Gender and Leadership in Unions [1 ed.] 9781136154584, 9780415887045

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European Works Councils A Transnational Industrial Relations Institution in the Making Jeremy Waddington The Politics of Industrial Relations Labor Unions in Spain Kerstin Hamann Social Failures of EU Enlargement A Case of Workers Voting with Their Feet Guglielmo Meardi

Gender and Leadership in Unions

Edited by Rick Delbridge and Edmund Heery Cardiff Business School, UK

Gill Kirton and Geraldine Healy

ROUTLEDGE RESEARCH IN EMPLOYMENT RELATIONS

ROUTLEDGE RESEARCH IN EMPLOYMENT RELATIONS

Trade Unions and Workplace Training Issues and International Perspectives Edited by Richard Cooney and Mark Stuart Marketing Management in Asia Edited by Stan Paliwoda, Tim Andrews and Junsong Chen Men, Wage Work and Family Edited by Paula McDonald and Emma Jeanes Gendering and Diversifying Trade Union Leadership Edited by Sue Ledwith and Lise Lotte Hansen Gender and Leadership in Unions Gill Kirton and Geraldine Healy

Gender and Leadership in Unions Gill Kirton and Geraldine Healy

www.routledge.com

Gender and Leadership in Unions Reflecting the increased attention to gender and women in the field of employment relations, there is now a growing international literature on women and unions. The interest in women as trade or labour unionists arises partly from the fact that women comprise 40 per cent of union membership in the USA and over 50 per cent in the UK. Further, despite considerable overall union membership decline in both the UK and the US, more women than men are joining unions in both countries. Recognition of the importance of women to the survival and revival of union movements has in many cases produced an unprecedented commitment to equality and inclusion at the highest level. Yet the challenge is to ensure that this commitment is translated into action and improves the experience of women in their union and in their workplace. Gender and Leadership in Unions explores and evaluates the similarities and differences in equality strategies pursued by unions in the US and the UK. It assesses the conditions experienced by women union members and how these impact on their leadership, both potential and actual. Women have made gains in both countries within union leadership and decision-making structures; however, climbing the ladder to leadership positions remains far from a smooth process. In the union context, women face multiple barriers that resonate with the barriers facing aspiring women leaders in other organizational contexts, including the gendered division of domestic work; the organization and nature of women’s work; the organization and nature of union work and the masculine culture of unions. The discussion of women union leaders is situated more broadly within debates on governance, leadership and democracy within social justice activism. Gill Kirton is Professor of Employment Relations and HRM in the School of Business and Management, Queen Mary University of London. She is a widely published researcher in the field of employment relations/organizational equality and diversity. One strand of her research has explored unions’ gender and race equality strategies in the context of union decline and the revitalization project. She has published numerous refereed journal articles and book chapters and five books. She sits on the editorial boards of two major journals in her field: Gender, Work and Organization and Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. She convenes the Gender and Industrial Relations Study Group of the International Labour and Employment Relations Association—the group works to increase the visibility of women in industrial relations research. Geraldine Healy is Professor of Employment Relations and Director of the Centre for Research in Equality and Diversity at Queen Mary University of London. Her research interests lie in the interconnecting fields of employment relations, inequalities and career. She has published on gender and ethnicity and unions, discrimination and disadvantage, and individualism and collectivism and intersectionality. She is on the editorial board of four journals: Work, Employment and Society, Industrial Relations Journal, British Journal of Management and Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. She has published the following books: The Future of Worker Representation (Palgrave 2004); Ethnicity and Gender at Work (Palgrave 2008); Equalities, Inequalities and Diversity ( Palgrave 2010); and Diversity, Ethnicity, Migration and Work (Palgrave 2011).

Routledge Research in Employment Relations Series editors: Rick Delbridge and Edmund Heery Cardiff Business School, UK Aspects of the employment relationship are central to numerous courses at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. Drawing from insights from industrial relations, human resource management and industrial sociology, this series provides an alternative source of researchbased materials and texts reviewing key developments in employment research. Books published in this series are works of high academic merit, drawn from a wide range of academic studies in the social sciences. For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com

