Women Trade Unionists Research Articles

Trade union women investigate working women's rights

Drawn together by a desire to learn more about their common oppression, trade union women from five regions have drawn-up and endorsed a Charter for Working Women's Rights at a historic meeting, reports SARANEL BENJAMIN

Trade Union Women Investigate Working Women's Rights

Trade Union Women Investigate Working Women's Rights

Equality for women in trade unions: the continuing challenge. A review of the work of the Women's Committee of the ICFTU

Equality for women in trade unions: the continuing challenge. A review of the work of the Women's Committee of the ICFTU

Reviews

Reviews of Business and New Zealand Society, Women in Trade Unions: Organizing the Unorganized, Labour Law and Industrial Relations in Asia, International and Comparative Industrial Relations: A Study of Industrialised Market Economies, The Challenge of Human Resource Management Directions and Debates in New Zealand, Visions of the Future of Social Justice: Essays on the Occasion of the ILO's 75th Aniversary, Coal, Class and Community: The United Mineworkers of New Zealand, 1880-1960, Higher Productivity and a Better Place to Work - Practical Ideas (or Owners and Managers of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises, OECD Societies in Transition." The Future of Wo.rk and Leisure.

Selected by the Institute of Industrial Relations Library University of California at Berkeley

The CZO, 1935–1955. By Robert H. Zieger. Cold War in the Working Class: The Rise and Decline of the United Electrical Workers. By Ronald L. Filippelli and Mark D. McColloch. Common Sense and a Little Fire: Women and Working‐class Politics in the United States, 1900–1965. By Annelise OrleckDark Sweat, White Gold: California Farm Workers, Cotton, and the New Deal. By Devra Weber Employment Contracts: New Zealand Experiences. Edited by Raymond Harbridge.Goodyear Invades the Backcountry: The Corporate Takeover of a Rural Town. By Bryan D. Palmer Militancy, Market Dynamics, and Workplace Authority: The Struggle over Labor Process Outcomes in the US. Automobile Industry, 1946 to 1973. By James R. Zetka, Jr. A Mouthful of Rivets: Women at Work in World War II. By Nancy Baker Wise and Christy Wise Multinationals and Employment: The Global Economy of the 1990s. Edited by Paul Bailey, Aurelio Parisotto and Geoffrey Renshaw. On Different Planes: An Organizational Analysis of Cooperation and Conflict Among Airline Unions. By David J. Walsh. The Struggle for the Breeches: Gender and the Making of the British Working Class. By Anna Clark Trade Unionists Against Terror: Guatemala City, 1954–1985. By Deborah Levenson‐Estrada. Training for Employment in Western Europe and the United States. By J. R. Shackleton. Women in Trade Unions: Organizing the Unorganized. Edited by Margaret Hosmer Martens and Swasti Mitter. The Work of Strangers: A Survey of International Labour Migration. By Peter Stalker. Workplace Industrial Relations and the Global Challenge. Edited by Jacques Belanger, P. K. Edwards, and Larry Haiven.

Women in trade unions: organizing the unorganized

This work offers a varied collection of case studies, from both developing and developed countries, on organizing women workers at national and local level in areas that are difficult to organize - small-scale enterprises, the rural and urban informal sectors, home work, domestic service and export processing zones. This book is a source of material, lessons and ideas for all those involved in, or planning to embark on, such initiatives.

