Documents Healy, Geraldine 16 results

"Cet article se propose d'exposer ce qui rapproche et sépare les responsables syndicales au Royaume-Uni et aux États-Unis face aux stratégies d'égalité des sexes mises en œuvre dans leurs syndicats pour faire avancer la démocratie de genre. Il s'appuie sur une enquête qualitative de deux ans, menée auprès de 134 représentantes syndicales des deux pays, sur de l'observation participative et sur l'analyse secondaire de données quantitatives. Entreprise à la fois dans une perspective de genre et comparatiste, cette étude souligne tant les convergences que les divergences des responsables syndicales britanniques et américaines vis-à-vis des mesures prises par leurs syndicats en faveur de l'égalité des sexes et examine l'efficacité de ces stratégies pour améliorer la représentation féminine dans les instances dirigeantes et décisionnelles. L'article évoque aussi la position de faiblesse des femmes dans les organisations syndicales et les entraves sociales et structurelles qu'elles rencontrent souvent lorsqu'elles veulent promouvoir et défendre des stratégies égalitaires réformatrices."

"Reflecting the increased attention to gender and women in the field of employment relations, there is now a growing international literature on women and trade unions. The interest in women as trade unionists arises partly from the fact that women comprise 40 percent of trade union membership in the USA and over 50 percent in the UK. Further, despite considerable overall union membership decline in both the UK and USA, more women than men are joining unions in both countries. Recognition of the importance of women to the survival and revival of trade 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 to action and improves the experience of women in their union and in their workplace.

Gender and Leadership in Trade 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 trade 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 trade union work and the masculine culture of trade unions. The discussion of women trade union leaders is situated more broadly within debates on governance, leadership and democracy within social justice activism."

"This article explores the initial reasons for union joining of women who became union leaders in the UK and the USA by drawing on concepts from mobilization theory and the literature on women and unions. The comparative study demonstrates similarities and differences in early mobilization influences on UK and US women with respect to family, ideology, instrumentality and injustice. Informed by the women and unions literature, the article critiques mobilization theorists for failing to problematize the term ‘injustice' and underplaying the importance of ideology which are shown to be gendered and racialized and located in time and place."

"This article asks what sustains women union leaders' long-term union participation given an internal environment often hostile to women and an external context antagonistic to unions. This article considers the dynamics of long-term participation by drawing on social movement interrelated concepts of commitment and collective identity in the context of a comparative study of American and British women union leaders. The study explores the experiences of 134 women union leaders, the majority of whom are long-term union participants. The findings reveal that commitment is strengthened by women's experience of both expressive and intrinsic rewards but that such rewards are offset by costs, some of which are universal to union leadership, but others are particularly gendered. It was found that while a gendered collective identity may inform union collective identity, it is the union collective identity and associated solidarity that remains dominant in contemporary British and American women's union leadership."

"In the context of efforts to revitalize unions and the acknowledged need to widen participation within trade unions, this paper argues that women-only trade union education acts as a vehicle for increasing women's participation and for improving their experiences of unions. Drawing on a qualitative research study of women-only courses in two large male-dominated British trade unions, the findings indicate that such courses provide the conditions for women to question, reinforce or transform their social identities and thereby can lead to greater union identification and participation."

"This article seeks to add discussion of the intersection of gender and ethnicity to the debates on individualism and collectivism. In doing so, it challenges the prevailing view, in these debates, of the rise of individualism and the decline in collectivism. Through a study of black and minority ethnic women trade unionists, it shows how a differentiated workforce, rather than leading to individualism at work, may contribute to union renewal and inspire more creative forms of collectivism."

"This article explores the paradox of women's academic employment in Turkey. There is a low rate of female labour market participation in the formal sector, yet a higher proportion of women professors than in any of the 25 European Union countries. We use a range of data to set the Turkish labour market and its higher education sector in comparative European perspective, then present findings from two qualitative studies of Turkish professors, concluding that ideological state support rather than legal frameworks of equal opportunities laid the foundations for women's hierarchical achievements in Turkey. However, the explanation is multilayered and lies in the cumulative and interrelated effect of state policy, institutional transparency, increased labour demand, the home-work interface, and the agency of the professors themselves."

"The paper draws on a qualitative case study of workplace industrial relations in an inner–city secondary school identified as 'failing' and subsequently closed. It considers the way unionized teachers and their representatives interpret, influence and resist the impact of centralized managerial and educational change. The local implementation of such change leads to an engagement with the debates on union renewal. In particular, the paper explores the dynamic interrelationship between political and trade union activism and the tension between workplace relations and formal union organization."