5 Human Resource Management in Developing Countries Pawan S. Budhwar and Yaw A. Debrah

10 Partnership at Work The Quest for Radical Organizational Change William K. Roche and John F. Geary

6 Gender, Diversity and Trade Unions International Perspectives Edited by Fiona Colgan and Sue Ledwith

11 European Works Councils Pessimism of the Intellect, Optimism of the Will? Edited by Ian Fitzgerald and John Stirling

7 Inside the Factory of the Future Work, Power and Authority in Microelectronics Alan Macinlay and Phil Taylor

12 Employment Relations in Non-Union Firms Tony Dundon and Derek Rollinson

8 New Unions, New Workplaces A Study of Union Resilience in the Restructured Workplace Andy Danford, Mike Richardson and Martin Upchurch 9 Partnership and Modernisation in Employment Relations Edited by Mark Stuart and Miguel Martinez Lucio

13 Management, Labour Process and Software Development Reality Bytes Edited by Rowena Barrett 14 A Comparison of the Trade Union Merger Process in Britain and Germany Joining Forces? Jeremy Waddington, Marcus Kahmann and Jürgen Hoffmann

15 French Industrial Relations in the New World Economy Nick Parsons 16 Union Recognition Organising and Bargaining Outcomes Edited by Gregor Gall 17 Towards a European Labour Identity The Case of the European Work Council Edited by Michael Whittall, Herman Knudsen and Fred Huijgen 18 Power at Work How Employees Reproduce the Corporate Machine Darren McCabe 19 Management in the Airline Industry Geraint Harvey 20 Trade Unions in a Neoliberal World British Trade Unions under New Labour Gary Daniels and John McIlroy 21 Diversity Management in the UK Organizational and Stakeholder Experiences Anne-Marie Greene and Gill Kirton 22 Ethical Socialism and the Trade Unions Allan Flanders and British Industrial Relation Reform John Kelly

23 European Works Councils A Transnational Industrial Relations Institution in the Making Jeremy Waddington 24 The Politics of Industrial Relations Labor Unions in Spain Kerstin Hamann 25 Social Failures of EU Enlargement A Case of Workers Voting with Their Feet Guglielmo Meardi 26 Trade Unions and Workplace Training Issues and International Perspectives Edited by Richard Cooney and Mark Stuart 27 Marketing Management in Asia Edited by Stan Paliwoda, Tim Andrews and Junsong Chen 28 Men, Wage Work and Family Edited by Paula McDonald and Emma Jeanes 29 Gendering and Diversifying Trade Union Leadership Edited by Sue Ledwith and Lise Lotte Hansen 30 Gender and Leadership in Unions Gill Kirton and Geraldine Healy

Gender and Leadership in Unions Gill Kirton and Geraldine Healy

First published 2013 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2013 Taylor & Francis The right of Gill Kirton and Geraldine Healy to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him/her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kirton, Gill. Gender and leadership in trade unions / by Gill Kirton and Geraldine Healy. p. cm. — (Routledge research in employment relations ; 30) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Women labor union members—Great Britain. 2. Women labor union members—United States. 3. Women labor leaders—Great Britain. 4. Women labor leaders—United States. 5. Labor unions— Great Britain. 6. Labor unions—United States. I. Healy, Geraldine (Geraldine Mary) II. Title. HD6079.2.G7K57 2012 331.88068'4—dc23 2012022553 ISBN: 978-0-415-88704-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-07840-2 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

List of Figures List of Tables Acknowledgements 1 Introduction

ix xi xiii 1

GERALDINE HEALY AND GILL KIRTON

2 Gender, Work and Unionism in Comparative Context

14

GILL KIRTON, GERALDINE HEALY, SALLY ALVAREZ AND RISA LIEBERWITZ

3 Gender, Union Democracy and Leadership

47

GILL KIRTON AND GERALDINE HEALY

4 Women Union Leaders: Influences, Routes, Barriers and Enablements

73

GERALDINE HEALY AND RISA LIEBERWITZ

5 Power, Empowerment and Women’s Leadership Discourses

110

GILL KIRTON AND RISA LIEBERWITZ

6 Tales from the Top—Senior Women Union Leaders

141

SALLY ALVAREZ, RISA LIEBERWITZ AND GILL KIRTON

7 Women Working towards Union Transformation

169

GERALDINE HEALY AND MARY GATTA

8 A Woman’s Place—Women’s Separate Organizing in Unions HEATHER McKAY AND GILL KIRTON

203

viii

Contents

9 Developing Women Leaders in a Globalized Context

229

GILL KIRTON AND MARY GATTA

10 Conclusions—Challenges from Inside and Outside the Union

251

GERALDINE HEALY AND GILL KIRTON

Abbreviations List of Contributors References Index

267 269 271 283

Figures

3.1 3.2 3.3 6.1

UK union leadership positions US union leadership positions Women’s union leadership development Dimensions of leadership

