Women were invited. But they couldn't vote at the first meeting of the International Labor Organization in 1919.

So they held their own summit.

The International Federation of Working Women meeting helped set the stage for policy changes throughout the century, said Rutgers University Professor Dorothy Sue Cobble as the speaker at the ILR School's annual Alice Hanson Cook Distinguished Lecture Sept. 30.

The 200 women at the first international gathering of trade union feminists were bold thinkers who came from 19 countries. "They sought not to end capitalism, but to challenge and transform it" through labor reform, Cobble said. "They hoped ... to influence new global institutions."

The mix of working-class and elite women sought to end such unfair workplace practices as pay inequities by working as a group and through unions, Cobble told more than 70 people at Ives Hall.

Cobble said the federation lasted five years after the historic meeting in Washington, D.C. When the formal organization faded, informal networks among federation activists continued for decades and helped sustain the influence of women in the labor movement and political life, she said.

Another reformer, Alice Hanson Cook, shared the disregard for norms embraced by federation members, she said. Cook's research, teaching and activism on behalf of women workers continued the legacy of the federation, said Cobble, a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation.

One of the first women to teach at the ILR School, Cook died in 1998. Her work is commemorated through the Cook lecture and through a professorship in her name. Rosemary Batt is ILR's Alice Cook Professor of Women and Work.

Cook did some of her most important work in her 70s and 80s as she traveled around the world to continue her scholarship and share her knowledge of women's work issues, said Cobble, who began her lecture by recounting a moment from Cook's career.

Cobble had invited Cook to talk to 150 women unionists at a conference in 1991 in New Jersey. It was a blisteringly hot day. The unionists were restless and tired after a week of workshops. As the group waited in an uncomfortably warm auditorium for the next speaker, Cobble wasn't sure how well the next speaker would be received.

Yet Cook, an older woman, barely taller than the podium, took the stage and quickly commandeered their attention. She seized the moment, as she had throughout her career, to rally women in pursuit of better work lives.

Cobble shared the vignette then paused to say, "Thank you, Alice, for your life and your work. We miss you."

Mary Catt is the ILR School's staff writer.