Gendering and Diversifying Trade Union Leadership

Book review for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion

Over the past few decades there have been repeated calls for the advancement of women in leadership roles at all levels of organizations including the board room. Unions have not been exempt from these appeals, and Ledwith and Hansen’s new edited collection considers how successful trade unions have been in gendering and diversifying their leadership. The book offers a timely assessment of where women leaders stand in the labour movement. A major strength of the book is that its 15 chapters have voices from a broad range of settings including Australia, Denmark, Finland, Canada, Ghana, Germany, France, Belgium, and the USA. The volume is bookended by useful analyses from the editors.

In many settings, female membership in unions now equals or exceeds that of men. However, female representation in union leadership roles remains low relative to their proportionality. A solid literature has developed over the past couple of decades to help explain why so few women make it to the top of unions, and offers suggestions about how this might be changed. Ledwith and Hansen’s volume, as a result, is able to assess the labour movement on this front with the full knowledge that unions have been under the microscope for some time, and have been under pressure to rectify the gender leadership imbalance. Spoiler Alert: their overall conclusion is that progress has been slow and continues to be fraught.

I found most chapters interesting and informative, although several stood out as particularly engaging. The chapter from Finland is the story of one union leader by the name of Alice during the mid to late 1990s. It is a very sensitive historical profile of an early pioneer, and chronicles the ascent of Alice in a large textile and clothing union, from shop steward to Vice-President of the Union Council, and ultimately to her fall from grace. The authors skillfully use Alice’s experience as a window for understanding how both women and men undermine women’s advancement. The chapter also highlights the depth of analysis that comes with a longitudinal, ethnographic approach to research. I also found the chapter on Belgium to be one of the more engaging. Belgium continues to have a relatively high-union density, and like most other countries about half of the union members are women. However, as with most situations profiled in the book, in Belgium unions there is underrepresentation of women in mainstream decision structures, despite formal policies and statutes encouraging female leadership. I also found Linda Briskin’s chapter dealing with the highly contested notion of designated seats for women on union executive boards to be very instructive. She chronicles the experience of the largest public sector union in Canada when confronting this issue – ultimately it decided to reject quotas for women and stick with the concept of a “merit” system. Briskin sees this as reinforcing masculine leadership concepts, and concludes that unions need to reject the neo-liberal values of meritocracy, individualism, and heroic leadership if women are to succeed. Interestingly, since Briskin’s chapter was written, the largest private sector union in Canada has implemented a gendered quota system for it executive board. Anja Kirsch’s chapter on Germany highlights the ways in which the gender parity through quota system has helped advance the viability and resilience of the service sector union called Ver.di. Surprisingly, given the controversial nature of quotas, both the introductory and concluding chapters by the editors, give this topic limited coverage. It merited much more assessment as a possible way forward.

A central theme running throughout the book is that a union’s culture tends to undermine the advancement of women, despite good policies and intentions. For example, in their chapter from the USA, Michelle Kaminski and Jailza Pauly look at the forces impacting labour-union leaders’ achievements and conclude it is “work-group level forces” that are the most counter-productive for women in union leadership roles. Based on interviews with 35 participants at the Harvard Trade Union programme they found that women reported having been the targets of vindictive attacks and demeaning remarks; whereas men were more likely to indicate they had benefitted from mentoring, and less likely to experience personal attacks. Guillaume and Pochic come to a similar conclusion in their analysis of French unions, indicating that it is informal and organizational processes that most limit the rise of women to the top of union decision-making forums, even when there are formal equity rules.

The book does have shortcomings. I would have liked more statistics about the actual number of women in leadership roles from each country. A couple of chapters did attempt to provide this information, but in too many cases the information was dated. Given that most of the writers would agree that women in union leadership roles is a moving and evolving target, the absence of up-to-date data were frustrating. As with most edited collections, some chapters are stronger than others. The chapter on Ghana seemed out of place given the majority of writers were assessing the situation in industrialized countries with a long history of feminist activism inside the labour movement. I found the chapter on France the most difficult to read, but this was in part because I knew so little about French labour relations. This chapter would have been helped by a stronger overview of what is a very complex industrial relations system. I thought the editors were perhaps trying a little too hard to theorize the topic; whereas, most contributors were more focused on the very real and practical sources of pushback women experience, and how these barriers might be overcome. Not surprisingly, all of the contributors to the book are female. Even though a number of authors hint that some men, especially younger men, are shifting their attitudes to union leadership in ways that may be more receptive to women, it would nevertheless have been interesting to hear from these men directly. Invariably, the way forward to more gender-balanced union leadership will have to involve both men and women, and in most settings, more attention to diverse populations. Finally, the title of the book suggests there would be coverage of diversity in union leadership. However, there was very little coverage of union leadership in relation to diverse groups such as visible minorities or lesbian and gay unionists.

Overall, I found the book engaging and informative. It makes a worthwhile contribution to the topic of unions and leadership. The international dimension of the book means that readers can learn a great deal, not only about unions and leadership issues, but also more general information about the organized labour system in a variety of setting. In this regard, I found the chapters from France, Belgium, and Germany particularly instructive. The overall conclusion of the book is that advancing gender parity in union leadership is illusive and continues to be a goal rather than a reality. This is a somewhat depressing assessment given union feminists have been advocating for more women at the top for a very long time.