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Social Science Feminism & Feminist Theory

Women Challenging Unions

Feminism, Democracy, and Militancy

edited by Linda Briskin & Patricia McDermott

Publisher
University of Toronto Press
Initial publish date
Dec 1993
Category
Feminism & Feminist Theory, Labor & Industrial Relations, Women
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780802028723
    Publish Date
    Nov 1993
    List Price
    $64.00
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781487596439
    Publish Date
    Dec 1993
    List Price
    $24.95
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780802073761
    Publish Date
    Nov 1993
    List Price
    $23.95

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Description

Women Challenging Unions is a collection of original papers that presents a vision of an invigorated and vibrant labour movement, one that would actively seek the full participation of women and other traditionally excluded groups, and that would willingly incorporate a feminist agenda. This vision challenges union complicity in the gendered segmentation of the labour market; union support for traditionalist ideologies about women's work, breadwinners, and male-headed families; union resistance to broader-based bargaining; and the marginalization of women inside unions.

All of the authors share a commitment to workplace militancy and a more democratic union movement, to women's resistance to the devaluation of their work, to their agency in the change-making process. The interconnected web of militancy, democracy, and feminism provides the grounds on which unions can address the challenges of equity and economic restructuring, and on which the re-visioning of the labour movement can take place.

The first of the four sections includes case studies of union militancy that highlight the experiences of individual women in three areas of female-dominated work: nursing, banking, and retailing. The second and third sections focus on the two key arenas of struggle where unions and feminism meet: inside unions, where women activists and staff confront the sexism of unions, and in the labour market, where women challenge their employers and their own unions. The fourth section deconstructs the conceptual tools of the discipline of industrial relations and examines its contribution to the continued invisibility of gender.

About the authors

Linda Briskin is an activist in OPSEU and a community college teacher in Toronto. She co-authored The Day the Fairies Went on Strike, a non-sexist fairy tale for children, and co-produced Rising Strong: Women in the 80's, an hour-long video documentary on the women's movement in Ontario.

Linda Briskin's profile page

Patricia McDermott teaches in the Division of Social Science, York University.

Patricia McDermott's profile page