In what will be essential reading for all industrial relations scholars, Gill Kirton considers the social construction of women's trade union participation in the context of male dominated trade unions. Exploring the making and progress of women's trade union careers, this book locates the issues within the context of their experiences of three interlocking social institutions - the union, work and family. The book examines how and why women embark on trade union careers, the social processes which shape women's gender and union identities and the combined influences of union/work/family contexts on the trajectory of women's union careers. Additionally, the book offers a historical overview of the development of women's trade union education and separate organizing, with original analysis and historical data.

Explores the potential for trade unions to defend the socioeconomic rights of women.

History of woman workers in the UK labour movement - discusses working conditions, wage rates, hours of work, women's trade unionization, strikes, women's rights, industrialization, political participation, wartime employment opportunities, workers representation trends, etc. Bibliography pp. 296 to 301, illustrations and references.

This book is the story of the New York Women's Trade Union League's efforts to reach New York City's working women and interest them in unionization, to create an alliance of upper-class and working-class women, and to synthesize unionism and feminism into a viable program for improving the lives of New York City's women wage earners. It is an attempt to delineate the cultural, ideological, and tactical difficulties the WTUL encountered in its efforts to organize the city's working women and its ultimate disillusionment with the strategy of integrating women into male-dominated unions. Finally, this work is concerned with the league's transformation from a self-defined labor organization that downplayed women's special concerns in the work force into a women's reform organization that emphasized specifically female demands, namely, woman suffrage and protective labor legislation.

First published in 1999, this volume aims to examine the extent to which such a partnership has been developed between women workers and trade unions, with a comparative emphasis. Jennifer Curtin analyses how women trade unionists have sought to make trade union structures and policy agendas more inclusive of the interests of women workers in four countries: Australia, Austria, Israel and Sweden.

The world of work has changed and so have trade unions with mergers, rebrandings and new unions being formed. The question is, how positioned are the unions to organize the unorganized? With more than three quarters of UK workers unrepresented and the growth of precarious employment and the gig economy this topical new book by Bob Smale reports up-to-date research on union identities and what he terms ‘niche unionism’, while raising critical questions for the future.

Women's employment is an area of considerable interest both from the point of view of equal opportunities and of economic competitiveness. This book brings togther the latest research on a series of key topics in the field of women's employment.