62 63 66 163

Tables

1.1 Selected interviewee characteristics 2.1 Global Gender Gap Index rankings 2006–2009: Top ten countries plus the UK and USA 2.2 Trade union density in the UK (2009) and the USA (2010) by gender, age and ethnicity 2.3 Proportion of UK unions with up-to-date policies or guidelines on specific equality issues (2009) 2.4 Women’s representation in the UK’s ten largest unions 2.5 Women’s representation in selected major US unions 3.1 Classification of union gender-equality strategies 3.2 Women’s and equality structures in the ten largest UK unions 4.1 UK union leadership positions 4.2 US union leadership positions 4.3 Initial reasons for union-joining 4.4 Length of union activism 4.5 Work-life balance impacts 4.6 Barriers to leadership 5.1 Forms of gendered power resources 7.1 Equality issues: Current guidance and negotiated success 7.2 Do women make a difference?

9 15 32 35 39 41 54 55 74 74 75 77 78 84 111 175 176

Acknowledgements

First, as editors and main authors we would like to thank our US academic collaborators: Sally Alvarez (Cornell University); Mary Gatta (Rutgers University and Wider Opportunities for Women); Risa Lieberwitz (Cornell University); Heather McKay (Rutgers University). We are immensely grateful for their involvement; we learnt so much from them, and it has been an enormous personal pleasure working with them over the past few years since our comparative project began as an idea. We also warmly recognize Francine Moccio’s (formerly Cornell University) role as an enabler in getting the project off the ground in New York. We would like to extend our gratitude to all the women union leaders in both the UK and the USA who took part in this study. We should also give a special mention to the ten US and ten UK women who crossed the Atlantic to take part in our two union exchanges, one in New Jersey and one in London. Many of these women have gone on to make personal and union links with each other and are building networks beyond the life of the project. A special word of thanks is due to Megan Dobney of Southern and Eastern Region TUC (SERTUC) and to Laurel Brennan of New Jersey State AFL-CIO. Megan and Laurel supported the project from the outset. and their help along the way was invaluable. Special thanks are also due to Jenny Murphy of Queen Mary University of London for administrative and other support way beyond the call of duty and also to Legna Cabrera (Cornell University), Donna Schulman (Rutgers University), Cathrine Seierstad and Tessa Wright (Queen Mary University of London) who all helped with various aspects of the literature review and/ or fieldwork. We would also like to acknowledge the research assistance of Nicole Avdelidou-Fischer, particularly for her expertise in building the NVivo project. We would also like to acknowledge the contribution of an extended network of academic colleagues again in the UK and the US who participated in the various workshops and events associated with the project in London, New Jersey and New York—there are too many to mention here, but we hope it is enough to say that we valued the contributions of each and every one of them.

xiv

Acknowledgements

Finally, we would not have been able to carry out the research without a grant from the Leverhulme Trust (International Networks programme) for which we are extremely grateful. Gill Kirton and Geraldine Healy

1

Introduction Geraldine Healy and Gill Kirton

In some ways we [US and UK women trade union leaders and activists] are similar; how we started off in the workplace, different problems we encountered. So in many ways we are similar and they have been through the same things. (Post-exchange focus group, UK) My experience was a very deep desire to keep connections with women in the UK . . . our intention in our local is to bring some of that sisterhood here and . . . expose other women in our local to that expansive view of the world because it was noted in the conference we attended today that we have got to stop thinking about the labour movement being an American movement. If we do not begin to understand that we are representing workers all over the globe, then we are losing the battle. (Post-exchange focus group, USA) When I took the trip [to London], I was very naive, I had no idea, about women and all that and every day since London has been a learning experience and you see it now in a different aspect. (Post-exchange focus group, USA) The above quotations reflect some of the thoughts of British and US participants in a women and union leadership development exchange programme that we organized as part of the research project on which this book is based. The quotations illustrate the personal, the political and the global thoughts that the exchange generated. This book is about that exchange, but it is about much more. It aims to provide a comparative in-depth study of women’s union leadership in the UK and the USA. We wanted to provide insights into the barriers standing in the way of women’s progression into union leadership, but we also wanted to identify strategies and practices that women had found enabling. Ultimately, we wanted to stimulate a debate among American and British women union activists, leaders and scholars that could generate creative and innovative collective and individual ideas and practices that might over time enable more women to access leadership. It is important to note that we do not see increasing women’s participation

