| his dissertation repositions the story of American industrial declension as one plot point in the broader gendered arc of late industrial capital, the rise of the global economy, and the ascendancy of Neoliberal policy. At its center is Kyriazi v. Western Electric: an important sex discrimination, class-action case. The events leading up to the case, its prosecution, and its eventual outcome illuminate the intersection between two major post-war historical phenomena: the emergence of women’s efforts to dismantle barriers of sex discrimination in the American workplace and deindustrialization. Initiated in 1973 by Kyriaki “Cleo” Kyriazi, an industrial engineer at Western Electric’s South Kearny, NJ, plant, more than four-thousand women eventually joined the Kyriazi, class-action case. After seven years of bitter litigation in federal district court, Western Electric agreed to a settlement in 1980. Terms included an... |
