How Far Have We Come? Women's Organization in the Unions in the United Kingdom

Abstract

Maybe other people's experience always sounds more impressive than our own. Or maybe in the process of writing down any events there is a tendency to work in a coherence that wasn't always present in the Eagmented incidents themselves something I am very aware of as I write this. Next to the experience of Italy and France our experience in this country of women's organization within trade unions sounds low key, unfocused and undramatic. At the same time, there are deep resonances for anyone who has been active as a feminist in the British trade union movement. For example we all seem to be exploring the same dual strategy of separate women's organization giving ourselves the space and time to collectively explore and define our own particular needs while at the same time trying to develop confidence and strategies for raising iese needs as legitimate trade union concerns through the 'mainstream' trade union structures. Another key point of shared experience seems to be the growing recognition that 'equality of opportunity' with men is not an adequate demand, whether we are taLking about women's job opportunities or our role within the unions. 'Equality' demands can mean that we simply accept male definitions of work and union activity and of the relation (or non-relation) between home and work, instead of developing demands based on the different experiences of women that, as the Italian women put it, 'change the rules of the game for men and women'. In a 1978 Red Reg article that was profoundly influential for many socialist feminists, Bea Campbell and Val Charlton said: 'Implicit in all our strivings of the last years has been an adaption to theworld of work rather than the adaption of that world to one that allows time for children, leisure, politics. . .' Over the 1980s this approach has been clearly visible in the kinds of bargaining demands prioritized by many women union activists demands for paid family leave, a shorter working day, job sharing for men and women. Building on aspects of 'difference' as opposed to 'equality' has also become more and more central to many women's approaches to union orEariization, as we increasingly re)ect the impersonality of procedures, the hierarchical power of union committee structures, the crowding out of personal life and fFiendship commitments. What has emerged as the most common and unifying experience among women in British trade unions, whether they would label themselves as feminists or not, is the profound alienation fFom traditional (male) forms of union organization. These two comments fFom a discussion among National Union of Public Employees (NUPE) women make the point very clearly: