#MeToo and #Timesup Have Deep Roots.

Women's ILO: Transnational Networks, Global Labour Standards, and Gender Equity, 1919 to Present "helps mark [the International Labour Organization's] 100 years of commitment to social justice and increased promotion of gender equality," says co-edi-or Eileen Boris, Hull Professor of Feminist Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

The volume includes articles from female writers and historians around the world, focusing on specific women involved in labor movements and the relationship between the ILO and other organizations. Essays address a range of topics, including attitudes toward motherhood in Argentina and their impact on labor regulations there; Italian women's struggle for equal pay; how women in rural Ghana organized in the 1980s; migrant women caregivers; and the question of viewing surrogacy as paid work. Boris contributed the essay "Equality's Cold War: The ILO and the UN Commission on the Status of Women, 1946-1970."

The book comes out as women's work life evolves amid cultural shifts that vary from country to country. According to Boris, women are "pushing back through organizations like the ILO. Today, the issues of women and workers, both paid and unpaid, and equal pay are at the center of working life. That is a big cultural shift. Low-waged, part-time, and temporary work--conditions long faced by women workers-now characterize the gig economy and more and more jobs, making the past of women's work newly relevant to understanding the future of work."

Apropos for this time of #MeToo and #TimesUp, the ILO has begun discussing gender violence and harassment at work. Boris notes that, though women have made progress, ifs been uneven and unequal...