The British and American women's trade union leagues, 1890-1925

The British and American women's trade union leagues, 1890-1925

Female Union Delegates: The Class Struggle and Sexual Equality

Compulsory unionism in New Zealand in the past meant that women had to sign up and join their local trade union branch - but there was no compulsion to become actively involved. Yet many women did permit themselves to be nominated and became union delegates. They persisted too, even though much of the literature tells us that male unionists were either indifferent or hostile to female involvement in the trade union movement. In the strictly male hierarchical trade union movement, women had little chance, until very recently, of gaining representation at influential levels. Despite this, many women stuck with their principles and represented their co-workers. Why did they do it? Was it because the class war was more important to them than the sex war? Did they try to fight both oppressions simultaneously? Did they believe overcoming one- the battle against the employers- would help alleviate male oppression generally? Or did they not find the attitudes of some male unionists a problem at all? Five older trade union women were interviewed on audio tape for this research topic and were asked to discuss their experiences with male trade unionists and, specifically to talk about their attitudes towards feminism and the feminist movement. The international work published by Alice Cook on the experiences of women as both members and office-holders in trade unions forms the empirical base of the paper.

The impact of the cold war on women's trade union activism: the UE experience

(1993). The impact of the cold war on women's trade union activism: the UE experience. Labor History: Vol. 34, No. 2-3, pp. 309-323.

Battling against the odds: the emergence of senior women trade unionists

In Britain, in July 1990, there were five women general secretaries, all of these had come into post since 1985. This article explores the negotiating context and styles of these leaders from a gender management perspective, paying particular attention to the danger of convergence contained in situations where male trade union leaders greatly outnumber their female counterparts.

The making of women trade union leaders

A trade union's constitution is intended to produce its leaders in a democratic and even‐handed manner, but the reality for women is one of inequality. They remain almost invisible in senior positions in British unions. The social processes by which women do or do not progress in a union's career structure are investigated through a case study of SOGAT ‘82.

Contemporary Indian Feminism

The Women's Liberation movement in India today is so diverse that it cannot be properly described in a brief article, so the focus here shall be on its main currents and the course they have taken over the last ten years, with occasional digressions into their history. In many ways the development of feminism in India is similar to that in Western Europe or the United States: like them, India too saw a feminist movement in the early twentieth century; like them, again, the movement gradually died away after the winning of certain demands, until, recently, a new feminist movement developed out of contemporary radical movements. The sixties and early seventies saw the development of a whole spate of radical movements in India, from student uprisings, workers' agitations and peasant insurgencies to tribal, anticaste and consumer action movements. These spanned a political spectrum from Gandhiansocialist (that is, nonviolent protest, based on explicitly moral values, over specific working or living conditions) to the far left, in particular, the Maoists. The Gandhian-socialists initiated several of the first women's movements in post-Independence India (e.g. an antialcohol agitation in north India, a consumer action and anticorruption agitation in western India, and a women's trade union, also in western India). Interestingly, however, neither they, nor others, looked upon these movements as feminist, nor did they advance any theories of women's oppression. These were advanced first by two women's groups which were formed in 1975, both of which grew out of the Maoist far left. The Progressive Organization of Women in Hyderabad offered an Engelian analysis of women's subordination, and the League of Women Soldiers for Equality, in Aurangabad linked feminism and anticasteism, saying that religious texts were used to subordinate both women and the lower castes. Although the imposition of a State of Emergency on India in 1975 led to a break in most agitational activities, there was, in many ways, an intensification of theoretical discussion. In 1977, when the Emergency

‘A cracking job for a woman’– a profile of women trade union officers

This article focuses on the women who constitute less than 10% of the total number of full‐time trade union officers–it examines the distribution of women FTOs across the trade union movement, their experiences of working in a male‐dominated occupation and the ways in which they adapt to the pressures and demands of their situation.

Review: The World of Women's Trade Unionism: Comparative Historical Essays, by Norbert C. Soldon

Review: <i>The World of Women's Trade Unionism: Comparative Historical Essays</i>, by Norbert C. Soldon

The World of Women's Trade Unionism: Comparative Historical Essays

This book is a timely contribution to the study of the impact of trade unionism on women in the work force and how women have exercised power within trade unions. This collection of essays contains brief yet comprehensive histories of women's trade union movements in many of the principal industrial nations of the world--Britain, France, Germany, Sweden, Japan, Argentina, Italy, and the United States. The authors survey the impact of the cult of true womanhood on the growth of trade unionism. Each author analyzes the relationship between early women's trade unions and guilds, identifies the important leaders, and explains how ideologies affected the expansion of trade unions. Among other subjects treated are the movement's relationship to the feminist movement, the effects of economic depression and rationalization of industry, women's attitudes toward protective legislation and political action, and the effect of the women's liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Finally, the authors assess the advances made as the result of equal-pay legislation and progress in the areas of training, promotion, safety, child-care, maternity leave, and reentry into the work force.

