Working on white womanhood: White working women in the San Francisco anti-Chinese movement, 1877-1890

Through a gendered analysis of the San Francisco anti-Chinese movement, thi s paper raises new questions about the historical and social construction o f class identity. The analysis suggests that the historical process of poli tical identity formation functions both as a process of exclusion and as a process of moving strategically among social categories in an effort to bui ld political coalitions. Tnt: payer turns first to the ways that the white male labor movement conceptualized working women as victims of both sexual perversion and economic competition as a result of the presence of Chinese male immigrant laborers. Second, it looks at the divergent constructions of white working women by male and female employers, and argues for the salie nce of class, race and gender to employers' assessments of the value of whi te working women. Finally, the article explores how white working women nav igated complex political coalitions by organizing on their own behalf to ch allenge their depiction in the rhetorics of the male labor movement and of middle-class women. The payer concludes by arguing that racially coded clas s and gender identities emerged as powerful sites of political coalition as a result of the presence of the Chinese male "other."