2

Geraldine Healy and Gill Kirton

in union leadership as an end in itself, but rather as a vehicle for increasing unions’ capacity to improve women’s working lives globally. WHY UNDERTAKE A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF WOMEN AND UNIONS? This section aims to explain why studies of women and gender are critical to industrial relations research, and also show how such studies connect to mainstream, traditional industrial relations debates. As a field of scholarship, industrial relations has taken its shape from studies of men and is still often associated with male-dominated industries and occupations, bluecollar unions and male leaders in industry, government and unions. In the early 1990s, it was characterized as a ‘malestream’ and accused of being if not oblivious to the presence of women, then unaware that their presence in workplaces or unions makes much difference (Forrest 1993). This criticism is certainly not unfounded with various authors’ reading of the mainstream industrial relations literature pointing to the invisibility of women (Wajcman 2000; Colgan and Ledwith 2000; Healy et al. 2006; Holgate et al. 2006; Forrest 1993; Greene 2003; Danieli 2006; Hansen 2002; Rubery and Fagan 1995). This is in part explained by the fact that class, class struggle and unequal power relations between employers and workers have been (and arguably still are) at the centre of industrial relations enquiry and analysis. Class and class relations continue to shape, if not determine, life conditions and life chances in all industrialized countries (including access to education and employment opportunities). To this extent class analysis undoubtedly remains highly apposite to understanding employment patterns and employment relations. However, it was sociological studies that were important in bringing together the intersection of gender, class and home, for example, Pollert (1981) and Westwood (1984). Nevertheless, women remained invisible in mainstream industrial relations class-based accounts, as Greene (2003) asks in a critique of industrial relations as a field of research, ‘where are the women’ in this class-based account? What about unequal gender relations in the workplace, in unions and in the home? These are questions that feminist industrial relations academics have been posing since the 1990s in a growing critique of the genderblind approach (where the male worker’s experience is treated as universal and the norm) and the lack of interest in the specificity of women’s working lives that marks much of the field’s research and writing (Colgan and Ledwith 2000; Holgate et al. 2006; Forrest 1993; Greene 2003; Danieli 2006; Hansen 2002; Healy et al. 2006). Holgate and colleagues (2006), for example, in a critical rereading of selected UK workplace case studies, argue that a sole focus on class may fail to uncover the myriad of social processes that position workers in the labour market and the workplace. In other words, it is not just class that matters—they highlight gender and

Introduction

3

ethnicity as particularly absent, yet mainly consequential for labour market positioning. The main argument within the critique of class analysis is that it usually fails to uncover the specificity of women’s experiences, especially those related to the complex relationship between paid work and family responsibilities, but also between paid work, union activism and domestic life (Kirton 2006). Cobble (2007) entitles her book about contemporary American labour The Sex of Class in order to reinforce the argument that class has gender dimensions and that it is necessary to think about how women experience class and class difference alongside how work has become more feminized. Thinking about work and the workplace as somehow gender neutral is no longer seen as sufficient for advancing industrial relations knowledge. Thus, feminist analysis has exposed the flaws of class analysis and has insisted on the need to see gender and class as intersecting and mutually constituting. But even this approach has attracted criticism (particularly from black feminists) for failing to deal with other significant aspects of social relations such as race/ethnicity and sexuality (see for example, hooks 2000 and Collins 2000; 2004). In response to this strand of criticism, increasingly feminist scholars are taking an explicitly intersectional approach. This approach has many variants, see for example the distinctions posed by Crenshaw (1991). In some studies the approach does not seek to prioritize for example, gender, race/ethnicity or class; rather, it aims to understand women in their contexts recognizing that at a moment in time or space, ethnicity might be dominant whilst at others it might be gender or class (e.g. Bradley 1996). The combined, sometimes inseparable, mutually constituted effects of gender, race/ethnicity, class, sexuality and age that produce multiple barriers and forms of discrimination become evident when using what Crenshaw (1991) calls an intersectional sensibility. Starting out with an intersectional sensibility is becoming more common in the sociological, industrial/employment relations and organization literature (see for example, Acker 2006; Acker 2006a; Healy et al. 2011; Özbilgin et al. 2011). Nevertheless, gender and gender relations remain important within an intersectional approach, but in studies of women and unions, gender and gender relations are enmeshed with class and race/ethnicity (Bradley and Healy 2008). Apart from the centrality of class analysis within industrial relations research, another reason for the invisibility of women lies with the traditional and, whilst much critiqued, still influential systems approach that underpins, if only implicitly, many studies. Here, the analytical emphasis is placed on institutions and structures (e.g. the state, union-management relations, collective bargaining) at the expense of social processes (e.g. behaviour of union leaders, social construction of workers’ interests, social construction and reproduction of gender segregation). For example, the systems approach fails to make the links that have always existed for all workers, not just for women, between community, family and work because the home as an institution is not seen as inside the industrial relations system (Greene 2003; Jones 2002).

