In this essay, I will focus my analysis on Edmund Heery and John Kelly’s “Do Female Representatives Make A Difference? Women Full-Time Officials and Trade Union Work.” I will discuss the strengths and weaknesses of his writing. I will review his findings and explain if I agree with them. I will comment on whether his article present an important argument, if there is enough evidence to presented to support their argument. I will discuss strengths and weaknesses that I felt about his writing. Heery and Kelly indicated that there were lots of comments about women being neglected in British trade unions in the past. They wanted to focus their studies on whether female representatives in trade unions make any difference. Recently, …show more content…
The major ways in which women played a significant part would be that women would “make a priority of women’s issues.”; women would be more concerned than men; the survey results indicate that men scored drastically different than women when it came to the topics of childcare, sexual harassment and maternity leave (Kelly, Heering, 1988, p.494). They indicate that Table 3 depicting results of the study indicated that younger females with higher education and were considered to be white collar tended to pursue women’s issues. (494). Also, women are really focused on recruitment for other females in white collar unions and supporting activities in the workplace and branches. Also, research indicates that women union members organize more than men. (Kelly, Heering, 1988, p.502). Heery and Kelly’s paper does bring forward an important argument. It is important to examine whether women do make a difference in unions. This helps people to see whether it was justifiable to avoid having females in the union. There is still an imbalance of women in higher positions in companies and unions (Kelly, Heering, 1988, p.488). Women issues are still given low priority (Kelly, Heering, 1988, p.493). The main women’s issues that were “equal pay, parental leave, sexual harassment, and women’s health” were given low priority by the unions (Kelly, Heering, 1988,
Each of the three strikes will be examined from the standpoint of five main factors. First, what were the roles of women in the strike? What kind of work were they involved in? Second, what interest did the women have in the strike? Third, what kind of relationship did the union have with the women? Did it impair their efforts or support them? Fourth, how did the women ultimately impact the strike? Were they seen as a positive influence? In addition, were they seen as positive by the media or ignored by them? And lastly, what happened after the strike? Did the women continue their new, politically active roles or did they go back to the lives they lived before the strike? Each of these questions will be addressed for each of the three strikes discussed...
For several decades, most American women occupied a supportive, home oriented role within society, outside of the workplace. However, as the mid-twentieth century approached a gender role paradigm occurred. The sequence of the departure of men for war, the need to fill employment for a growing economy, a handful of critical legal cases, the Black Civil Rights movement seen and heard around the nation, all greatly influenced and demanded social change for human and women’s rights. This momentous period began a social movement known as feminism and introduced a coin phrase known in and outside of the workplace as the “wage-gap.”
Beginning in the late 1700’s and growing rapidly even today, labor unions form the backbone for the American workforce and continue to fight for the common interests of workers around the country. As we look at the history of these unions, we see powerful individuals such as Terrence Powderly, Samuel Gompers, and Eugene Debs rise up as leaders in a newfound movement that protected the rights of the common worker and ensured better wages, more reasonable hours, and safer working conditions for those people (History). The rise of these labor unions also warranted new legislation that would protect against child labor in factories and give health benefits to workers who were either retired or injured, but everyone was not on board with the idea of foundations working to protect the interests of the common worker. Conflict with their industries lead to many strikes across the country in the coal, steel, and railroad industries, and several of these would ultimately end up leading to bloodshed. However, the existence of labor unions in the United States and their influence on their respective industries still resonates today, and many of our modern ideals that we have today carry over from what these labor unions fought for during through the Industrial Revolution.
The white-collar union organizer affiliates in the case consist of: an office worker and the Office Employee International Union organizer, Nancy Rogers (Sloane & Witney, 2010). Base on Sloane & Witney (2010), “white-collar workers have long felt superior to their blue-collar-worker counterparts and tended to believe that joining a union decreases their occupational prestige” (p.13). It is synonymous to the office worker’s explanation to Rogers on the company’s culture as management’s influence toward nonunion workers to reframe from joining unions has resulted in paying them greater salaries, impose the idea of unions are only for manual workers and inappropriate for white-collar people to join (Sloane & Witney, 2010).This case provided a reference t...
universities and major labor unions. Despite all of these changes in society, women’s rights are
Turbulent times of a newly freed democracy bred a longing for civil liberties and birthed what would become equality for all. The United States of America, known for independence, has not always been balanced in its freedom. The labor movement in America was a significant step in developing equal opportunity. In the nation’s infancy, working conditions were abominable. Workers were underpaid, overworked, and abused. Women and children in the workforce were ubiquitous in certain industries, often earning far less than a man would. Countless laborers were injured or killed on the job, and there was no health insurance. If a worker was wounded while working, he or she would simply be replaced. As a result of the deplorable labor environment, unions
In the 1950s, women comprised less than one third of the labor force (Berger, 4) (See Appendix B). Women had their place in the workforce, yet it was not very influencial. Women had to fight to hold their positions while confro...
