Given how different unions are both within a given country and between countries there is a surprising degree of convergence in studies on the underrepresentation of women in the trade union movement. Unions differ in their size, the characteristics of their members, their rates of feminization, and above all in their identity and the scope of their equality policy. So, how can we understand the processes that maintain gender inequalities within unions? What are the policies and measures that facilitate the feminization of different union structures, from the workplace branch to national decision-making bodies?

This chapter intends to answer these questions through the analysis of the ‘careers’ (Guillaume and Pochic, 2021) of men and women activists, using them to decode the institutional processes that produce and legitimate inequalities, but also the conditions that facilitate the promotion of women and their interests. Using what Rosemary Crompton calls ‘biographical matching and comparative analysis’ (Crompton, 2001), this research has compared the careers of many unionists, both men and women, in four unions, in France and the UK. As Muriel Darmon emphasizes, the concept of ‘career’ is particularly useful for the analysis of trajectories inscribed in ‘areas where it is not already used as an indigenous term or idea’ (Darmon, 2008). Indeed, this term is not only lacking but in fact actively rejected from the unionists’ vocabulary, probably because it is usually associated with paid work and part of union work is unpaid and voluntary. Yet, by breaking away from the categories used by trade unionists themselves, which often borrow from the repertoire of ‘vocation’ (Fillieule et al, 2019), the concept of career explores how union activism is built and maintained in a ‘permanent dialectic between individual history and institution, and more generally the contexts’ (Fillieule, 2010). This approach allows to explore the institutional processes and norms that produce careers within the union movement, and their effects in terms of discrimination. By shedding light on the ways in which typical stable and ascending union careers are constructed, this comparative analysis implicitly reveals the difficulties some activists (and particularly women) have in accessing leadership roles.