Table-ronde « histoire ouvrière, histoire d'ouvrières »

Final date of the cycle on women workers presented by the Bibliothèque historique de la Ville de Paris. Romain Castellesi, Fanny Gallot and Amandine Tabutaud, historians, will discuss the figure of women workers in contemporary France.

‘The Worker! ’ So declared the historian Jules Michelet in 1861. Caught between mythologising and repression, the figure of the female worker is ambivalent: although present in every era and in many industrial sectors, women workers are invisible among the invisible.

This lecture sets out to examine the presence of women workers in France in the 20th century, a period of both affirmation and marginalisation for these working women.

In factories, workshops, but also at home and in mobilisations, women have always made up at least 20% of the working class and have helped to revolutionise French society.

Romain Castellesi is a senior lecturer in contemporary history at the Université du Littoral Côte d'Opale (ULCO). His work focuses on the social history of deindustrialisation, and in particular on its working-class dimension. In 2025 he published Savoir commencer une grève.

Résistances ouvrières à la désindustrialisation dans la France contemporaine (Éditions Agone). He is currently interested in oral inquiry in working-class milieus and in the genre of economic crisis.