Publications of ZARAH Team Members

Publications from the ZARAH Project

Women’s Labour Activism in Eastern Europe and Beyond (open access book, 2025)

Çağatay, S., A. Ghiț, O. Gnydiuk, V. Helfert, I. Masheva, Z. Popova, J. Tešija, E. Varsa, and S. Zimmermann, eds. Through the Prism of Gender and Work: Women’s Labour Struggles in Central and Eastern Europe and Beyond, 19th and 20th Centuries. Leiden: Brill, 2024.

Çağatay, S., M. Erdélyi, A. Ghiț, O. Gnydiuk, V. Helfert, I. Masheva, Z. Popova, J. Tešija, E. Varsa, and S. Zimmermann. “Women’s Labour Struggles in Central and Eastern Europe and Beyond: Toward a Long-Term, Transregional, Integrative, and Critical Approach.” In Through the Prism of Gender and Work, 1–80. Leiden: Brill, 2024.

Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe 31, No. 2, Special Issue.

Ghiț, A., V. Helfert, l. Masheva, Z. Popova, J. Tešija, E. Varsa, and S. Zimmermann. “Women and the Gendered Politics of Work in Central and Eastern Europe, and Internationally, in the Twentieth Century: Activism, Governance, and Scale.” Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe 31, no. 2 (2023): 227–240.

Masheva, Ivelina. “‘An Eight-Hour Day for Women Workers’: Negotiating Working Time in the Bulgarian Textile Industry between International Labour Politics and the Shop Floor, 1890s to 1930s.” Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe 31, no. 2 (2023): 241–260.

Ghiț, Alexandra. “The Treacherous Trade Unionist: Paraschiva B. Ion and Labour Activism in the Romanian Tobacco Sector, 1920s to 1940s.” Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe 31, no. 2 (2023): 261–278.

Varsa, Eszter. “‘The Rulers Are the Causes of the War […] They Are the Reason There is No Bread in Our Town’: Women’s Food Riots in the Hungarian Countryside, 1917–1918”. Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe 31, no. 2 (2023): 279–299.

Popova, Zhanna. “Polish Women Labour Inspectors between the World Wars: Scrutinizing the Workplace and Mobilizing Public Opinion.” Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe 31, no. 2 (2023): 301–319.

Tešija, Jelena. “‘Millions of Working Housewives’: The International Co-Operative Women’s Guild and Household Labour in the Interwar Period.” Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe 31, no. 2 (2023): 321–338.

Zimmermann, Susan. “Spurring Women to Action? Communist-Led Women’s Trade Unionism Between the Hungarian Shop Floor and Top-level Internationalism, 1947 to 1959.” Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe 31, no. 2 (2023): 339–362.

Helfert, Veronika. “Part-Time Work: The Co-Production of a Contested Employment Model for Women in Austria and Internationally, 1950s to 1980s.” Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe 31, no. 2 (2023): 363–383.

Çağatay, Selin. “Women Workers’ Education at the Confederation of Turkish Trade Unions: Excavating Histories of Transnational Collaboration with the ICFTU.” Labor History 65, no. 2 (2024): 273–287.

Ghiț, Alexandra. “State Labour Control and Women’s Resistance in Austro-Hungarian Transylvania Tobacco Manufacturing (1897–1918).” In Tobacco in Global Perspective, 1780–1960: Trade, Knowledge, and Labour, edited by Alexander van Wickeren, Jean Stubbs, and William Gervase Clarence-Smith, 285–313. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2024.

Ghiț, Alexandra. “Gendered Work, Skill, and Women’s Labor Activism in Romanian Tobacco Factories from the 1920s to the 1960s.” International Labor and Working-Class History 104 (2023): 11–31.

Helfert, Veronika. “Radical and Utopian or Partnership between Men and Women? Austrian Trade Union Women, Autonomous Feminists and Labour Related Concerns, 1970s–1980s.” Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften/Austrian Journal of Historical Studies 35. no. 1 (2024): 96–116.

