Unprotected labor: household workers, politics, and middle-class reform in New York, 1870-1940

Through an analysis of women's reform, domestic worker activism, and cultural values attached to public and private space, this book explains how and why domestic workers, the largest category of working women before 1940, were excluded from labour protections that formed the foundation of the US welfare state.

Looking at the debate over domestic service from both sides of the class divide, it assesses middle-class women's reform programmes as well as household workers' efforts to determine their own working conditions.