This study focuses on working-class women, catering and cleaning workers, and the way their interests were presented in trade unions. It argues that there is an institutional bias within trade unions which precludes the full representation of women's interests. Based on empirical research into two trade unions in the National Health Service, the book stresses the importance of how women's work is structured, in order to investigate the role of trade unions in challenging or reproducing inequalities.
The pressures of globalization and diversity are increasingly requiring organizations to rethink their priorities and methods. In this collection, leading researchers examine the debates and developments on gender, diversity and democracy in trade unions in eleven countries. Offering an authoritative basis for comparative analysis, this book is essential reading for researchers, teachers, trade unionists and students of industrial relations and equal opportunities, along with all those concerned with ensuring that modern organizations reflect and represent the needs and concerns of a diverse workforce.
First published in 1999, this volume aims to examine the extent to which such a partnership has been developed between women workers and trade unions, with a comparative emphasis. Jennifer Curtin analyses how women trade unionists have sought to make trade union structures and policy agendas more inclusive of the interests of women workers in four countries: Australia, Austria, Israel and Sweden.
This book, first published in 1941, is concerned to relate the argument for Trade Unionism to the needs of women who work, whether in their homes or outside them. It is, in part, a historical analysis of the inter-war years, and it also prefigures the changes to women’s working conditions brought about by the two World Wars. War necessitated the mass employment of women, and Trade Union action had greatly improved the position of the woman war-worker of 1941 compared to a quarter century previously. This invaluable book examines that Trade Union action.
In what will be essential reading for all industrial relations scholars, Gill Kirton considers the social construction of women's trade union participation in the context of male dominated trade unions. Exploring the making and progress of women's trade union careers, this book locates the issues within the context of their experiences of three interlocking social institutions - the union, work and family. The book examines how and why women embark on trade union careers, the social processes which shape women's gender and union identities and the combined influences of union/work/family contexts on the trajectory of women's union careers. Additionally, the book offers a historical overview of the development of women's trade union education and separate organizing, with original analysis and historical data.
As paid work becomes increasingly central in women’s lives, the history of their labor struggles assumes more and more importance. This volume represents the best of the new feminist scholarship in twentieth-century U.S. women’s labor history. Fourteen original essays illuminate the complex relationship between gender, consciousness and working-class activism, and deepen historical understanding of the contradictory legacy of trade unionism for women workers. The contributors take up a wide range of specific subjects, and write from diverse theoretical perspectives. Some of the essays are case studies of women’s participation in individual unions, organizing efforts, or strikes; others examine broader themes in women’s labor history, focusing on a specific time period; and still others explore the situation of particular categories of women workers over a longer time span. This collection extends the scope of current research and interpretation in women’s labor history, both conceptually and in terms of periodization – emphasis is placed on the post-World War I period where the literature is sparse. This book will be valuable for scholars, students and general readers alike.