Helfert, Veronika. “A ‘Special Category of Women’ in Austria and Internationally: Migrant Women Workers, Trade Union Activists, and the Textile Industry, 1960s to 1980s.” In Migrant Actors Worldwide: Capitalist Interests, State Regulations, and Left-Wing Strategies, edited by Dirk Hoerder and Lukas Neissl, 395–416. Leiden: Brill, 2024.

Masheva, Ivelina. “Renegotiating Skills, Wages, and the Right to Work: On the Gender of Labor Activism around Rationalization in the Bulgarian Tobacco Industry in the Early 1930s.” International Labor and Working-Class History 105 (2024): 213–230.

Varsa, Eszter. “The Women of Viharsarok: Peasant Women’s Labour Activism in 1890s Hungary.” International Review of Social History 69, no. 1 (2024): 99–126.

Zimmermann, Susan. “The Changing Politics of Women’s Work and the Making of Extended Childcare Leave in State-Socialist Hungary, Europe, and Internationally: Shifting the Scene.” In Life Course, Work, and Labour in Global History, edited by Josef Ehmer and Carola Lentz, 225–257. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2023.

Zimmermann, Susan. “Dance Around a ‘Sacred Cow’: Women’s Night Work and the Gender Politics of the Mass Worker in State-Socialist Hungary and Internationally.” In State Socialism in Eastern Europe: History, Theory, Anti-Capitalist Alternatives, edited by Eszter Bartha, Tamás Krausz, and Bálint Mezei, 79–124. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023.

Zimmermann, Susan. “‘It Shall Not Be a Written Gift, but a Lived Reality’: Equal Pay, Women’s Work, and the Politics of Labor in State-Socialist Hungary, Late 1960s to Late 1970s.” In Labor in State-Socialist Europe, 1945-1989. Contributions to a History of Work, edited by Marsha Siefert, 337–372. Budapest/New York: Central European University Press, 2020.

Other publications authored by team members

Hoerder, Dirk, and Lukas Neissl, eds. Migrant Actors Worldwide: Capitalist Interests, State Regulations, and Left-Wing Strategies. Leiden: Brill, 2024.

Hoerder, Dirk, and Lukas Neissl. “Introduction.” In Migrant Actors Worldwide: Capitalist Interests, State Regulations, and Left-Wing Strategies, edited by Dirk Hoerder and Lukas Neissl, 1-35. Leiden: Brill, 2024.

Popova, Zhanna. Coerced Labour, Forced Displacement, and the Soviet Gulag, 1880s-1930s. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2024.

Çağatay, Selin. “‘If Women Stop, the World Stops.’ Forging Transnational Solidarities with the International Women’s Strike.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 25, no. 4 (2023): 637–663.

Biçer-Deveci, Elife and Selin Çağatay. “Introduction: Reimagining Gender Equality Struggles Towards a More Inclusive History,” Diyâr: Journal of Ottoman, Turkish and Middle Eastern Studies 4, no. 1 (2023), 5–19.

Adak, Sevgi, and Selin Çağatay. “Revisiting Feminist Historiography on Women’s Activism in Turkey: Beyond the Grand Narrative of Waves.” Women’s History Review, vol. 32, no. 5 (2023), 723–744.

Arik, Hülya, Selin Çağatay, Mia Liinason, and Olga Sasunkevich. “Unsettling the Political: Conceptualizing the Political in Feminist and LGBTI+ Activism across Russia, the Scandinavian Countries, and Turkey.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 25, no. 4 (2023), 687–710.

Çağatay, Selin, Mia Liinason, and Olga Sasunkevich. “Varieties of Exceptionalism: A Conversation.” In Transforming Identities in Contemporary Europe, edited by Mia Liinason and Elisabeth L. Engebretsen, 154–175. London: Routledge, 2023.

Çağatay, Selin, Mia Liinason and Olga Sasunkevich. Feminist and LGBTI+ Activism across Russia, Scandinavia and Turkey: Transnationalizing Spaces of Resistance. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022.

