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Eileen Boris reflects on her recent book Making the Woman Worker: Precarious Labor and the Fight for Global Standards 1919-2019 (Oxford University Press, 2019), followed by remarks from policy makers and labor leaders who focus on women's economic security, labor standards, and workplace equity in Washington State. The book considers how the International Labor Organization (ILO) has made and re-made the woman worker through their creation of global labor standards and the concurrent categorization of what does, and doesn’t, constitute standardized protected work. Women’s work and feminized labor are foregrounded in an analysis of how these definitions have been debated, drawn and challenged particularly as work that has often been rendered precarious by lying outside of accepted categories. The story Boris tells is how the ILO went from an organization focused on improving the working conditions for men in industrial western economies - to the exclusion and restriction of women’s labor - to transform into today’s more equitable institution that advocates for non-discrimination, equal treatment, fair globalization and decent work for women all over the world . Eileen Boris, is the Hull Professor and Distinguished Professor of Feminist Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She also served as past President of the International Federation for Research in Women’s History. ALSO FEATURING: Dana Barnett (Seattle Organizer, Hand in Hand: The Domestic Employers Network; Co-Chair, City of Seattle’s Domestic Workers Standards Board) Senator Karen Keiser (represents Washington state’s 33rd Legislative District. Chair of the Senate Labor and Commerce Committee; Member, Senate Health and Long Term Care Committee, Rules, Ways and Means Committee) Kasi Marita Perreira (Director of Racial and Gender Justice, Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO) |