The Making of Women Trade Unionists

Citation

Kirton, G. (2007), "The Making of Women Trade Unionists", Human Resource Management International Digest, Vol. 15 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/hrmid.2007.04415fae.003

The Making of Women Trade Unionists

The Making of Women Trade Unionists

Gill Kirton, Ashgate, 2006

Women are under-represented in every facet of the trade-union movement. This book presents theoretical background to this “democracy deficit” and considers how the family, work and union shape women’s trade-union participation. The relationship between women and trade unions and the history of their association are both charted. However, there is a more manageable and sustained focus on women’s union involvement in light of women-only trade-union courses.

The book sets out to establish the nature and results of such courses. It uses union archives, surveys, observations and so on, but the originality of the book lies in the interviews of women taking women-only courses run by the Manufacturing, Science and Finance (MSF) union and the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU). These two UK unions are large and male-dominated. The MSF introduced the “Women’s Week” – the cornerstone of its women-only education – only in 1982 as a result of the female director of education and a women’s committee pushing for it. The TGWU has provided women-only courses at a regional level since 1979, although the National Women’s Members’ School only began in 1997.

The author finds that women-only courses are only one means that promote women’s union participation, that not all women doing women-only courses remain active union participants, and that a proportion find that their careers are “stunted”.

Most of the women reported some difficulties in getting to the in-house residential courses, but some women facing the largest barriers still made it to the courses. Moreover, some single women, without children, who had attended women-only courses ceased to “kick on” in their union activism.

Nevertheless, the women interviewed all reported that the courses shaped and strengthened their gender identities and, consequently, their trade-union identities. The consensus was that raised gender consciousness had flow-on effects on trade-union consciousness, even if it does not result in active union participation.

Kirton argues that women-only courses differ from mixed-sex courses because the “modes of expression in the women-only setting are different” and empowering for all the women, from varied backgrounds, attending them.

The trade-union movement was traditionally blue-collar, male and strong. However, British unions suffered a long period of decline in membership from 1979 to 1997. During that period its constituency changed. Work and workers feminized. The survival of the trade-union movement into this century requires that it recruit and service the new labor-market workers, increase participation and increase democracy. The issue of women-only courses, then, is part of a huge sociological dilemma for unions and other organizations. How does an organizational or institutionalized culture change? How does the trade-union movement remake itself and become more democratic? What place does women’s separatism play in encouraging membership participation? Does separatism continue to be central to increased women’s participation? What role does education have for sustained improvements in women’s participation?

The author states that women-only courses are not the whole explanation for women’s increased participation in unions and their increasing rate of representation. Yet she does not establish the extent of the role of the women-only courses. The voice of those uncomfortable with women-only courses is not raised.

Women’s lives and the historical context are summarized expertly. However, the broad-brush theoretical, social and historical overview and the detailed empirical interviews never quite mesh.

Reviewed by Melanie Nolan, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand

A longer version of this review was originally published in Women in Management Review, Vol. 22 No. 3, 2007