Dorothy Sue Cobble

Dorothy Sue Cobble (June 28, 1949) is an American historian, and a specialist in the historical study of work, social movements, and feminism in the United States and worldwide. She is a Distinguished Professor Emerita at Rutgers University, and has held dual appointments in the Departments of Labor Studies and History since 1986.

Her book The Other Women’s Movement (2005) coined the term labor feminism.

Early life and education Cobble was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1949, into a working class family. She attended Smith College before receiving her B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1972.

She worked as a trade union stevedore in the mid-1970s before earning her Ph.D. in history from Stanford University in 1986. At Stanford, she studied under American historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Carl Degler.

Career During the 1970s and 1980s, Cobble became a leading historian of women's labor movements. She was the first woman to run the Labor Studies program at City College of San Francisco, and after receiving her PhD, joined the faculty of Rutgers University, where she initially led education for women trade unionists in New Jersey and created the Center for Women and Work. In 2021, she published For the Many: American Feminists and the Global Fight for Democratic Equality, a history of the twentieth-century feminists who fought for the rights of women and workers internationally.

Cobble retired in 2021 as a Distinguished Professor Emerita in Labor Studies and Employment Relations.

Books Dishing It Out: Waitresses and Their Unions in the Twentieth Century (1991) Women and Unions: Forging a Partnership (editor) (1993) The Other Women's Movement: Workplace Justice and Social Rights in America (2005) The Sex of Class: Women Transforming American Labor (editor) (2007) Feminism Unfinished: A Short, Surprising History of American Women’s Movements with Linda Gordon and Astrid Henry (2014) For the Many: American Feminists and the Global Fight for Democratic Equality (2021)