Gender Equality Within British Trade Unions: The Incomplete Revolution

Résumé: This article examines the gender politics within British trade unions and their role in advancing gender equality at the workplace in the nineteenth and twentieth century Britain, where unions' feminization process encountered social and ideological impediments. The gender equality study explores the difficulties women experienced within a totally male dominated labour movement. This system of hegemonic masculinity and arbitrary values ascertained that women's industrial lives were limited to the few years between school and marriage, and de facto denied them any ability to develop habits of trade unionism. Despite overtly sexist opinions, women have demonstrated before and during world events their economic awareness as an increasing industrial workforce, and their political consciousness as belonging to a class whose interests were unrepresented within mainstream unionism and under a hegemonic capitalist system.

Publié dans la revue: Aleph