Women, gender and power in trade unions

This chapter is part of the book Labour in the Global South Challenges and Alternatives for Workers
Increasingly, women around the world are joining trade unions. However, this rise in female union membership is consistently at odds with women’s representation in leadership. This lack of representation, voice and power in trade unions is significant for a number of reasons. Workers remain the focus of attack from employers and are forced to carry the burden of failures of private capital. Women carry this burden disproportionately, owing to their gendered positioning in societal and organizational cultures and structures. Thus women are placed precariously and insecurely in labour markets, domi nating informal sectors especially. This positioning is also partly responsible for women’s difficulties in joining trade unions, while unions themselves also use this as an excuse for their low levels of organizing activity among women and other marginalized groups. Nevertheless, newly diverse labour forces, including women, migrant workers and other previously marginalized groups, are becoming more and more vocal in their demands for recognition and representation in labour movements, and in a period of sustained ideo logical attack, trade unions cannot credibly maintain their important place in the global community as agents of social change if their own internal decision-making bodies do not reflect the full range of their constituencies.
https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/32875379/ilo-sarbeswar.pdf?1391048094=&response-content-disposition=inline%3B+filename%3DIlo_sarbeswar.pdf&Expires=1612271744&Signature=L0RxZoITYZJqKv77vqpkSzqM1KBiNeUg3ByqWkTgAQW6oa8oAtjFKLWka9PGXDdPlnUVMJSw9ZN9BzlDktOyBXhaCNx-JE8Xtf2xDg5SIDGrfCsOASJQ-PnEeQX-SLMqeYaaZcUwjwdMA3~pEf2SR1AstoBSobCThVTOK95aqfKD1k0mU0DS3lhg7TD3CkzmKijh6zX8~RnWDYQbQFio6nmr4x~m75TELeHyz5hiyrbX1wrLPvCXQ5VFvYhxrjsoqnnO7E1q3l6SnN9DzGVCU-g-Etp4vD~0uWr4oXzfbp9iKXS3vt7nJWE6n8HjBigtaaR9viMKliRriw7JypyjlQ__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA#page=59