The misrecognition of intersectional justice claims: UK women’s workplace activism of the 1970s–1980s

This article explores the specific history of Black and Asian women’s workplace activism and wider campaigning on workplace equality in the UK during the 1970s and 1980s. Given the variety and richness of this history, I highlight particular aspects and examples to address the following questions: What were racially minoritised women’s experiences, analyses of, and campaigning concerning work in this time period, and how did these compare to those of white women? What were their relationships to trade unions and to white women’s campaigning around work? How have these experiences, perspectives and debates concerning workplace inequalities been framed (e.g. in media, academic literature and trade union accounts) across time and to what effect? While racially minoritised women often had priorities other than issues of equal pay and sex discrimination at work, many women who were active in Black women’s movements in this time period were also active in workplace organising. These voices and perspectives have often been excluded from published accounts, including many feminist ones. I argue that when such campaigning and activism has been included, it has usually been misrecognised in media, academic literature and trade union accounts as being exclusively about race or solely about class. An alternative reading would be to see it as being driven by their indivisible experiences as working-class racially minoritised women , which challenges persisting dominant framings of gender and histories of work.