4

Geraldine Healy and Gill Kirton

Against this background, many researchers have now responded to the call for a wider interpretation of what counts as industrial relations research, and there are studies, even if these are in the minority, that explore the connections between communities and unions, women and unions, minority ethnic and migrant workers and unions and the gendered character of employment relations (Wajcman 2000; Healy and Oikelome 2011). The relative invisibility of women is not confined to academic research but also enters the field of industrial relations policy and practice. A fixation with class categories (sometimes unarticulated as such, but present nonetheless), to the near exclusion of other aspects of social relations such as gender and race/ethnicity, has certainly been at the heart of UK and US unionism and their agendas, at least until fairly recently. In traditional union discourse, class has been symbolized by the male working class, blue-collar worker and this powerful symbol often still holds sway despite the glaring reality of the changed composition of union membership towards the female white-collar, even professional middle-class worker. The main problem with this traditional, blinkered and out-of-date approach is that the holding of a particular category of class as the central basis of union solidarity invariably neglects women and their specific needs. Crain (2007: 99) asks why sex discrimination is not seen as a key issue for organized labour and why the decline of unionism is not a feminist issue. She suggests that the answers to these questions lie in the artificial divide between workers’ rights to economic justice and women’s rights to workplace equality. Although the union movement has sought and even claimed class-based solidarity over and above any other social divisions such as gender or ethnicity, in reality the working class was never a unified group. For example, this is quite apparent from the traditional structure of American and British unionism where there has always been a hierarchy of labour with skilled (male) craft workers historically organized in different (and often more powerful) unions to the unskilled (disproportionately including women) (Ledwith and Colgan 2002). Further, Colling and Dickens (1989: 32) believe that the answer to Crain’s question (why is sex discrimination not seen as an issue for organized labour?) lies in the fact that women are underrepresented among union negotiators and leaders with the consequence that the bargaining agenda is male-defined and women’s specific issues do not always reach the table, particularly at local level. Many feminist authors have argued that women are a specific union constituency with gender specific employment needs and concerns which unions need to respond to if they are to be successful in recruiting and retaining women (Cockburn 1995; Cunnison and Stageman 1995; Kirton and Healy 1999). Further, the failure to address women’s specific concerns in turn produces and reinforces women’s lower favourability to unions and lesser willingness to participate (Sinclair 1996; Walters 2002). Thus, it is also posited that unions still need to develop more inclusive processes and structures to encourage greater female participation (Munro 2001; Parker 2002). Despite

