Motherhood Without Poverty: Working-Class Women and Global Struggles for Work, Family, and Reproductive Autonomy (1918–1939)

Motherhood Without Poverty: Working-Class Women and Global Struggles for Work, Family, and Reproductive Autonomy (1918–1939)

A One-Day Hybrid Workshop at the University of Glasgow

Friday 27 February 2026, 9 am-6 pm (London time)

This event will bring together scholars exploring the history of global women’s activism around working motherhood, state support for families, and reproductive autonomy during the interwar period. Professor Eileen Boris of the University of California Santa Barbara will deliver an online keynote titled “Regulating Women’s Labors: Cultures of Protection, Womanly Duties, and the Wages of Care.”

The workshop aims to examine how women both shaped and were influenced by national and international politics concerning these issues. Through intersectional, postcolonial, and critical-feminist approaches, we seek to reassess the contributions of working-class women to struggles for emancipation at work and in the family.

Following World War I, as women entered the labour force in unprecedented numbers, governments, political parties, and international actors began debating policies aimed at working women and mothers. Although women were only discreetly present in these policy discussions, their influence was significant. Yet, while the role of conservative and liberal currents has been studied, the ideas and policies of international left-wing and working-class movements regarding working mothers, childcare, and reproductive rights remain underexplored. This historical amnesia persists despite the progressive character of these movements and the fact that many of their demands – such as free, medically supervised deliveries, paid maternity leave, unconditional state support for mothers and families, public childcare and schooling, and access to contraceptives – later on came to form the bedrock of welfare states worldwide. 

This workshop aims to address this gap by fostering dialogue among scholars working on such activism in local, national, and global contexts. We particularly welcome proposals that:

· Examine working class and left-wing women's ideas and demands related to state policies towards working mothers' and children 

· Explore working-women’s ideas on work and reproductive autonomy

· Adopt transnational and global perspectives on working motherhood, moving beyond Western-centric case-studies and narratives

· Investigate connections, networks, and ties and/or antagonisms between movements and activists across different countries and political movements

To attend on-line please register on Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/motherhood-without-poverty-university-of-glasgow-tickets-1978372122274?aff=oddtdtcreator

Programme

9:00-9:30:    Welcome & coffee

9:30-10:00:  Opening remarks

10: 00 - 11:30:  Panel 1: Motherhood, Labor, and Mobility in the Late Colonial World (1918–1939)

Chair and discussant: Dr. Christine Whyte, University of Glasgow

• Dr. Delzar Sadiq, Salahaddin University-Erbil: Gendered Foundations of a Proto-State: Motherhood, Poverty, and Women's Labor in Southern Kurdistan (1918-1939)

• Dr. Henry Dee, Northumbria University: Trade unions, women workers and the politics of migration in urban South Africa, Sri Lanka and Myanmar, 1919-1939

• Sara Shabab Arab, Geneva Graduate Institute: Mothers on the Move: Mahar Women, Caste Discrimination and City Life in Late Colonial India

11:30-13:00 Lunch

13:00- 14:30 : Panel 2: Communism, Motherhood, and Reproductive Rights

Chair and discussant: Prof. Maud Bracke, University of Glasgow

• Dr. Anne McShane, independent: Abortion and a right to choose in 1920s Soviet Union

• Dr. Daria Dyakonova: "Fight for humane care of mothers and children!": Communist Women and Reproductive Autonomy, 1920-1936

• Minja Bujankovich, EUI: Motherhood and Anti-Fascist Struggles: The Communist Women’s Movement’s Analysis and Opposition to Fascist Reproductive Politics

14:30-15:00 Coffee Break

15:00- 16: 45 Panel 3: Feminism, Women’s Rights, and Social Motherhood

Chair and discussant: TBC

• Dr. Anna Krylova, Duke University: Alexandra Kollontai, Social Motherhood, and the Long Bolshevik Revolution 

• Christine Taylor, Indiana University: Setting Out Her Own Shingle: Catharine Waugh McCulloch and the Fight for Women’s Rights in the Public and Private Spheres of Chicago, 1890-1920

• Dr. Alexa Rae Burk, Geneva Graduate Institute: Mexicanista Feminism: Proto Welfare Political Organizing in Texas Before the Welfare State, 1910-1930

• Dr. Manuel Ramírez Chicharro, Institute of History - Spanish National Research Council: “The emergence of radical feminism in Cuba: the Third National Women's Congress (1939) and the Constituent Convention (1940).”

17:00 Keynote : Prof. Eileen Boris, University of California Santa Barbara, “Regulating Women’s Labors: Cultures of Protection, Womanly Duties, and the Wages of Care.”

Organizers: Daria Dyakonova (University of Sapienza, Rome) and Maud Anne Bracke (University of Glasgow) 

Contact: daria.dyakonova@uniroma1.it

To attend on-line please register on Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/motherhood-without-poverty-university-of-glasgow-tickets-1978372122274?aff=oddtdtcreator