The Gendered Economy is a new path-breaking series of short books which critically examine our understanding of the economy through the lens of gender and expose the androcentric biases within mainstream and heterodox economic analysis.

This book contributes to the series by looking how trade unions and other membership-based workers’ organizations can support gender equality, drawing on examples from across the world. This issue is missing from most of the global reports on women’s economic empowerment, from organizations like the World Bank and the IMF, which celebrate individual entrepreneurship but ignore collective action. As more women take up paid employment, they are joining trade unions or other membership-based organizations in growing numbers, so that in some countries women now outnumber men in trade unions. But this book is clear-eyed about the challenges: collective agreements often cover only male dominated industries and the public sector, and usually have not included sub-contracted workers; trade unions have often been slow to take up gender equality issues; and the majority of women in employment in many countries are in the informal economy where organizing is much more difficult.

Nevertheless, as this book shows, change is happening. Collective bargaining agendas have been broadened to address issues such as workplace discrimination, equal pay for work of equal value, the care responsibilities of workers, and the impact of domestic violence in the workplace. Women are increasingly participating in the leadership of some trade unions.

This book does not only look at traditional trade union organizing. It also looks at new ways of organizing workers in informal employment, and the ways in which trade unions can support this in networks developed with NGOs, and in bargaining forums in which trade unions participate alongside informal workers’ organizations. Global Framework Agreements have established new bargaining frameworks at transnational level, and some have sought to cover sub-contracted workers throughout the supply chain. Trade unions have participated in multi-stakeholder initiatives, such as the Ethical Trading Initiative. Some trade unions have also begun to engage with the communities who use the services they produce. For example, teachers’ unions have engaged with parents in campaigns for good quality public education; while health care unions have focused on the quality of patient care.