[...] The largest, most progressive union, the United Garment Workers, organized in 1891, tried to root out what it saw as the "menace of the outworkers" and make them "a coherent part of its growth," but to no avail. Union organizers focused on getting young women to fill vacancies on the factory floor. But these approaches did not contend with or even recognize how often women worked on contract through piecework, because factory work was still considered morally suspect for a young, unmarried woman and, practically speaking, took her away from her other full-time job of cooking cleaning, and caring for children and elders at home.

[...] union strategies did not prioritize or recognize the specific burdens or costs women faced leaving contract labor or home-based piecework behind. Unions quickly abandoned their focus on recruiting young women to the factory floor. And none imagined that advocating for gender equality in the home to reduce women's household workoad might be a necessary strategy for unionizing women in the workforce. Instead, they shifted their attention to blocking the uptake of newer technologies that sped up the work pace. [...]