“The wage-earning woman and the state”: The national women's trade union league and protective labor legislation, 1903–1923

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsDiane KirkbyAn earlier and very different version of this paper was presented to the 9th Biennial Conference of the Australian and New Zealand American Studies Association, 1980, and subsequently appeared in the published papers of the conference. I wish to thank Herb Gutman and Joan Hoff Wilson for comments made at that conference, and Laura Bennett, Peter Shergold and Christopher Tomlins for comments made on drafts of this ms.

Book Review: Economic and Social Security and Substandard Working Conditions: Comparative Industrial Relations: The World of Women's Trade Unionism: Comparative Historical Essays

Book Review: Economic and Social Security and Substandard Working Conditions: Comparative Industrial Relations: The World of Women's Trade Unionism: Comparative Historical Essays

Revolutionaries, Superwomen or Ordinary Members: The Participation of Women in Trade Unions

Women constitute over 50 per cent of NALGO membership but are still under‐represented at all levels within the union. Previous explanations of trade union activism have ignored gender differences in union participation. They have not taken the impact of the sexual division of labour within the home and workplace into account. Many unions have failed to recognise the effect this has had on the ability of women to participate fully in the union's organisation. If women are to participate fully their domestic commitments must be taken into account. The union's expectations of its lay officers need to be examined.

The World of Women's Trade Unionism

The World of Women's Trade Unionism

What's so Special about Women's Employment? A Review of some Recent Studies of Women's Paid Work

It is now about ten years since the publication of some of the first classical texts of contemporary feminism and an immense amount of new feminist work has been accomplished in a whole number of spheres. In this article I want to look at some of the recently published studies of women's employment, and within the limited scope of what is primarily a review article, to make some assessment of how far we have progressed in developing a feminist theoretical understanding of women's place in the world of paid work. Writings on women's employment have taken a variety of forms over this period. Some experiential accounts of paid work have been published, although, given the experiential emphasis of much feminist thinking, especially in the early years of the women's liberation movement, these have been rather few in number. Statistical analyses of women's employment, many of them underaken under the auspices of the Equal Opportunities Commission and the Oepartment of Employment, have become more widely available. Although these are by no means adequate, as a number of critics concerned with women's employment have pointed out, they are indispensable for understanding the overall patterns of women's employment: changes in women's participation rate in the world of paid work; the distribution of women across industries and occupations; and evidence about rates of pay, hours of work and so on. The bulk of 'mainstream' feminist writings on women's employment falls into three categories: political and educational books and pamphlets, theoretical writings and empirical case studies. Of the wide variety of broadly 'educational' material available, much of it is devised for women trade unionists: material on employment legislation, on women's place in the workforce and on women in trade unions. The more academic writings about women's paid work have veered between theoretical analyses and empirical case studies. In the early years of feminist analysis many femirlists (myself included) engaged in largely theoretical work. We felt that it was necessary to clarit what concepts and theories were appropriate for a feminist understanding. We tried to use and transform the concepts which Marxists and radical economists were developing to analyse work in general, for example, the labour process, concepts of value, deskilling, the industrial reserve army of labour and the dual labour market. We also developed our own specifically feminist concepts, for example, patriarchy, production and reproduction, domestic labour and wage labour. It is still concepts derived fiom Marx and IFom radical economic analysis which form the basis of theoretical analyses of women's employment, although some writers have