Introduction

5

the feminist critique of union policy and practice which still has purchase, it would be unfair to imply that nothing has changed in unions. As we show in Chapter 2, women’s representation in union leadership has increased markedly since the 1970s, even if at a slow pace, and union movements in most industrialized countries have recognized the need to revitalize policies and agendas in order to improve their capacity to represent the interests of a more diverse membership. In summary, an analytical framework for industrial relations research and a mobilizing framework for guiding the union movement based solely on class is not sufficient when we consider the high proportion of union members in most countries, and certainly in both the UK and USA, that are female, highly educated and in associate professional, professional and management occupations (see Chapter 2, this volume). This is not to understate the importance of solidarity within and between different groups of workers. Rather we believe that solidarity may well be a consequence of a diverse membership when the strengths of a diverse workforce are recognized and harnessed (see Healy et al. 2004; Kirton and Greene 2002). Thus a diversity of union membership is one way to rebuild union strength and solidarity rather than to weaken it. Therefore, it is necessary for both research and policy and practice to acknowledge that the labour markets of industrialized countries and the characteristics of the typical unionist have altered beyond recognition, and there is therefore a need to explore and understand working lives using multiple lenses and concepts. This is the task of this book in its endeavour to explore the union, work and home lives of American and British women union leaders from a comparative perspective. To undertake a comparative study is a challenging and difficult endeavour, and therefore it is perhaps unsurprising that Bryson and Frege (2010) state that employment relations articles that compare and contrast findings across countries remain relatively rare. Despite the inevitable challenges, Hyman (2001) argues that even if the goal of satisfactory cross-national comparison may be unattainable, its pursuit is both necessary and valuable (ibid.: 203). The challenge for this comparative research was to maintain a theoretically informed contextual analysis at the same time as offering insights into cross-national similarities and differences in women’s experiences in their unions. In a paper subtitled ‘Developing Theory and Method in Context-Sensitive Research’, Edwards (2005) argues for a context-sensitive explanatory approach to industrial relations research where IR institutions and processes are grasped in context. One example Edwards gives is that of trade union democracy that has different meanings in different countries or even within countries. In relation explicitly to international comparisons, Edwards has this to say (ibid.: 275): . . . we know in broad terms that global forces are shaped in numerous ways. We now need to show more exactly how and why one sector

6

Geraldine Healy and Gill Kirton differs from another, and thus develop causal explanations of the way in which such shaping takes place and the conditions leading to one form rather than another. The issues of research design here are very large, for they embrace differences between countries, sectors and companies, and interactions between all three.

Hyman goes further by arguing for comparative research to take account of institution, function and issue, but he recognizes that the appropriateness of different approaches depend on the unit of analysis (ibid. 2001: 223). Moreover, he argues that unions today have to find new ways of articulating the perception and representation of distinctive interests in a heterogeneity of local and company level milieux and that the different responses to this challenge, both within and between countries, are a vital theme for comparative research. When the prime unit of analysis is union women and their interrelationship with meso and macro levels of analysis, we would argue that the gender order is a crucial analytical factor to take into account in undertaking comparative employment relations. Yet it is often neglected in the prescription and critique of comparative industrial relations research (e.g. Edwards 2005 and Hyman 2001). Thus, one critical question is how do accepted understandings of gender relations influence trade union women and their leadership practices in the two countries? Moreover we would argue that this question gets closer to understanding the reality of the prescription for unions offered by Hyman (2001) that unions need to get closer to the perception and representation of distinctive interests in a heterogeneity of local and company level milieux, and of course we would add national and international. The above points have implications for the design of the research instruments as well as for data analysis. At the pre-fieldwork stage it implies that the research team needs to develop sensitivity to cross-national differences in explaining women’s subordination and oppression, both in a popular and conceptual sense. For example, studies of women and trade unions based in the UK have explicitly explored feminist orientations of trade union women. This is seen as valuable enquiry because of the significant influence of feminism, feminist values and feminist activism on British trade union women and the trade union agenda at various points in history. However, British researchers report that questioning in this area needs to be handled sensitively because many women do not now identify with feminism. Research on unions and union women in the USA rarely seems to tackle the issue of feminism head-on and feminism seems to have less popular appeal to women generally or to union women specifically. Arguably, for comparative research in-depth local knowledge is necessary in order to contextualize and hence theorize findings. Speaking up for international research teams and the strength they can bring to comparative studies, Locke. Kochan and Piore (1995: 159) argue that too much local

Introduction

7

knowledge unchallenged by a global perspective can actually be an obstacle to understanding. Encouragingly, they go on to say, This, then, is the real value of an international network to structure comparative research and analysis. It can result in having the best of both worlds: detailed studies grounded in local knowledge and the means for comparing and debating comparable work from other countries. It is to our own detailed comparative study and to our international network that we now turn. OUR STUDY To explore the union, work and home lives of American and British women, we undertook a comparative in-depth study of women’s union activism and leadership in the UK and the USA. The choice of the UK and the USA rests in both their similarities and differences. The UK and the USA are two major liberal industrialized countries, whose social and economic profiles bear many similarities. In the varieties-of-capitalism literature, the UK and the USA are characterized as liberal market economies with weakly institutionalized settings and decentralized bargaining structures (Hall and Soskice 2001). In comparing varieties of unionism, Frege and Kelly show that UK and US unions adopt similar strategies with respect to political action and organizing (2004: 184). Both countries have experienced industrial and occupational restructuring which is not unrelated to women’s increased employment participation. However, there are sharp differences between (and within) the countries with respect to the welfare model, differences which have far-reaching implications for individual workers and unions. The UK has greater welfare provisions than the more individualistic low state involvement approach of the USA; nevertheless both the USA and UK tend to be low on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) strictness indicator of employment protection legislation.1 In undertaking a UK/US study on women’s union leadership, we wanted to provide comparative insights into the barriers standing in the way of women’s progression into union leadership, but we also wanted to identify how women used their agency and the strategies and practices that women found enabling and possibly transformative. Thus we were seeking to understand in what way the structural differences in each country affected the constraints and enablements faced by women union leaders. Our research team was made up of American and British academics with backgrounds in industrial relations, sociology, labour law, labour/union education and international relations. The cross-national team was vital since as Hyman states, researchers operate with distinct conceptual maps which both reflect and reinforce different social and material realities (2001: 222).

