Stressing a women's agenda. Women of three European sectors define their needs

Abstract

Women are inadequately represented in the decision-making structures of trade unions, in their European representative organisations and hence also in the European Social Dialogue. The article describes a series of innovatory workshops mounted in Brussels in the summer of 1995, bringing together women grassroots activists of the automobile components manufacturing sector, the railways, and industrial cleaning. The participants generated a comparison of the employment of women in different European member states and worked towards a women's collective bargaining and policy agenda for their different sectors. Practical steps towards gender democracy in the union structures were emphasised, for without them a women's agenda was unlikely to be effectively pursued.