Class Returns

The story of how historians of women and gender do class—the neglected component of intersectionality—takes the form of a return narrative. Connected to trends in the global political economy, class has reemerged as a category of analysis, with interpretative returns that are worth it. But what constitutes class and its boundaries is not so apparent. Here I reflect on three broad arenas: First, how do we define class: is women’s class the same as men’s? Second, what constitutes class formation: How has gender functioned in understandings of class and class mobilization? Third, what is meant by labor: how has women’s history expanded definitions of work and worker and how has such scholarship understood the significance of reproductive labor for the overall political economy? Commodities, we have learned, can be gendered and indeed have a sex, even if women’s class remains determined differently than men’s.