8

Geraldine Healy and Gill Kirton

Our international, cross-disciplinary team helped us understand the distinct conceptual maps implicit in the research questions and ensure that the potential ethnocentric barriers these maps create were shared and overcome in the research design. Moreover as will become clear in the literature reviews in Chapters 2 and 3, British and American researchers tend to draw on similar conceptual tools when investigating gendered inequalities or women in unions (notwithstanding the different contexts). Thus in the field of the comparative gender studies in developed countries the conceptual map may be less distinct than Hyman suggests. The cross-national team was active at every stage and in every aspect of the fieldwork in both countries. The study engaged an innovative research approach involving both traditional qualitative methods (using interviews, focus groups and participative observation), but also a novel exchange of UK and US union leaders where ten British women and ten American women participated in events in each country and shared their different perceptions of employment and gender relations in each country. The UK and US academic research team facilitated these events and in addition met face-to-face for meetings to discuss research design and unpick distinct conceptual maps and again to discuss the analytical themes emerging from the fieldwork. We therefore used a multistrategy approach to method in our study. The interview stage included an exploration of women’s union leadership through the experiences of 134 women union leaders (similar numbers in each country) in interviews2 and small focus groups. The study took place in two broad regions: the southeast of England and New York City and New Jersey. Our results are clearly shaped by the geographical locations of the study. We used standard, semistructured interview and focus group schedules to allow cross-national comparison but which also allowed for some flexibility according to individual interviewees’ and groups’ narratives situated within their national contexts. We explored a wide range of themes that encouraged reflection on the women’s personal histories of union activism: (a) the nature of union work; (b) attitudes towards unions and their policies and practices; (c) perceptions about union work—costs and opportunities; (d) impact of union involvement on home life and vice versa; (e) being a woman activist/leader; (f) views on unions’ gender equality strategies; (g) views on union leadership in both an everyday and conceptual sense. The focus groups concentrated on two main themes: (a) being a woman union activist/leader and (b) views on unions’ gender equality strategies. Selected interviewee characteristics are shown in Table 1.1. It can be seen that the US sample included a higher proportion of BME (black and minority ethnic)/women of colour reflecting the country composition described in Chapter 2. However, it is noteworthy that the relatively high proportion of BME/women of colour in the British sample reflects the proportionately higher union membership of this group. The sample reflects the older age group of union members in both countries.

Introduction Table 1.1

9

Selected interviewee characteristics UK % (N = 62)

USA % (N = 72)

Total % (N = 134)

BME/of colour

24% (15)

47% (34)

36.5% (49)

White

68% (42)

53% (38)

59.7% (80)

8% (5)

0% (0)

3.7% (5)

Ethnicity

Unknown Age 18–25

0% (0)

1% (1)

1% (1)

26–35

10% (6)

13% (9)

11% (15)

36–45

26% (16)

17% (12)

21% (28)

46–55

35% (22)

39% (28)

37% (50)

56–65

23% (14)

24% (17)

23% (31)

65+

5% (3)

6% (4)

5% (7)

Unknown

2% (1)

1% (1)

1% (2)

Yes

23% (14)

25% (18)

24% (32)

No

73% (45)

75% (54)

74% (99)

5% (3)

0% (0)

2% (3)

Single

21% (13)

22% (16)

22% (29)

Married/partnered

50% (31)

57% (41)

54% (72)

Divorced/widowed

23% (14)

19% (14)

21% (28)

6% (4)

3% (2)

4% (6)

Dependent children (