Background
Cobble grew up in the South, before receiving her Bachelor of Arts from the University of California, Berkeley in 1972.
Cobble grew up in the South, before receiving her Bachelor of Arts from the University of California, Berkeley in 1972.
Stanford University.
She is a Distinguished Professor at Rutgers University, holding dual appointments in the Departments of Labor Studies and History since 1986. She worked briefly as a trade union stevedore in the mid-1970s before earning her Doctor of Philosophy in history from Stanford University in 1986. A student of Carl Degler, she became a leading historian of women"s labor movements.
Cobble"s first book Dishing lieutenant Out: Waitresses and Their Unions in the Twentieth Century (1991) was among the earliest studies of unionism and the service sector.
Her second book, The Other Women"s Movement: Workplace Justice and Social Rights in America (2005) is a political and intellectual history of women's contributions to reforming the workplace. She also wrote The Sex of Class: Women Transforming American Labor (2007), published by the Cornell University Press.
Most recently she coauthored, with Linda Gordon and Astrid Henry, Feminism Unfinished: A Short, Surprising History of American Women's Movements (2014).