Çağatay, Selin. “Turkey and Eastern Europe: Historicising Geopolitical Convergences in Gender Politics.” In Decolonising (Knowledge on) Euro-Mediteranean Relations: Insights on Shared Histories and Futures, edited by Daniela Huber and Lorenzo Kamel, 43–54. Rome: Edizioni Nuova Cultura, 2022.

Betti, Eloisa, Leda Papastefanaki, Marica Tolomelli, and Susan Zimmermann. “Thinking the History of Women’s Activism into Global Labor History.” In Women, Work, and Activism: Contributions to an Inclusive History of Labor in the Long Twentieth Century, edited by Eloisa Betti, Leda Papastefanaki, Marica Tolomelli, and Susan Zimmermann, 1–31, Budapest/New York: Central European University Press, 2022.

Ghiț, Alexandra. “Romania: Serving Fewer by Design: Austerity Welfare Politics during the Great Depression.” In The Great Depression in Eastern Europe, edited by Klaus Richter, Jasmin Nithammer, and Anca Mândru, 203-230. Budapest: CEU Press, 2025.

Ghiț, Alexandra. “‘About the Author’ and ‘Context’ to ‘Ecaterina Arbore – The Working Woman in the Struggle Towards Emancipation.’” In Texts and Contexts from the History of Feminism and Women’s Rights: East Central Europe, Second Half of the Twentieth Century, edited by Zsófia Lóránd, Adela Hîncu, Jovana Mihajlović Trbovc, and Katarzyna Stańczak-Wiślicz, 23–30. Budapest: CEU Press, 2024.

Gnydiuk, Olga. “’Trade Unions Are Also Working Hard in This Direction’: Gendered Labour Policy and Women’s Work in Ukraine, 1970s – Early 1980s.” In Women and History: Gender Perspectives of Everyday Life during the Late Soviet Period (1970s and 1980s), edited by Heinrich Boell Foundation, 7–17. Kiev/Tbilisi: Heinrich Boell Foundation, 2021.

Helfert, Veronika. Women, Stand Up! A Women’s and Gender History of the Austrian Revolution and Council Movement, 1916-1924 [in German]. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021.

Varsa, Eszter. Protected Children, Regulated Mothers: Gender and the “Gypsy Question” in State Care in Postwar Hungary, 1949-1956. Budapest/New York: CEU Press, 2021.

Zimmermann, Susan. Women’s Politics and Men’s Trade Unionism: International Gender Politics, Female IFTU Trade Unionists and the Workers’ and Women’s Movements of the Interwar Period [in German]. Vienna: Löcker Verlag, 2021 (open access edition, with minor corrections [2023]).

Helfert, Veronika. “Between Pacifism and Militancy: Socialist Women in the First Austrian Republic, 1918-1934.” Diplomacy & Statecraft 31, no. 4 (2020): 648-672.

Varsa, Eszter, and Dorottya Szikra. “‘New Eugenics,’ Gender and Sexuality: A Global Perspective on Reproductive Politics and Sex Education in Cold War Europe.” The History of the Family 25, no. 4 (2020): 527–549.

Helfert, Veronika. “Schwestern im ‘Bund der Brüder’? Zum Verschwinden (und Wiederfinden) der Frauen in der österreichischen Rätebewegung.” In Die Rätebewegung in Österreich. Von sozialer Notwehr zur konkreten Utopie, edited by Anna Leder, Mario Memoli, and Andreas Pavlic, 105–124. Wien: Mandelbaum Verlag, 2019.

Zimmermann, Susan. “Equality of Women’s Economic Status? A Major Bone of Contention in the International Gender Politics Emerging During the Interwar Period.” The International History Review 41, no. 1 (2019): 200–227.

Ghiț, Alexandra. “Professionals’ and Amateurs’ Pasts: A Decolonizing Reading of Post-war Romanian Histories of Gendered Interwar Activism.” European Review of History: Revue européenne d’histoire 25, no. 1 (2018): 21–44.