Lifestyle enrooted by thousands of years old historical process interlocking with oppression, violence, war, racism, militarism, and sexual exploitation is still protected… Women who try to hold on, stand on their feet, and survive in the working life dominated by the gendered division of labor, struggle not only to hold on to the labor market, but also to work under equal and fair conditions. While jobs have been divided as men's and women's jobs, women are paid less despite working harder… Women’s business life started in textile factories now continues in the service sector. In these articles series, we try to summarize women’s cultural and political development in history. In the first article, we share the resistance of women working in textile factories in Lowell and Olympe De Gouges.

ZEYNEP AKGÜL

Ankara- Men think they are losing their hegemony as women struggle to win their rights, and they want to regain their domination by using violence against women. Throughout history, men have shown that they will not easily give up their privileges by producing more violence against women. Olympe De Gouges was executed by guillotine in 1793 for writing men’s violence in her “Declaration of the Rights of Woman”; in 1834, young women working in textile factories in Lowell were killed; in 1857, women working in the New York garment industry staged protests demanding improved working conditions; in the 1990s, 146 young women were killed due to fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York. In 2005, women were burned to death at Özay Tekstil workplace located in Bursa province of Turkey. We try to share the resistance of those women in our articles series.

The first women’s struggles

Social change has also made differences in women's positions. We can say that women’s struggle emerged when women began to work in factories. One of the first organized actions of women is the petition presented by a number of women in London to a Parliamentary against the patriarchal structure of the church and state. In 1647, the second petition was presented by servant girls to object to the pressure and long working hours.

In the same year, women presented a petition for the release of an arrested woman named Lilburne. Women said, “Shall we sit still and keep at home?” Petitions had an important role to react against something in that period.

Olympe De Gouges should be always remembered

Women had no rights in many countries. Even in France, one of the most developed countries of the world, Napoleon's reactionary laws prevailed in the 1960s. Married women had no rights on properties, on their children. Abortion was forbidden. Women were paid less than men. Maternity leave was unpaid. There was no day nursery. Women could work if they could take permission from their husbands. After the revolution, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen de 1789) set by French National Constituent Assembly. However, Olympe De Gouges said that the word “homme” used in the declaration meant ‘men’ in English and she published her Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen in 1791. For this reason, she should be always remembered as the early women's rights advocate. But, unfortunately, she was executed by guillotine during the Reign of Terror (1793–1794) for criticizing the regime of the Revolutionary government by writing the declaration.

When we look at the world history, we see that the demands and thoughts of women have always been ignored.

The Mill Girls' resistance at Lowell made history

The Lowell mill girls were young female workers who came to work in industrial corporations in Lowell, Massachusetts, during the Industrial Revolution in the United States. The workers initially recruited by the corporations were daughters of New England farmers, typically between the ages of 15 and 35. They protested increasingly harsh working conditions. The Mill Girls worked from 5:00 am until 7:00 pm, for an average of 73 hours per week. They had to pay rent to stay in houses around the factory. Women couldn’t go out after 10 pm. The Mill Girls organized protests and strikes, however, the strike failed and within days the protesters had all returned to work at reduced pay or left town.

In 1836, the female textile workers organized protests and strike due to the rent hike and there was enormous community support for the striking female textile workers. In the end, the proposed rent hike was seen as a violation of the written contract between the employers and the employees. Women founded their first association called the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association (LFLRA).