrive at mutually satisfactory flexible schedules when possible. The team system under which the women worked could easily have caused friction, but it also served as a unifying force as women recognized their dependence on one another. Sitting in rows that faced each other facilitated quiet conversation and a friendly atmosphere on the shop floor. Warm social ties were formed that lasted beyond work hours (Cooper, 1992). Unlike the manly and elitist image cultivated by the CWIU, the women’s cigar maker’ community was one of support and mutual reinforcement. Appalachian miners’ unions represent a somewhat different picture of male vs. female use of community. They are firmly grounded in mining as “men’s work” (Yarrow, 1991, p.288), requiring strong, tough, skilled, mechanically inclined beings. Women intruding in the mines are met with hostility as they are perceived to threaten the status of the mining occupation. Socializing after work hours is full-hearted and boisterous like cigar making men. In the mines, however, manhood requires a supportive, nurturing stance toward brothers because the “buddies” are forced to rely on one another for safety in life-threatening conditions (Yarrow). The supportive attitudes that help women survive their work, home and leisure lives, is the same attitude that sees miners through uncertain circumstances. Less Visible Resistance Resistance is delineated by historian Rosalyn Terborg-Penn (in Collins, 1991) as “women’s involvement in the organized struggle against slavery, peonage, and imperialism. Strategies included open and guerrilla warfare, maroonage, slave revolts, and peasant revolts” (p. 141). As pointed out by Collins, Terborg-Penn has outlined specific types of black women’s resistance, but the limits of her definition lead her to overlook less visible but equally important forms of black women’s political activity in the African American community. In bringing the less visible into focus, Collins has eloquently assessed the importance of self-image in effective resistance, and her concept of rearticulation could assist all women who find dominant images inappropriate depictions of their own histories and life experiences. Black women have used multiple strategies of resistance such as poisoning during slavery, withdrawing from field agricultural work during postbellum reconstruction in order to return their labor to their families, and finding ways to gain control of domestic service employment in the current marketplace. Collins (1991) also has rightly noted the contributions of literature, music and art as modes of resistance, though men’s ways of knowing may never recognize their value as expressions of strength. “But change can also occur in the private, personal space of an individual woman’s consciousness” (p.111). Black women’s journeys, though at times embracing political and social issues, basically take personal and psychological forms and rarely reflect the freedom of movement of Black men who hop trains, hit the road or in other ways physically travel in order to find that elusive sphere of freedom from racial oppression. Black women’s journeys involve the transformation of silence into language and action. ‘Motionless on the outside, but inside?’” (p.105). Collins’ beautifully crafted passage is emphasizing the importance of self-image and discovery in resistance. The technique she has espoused is rearticulation, giving voice to challenges of engrained images of Black women (or other groups of women). Although rearticulating images is not a visible form of resistance, it manifests itself in the destigmatization of domestic work, in a philosophy of education for race uplift rather than for individual gain, and in Black mothers’ obstinance at discouraging their children to be deferent to whites (Collins 1991, Romero, 1992). The domestic workers’ chant recited during survival skills training sessions in New York City demonstrates how rearticulation can help to resist controlling images within other communities of women (Romero, 1992). “I am not a maid. I am a household technician. I am not your girl. I am a grown woman. If I were your girl you would not leave me with your child or your mother. I’m nobody’s girl (p.115)”.Rearticulation is an affirmation of self worth that empowers women to repel the controlling aspects of domination, subordination and oppression. Sustaining Resistance As long as sex segregated labor continues to relegate women to low-status, low paying jobs they will be inclined to use hidden or muted resistance tactics. Security is low, risks are high and retaliation is swift. In most industries women are perceived as less likely to resist, yet the accounts of women challenging employers is plentiful. What conditions promote women’s resistance? Clearly dissatisfaction with wages and working conditions will stimulate resistance, but if that is all that is required, industries would continually be answering charges leveled at them by women. Katherine Gerson (1987) offers an expanded explanation. She posits that economic and family structures in transition will precipitate resistance. Scanning some particularly active periods of resistance suggests that resistance among slaves followed a forced transition in their family structures and economic viability when they were removed from Africa. Unionization and work place affiliations came after industrialization altered the basic agrarian economic base and restructured the traditional extended family unit. All pockets of resistance can not be explained by “transition,” and no directional link has been established. Perhaps resistance causes transition. But Gerson’s final comments offer a succinct summary of initiating and sustaining women’s resistance. “Under conducive circumstances, many women developed strategies of resistance to social oppression. Because the arrangements that subordinate women also depend on their participation, this resistance posed a challenge to the men and employers they confronted. This resistance may have produced opposition on the part of those who were challenged, but opposition alone do not and could not halt resistance that springs form underlying structural change. Some women thus acted as a force for change that reverberated throughout the social institutions that impinged on them (p. 280).” References Allen, K. R. (1989). Single women/Family ties: Life histories of older women. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Cobble, S. (1991). Dishing it out: Waitresses and their unions in the twentieth century. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Collins, P. H. (1991). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. New York: Routledge. Cooper, P. A. (1987). Once a cigar maker: Men, women and work culture in American cigar factories, 1900-1919. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Franklin, R. S. (1991). Shadows of race and class. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Gerson, K. (1987). 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