Collective bargaining, as both a tool for representing workers’ interests and a method for finding common solutions with employers to workplace issues, has enormous potential to address structural gender inequalities. However, many of the changes discussed in this book point to the need for new thinking about how gender equality can be more effectively integrated into union strategies, policies and advocacy. Both bipartite and tripartite social dialogue has never been so relevant to workers, particularly to women workers in formal and informal employment across the world. At the International Labour Conference in 2009, tripartite delegations discussing “gender equality at the heart of decent work” emphasized that social dialogue is fundamentally about equitable participation.

These same issues were still being discussed in 2018 at the ILC, where a resolution on social dialogue and tripartism stressed the urgency of ensuring that social dialogue addresses gender equality in the light of the rapidly changing world of work (ILO 2018g). Women have entered paid employment and are joining unions or other membership-based organizations in growing numbers, and in some countries, women now outnumber men in union membership. However, in many parts of the world, collective bargaining coverage continues to be limited and only covers a proportion of the formal economy workforce, often in male-dominated industries and the public sector. Collective agreements do not necessarily extend to contract and subcontracted workers in the supply chain in key sectors of women’s employment. The majority of workers, many of whom are women own-account workers in the informal economy, remain outside of and are unprotected by collective bargaining.