In the nineteen twenties, the crusade for women’s rights gained a much greater force than it had in the past. What helped to make this possible was the economic upturn. The wages of workers increased, and women also began to weigh more heavily in the workforce. Beginning in World War One, American women began to take the jobs of their spouses to support their families. They continued to work even after the war was over. The amount of women making up the overall labor forced increased about two percent in the time between 1920 and 1930, totaling to about twenty two percent in 1930 (“Women in the Labor Force”). Although they did not take the same jobs that men did, women were still an important ...
From the above analysis of Card, Lemieux and Riddell’s work, union theory studied in this course and the work of other noted economists on the subject of unions, it is apparent that not only is the argument Card and his colleagues make plausible, but likely a fact. From the bargaining power of unions and the application of the objective function to explain why the “male over 30” demographic is waning in interest in unions to the application of models to determine if this change could indeed create a rising inequality in wages throughout the sector, it is clear that the potential for such a theory to be successfully applied using models and theories is likely.
Led by Clara Lemlich, 20,000 immigrants, mostly young women, demanded a twenty percent pay raise, a fifty-two hour workweek, and a closed shop (59). Their cause gained a significant amount of attention and caught the eye of wealthy progressive reformers, such as Alva Belmont and Anne Morgan, who perceived the strike as an opportunity to also advocate their own objective: women’s suffrage. Wealthy elites like Carnegie and Sumner may have believed that efforts to change the natural order are futile, but Morgan claimed that after learning about the details of the strike, she and other women wouldn’t be able to live their lives “without doing something to help them” (72). These affluent women demonstrated their support from both sides of the spectrum, from modestly distributing ribbons and buttons, to Alva Belmont’s contribution of her several cars to a parade for the striking workers (682) and the pledge of her mansion as surety for the bail of four strikers (76). Without the aid of these women, it was doubtful the strikers “could have lasted much longer without progressive money” (70). However, frustration arose amongst picketers as these progressive reformers turned a strike based on class struggle into a “broader feminist revolt” (68). Morgan blamed the strikers’ treatment on the inability for women to vote, not their inability to unionize (67). Striker’s retorted, asking
Tired of being America’s second class citizens women throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries joined in the fight to demand increased government involvement that would give women more rights. By being the radical voice of prohibition, Francis Willard propelled this fight onward by pushing women’s issues into the political arena. Organizations such as the Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL) were influential forces fighting for improved working conditions of women by letting America know that unfavorable working conditions were faced not only by men but also by women. The battle for suffrage was long and strenuous, but women never gave up because as Susan B. Anthony said in 1906, “failure is impossible.” As people and ideas poured into the United States, women formed cross ethnic and class organizations to improve their rights by fighting for prohibition, labor reform, and suffrage which led to a more responsive and powerful government.
As late as 1962, a survey done by the University of Michigan found that two-thirds of women believed that decisions that were important to the family should be decided by the man of the house (Coontz 2013). Thus, most Americans didn 't believe that gender equality was necessary or good, and most of the information they learned had stated that women couldn 't pursue careers and be a proper mother. (Coontz 2013). Feminists and women 's right 's activists began the task of challenging women to question the assumption that all women are to be used for is to watch children, maintain the house, and make the food. It was a slow, but steady progress, with two-thirds of Americans believe that it was better for men to be the breadwinners and women to be the bread makers in 1977, but only one-third of Americans believing this was the case in 1994 (Coontz 2013). In the 1970s and onward, there was a shift in American 's beliefs in the qualifications of women in the workforce and in the political atmosphere. For example, Myra Marx Feree found that, in the 1970s, the amount of Americans who would vote for a well-qualified woman for president increased only with the continuation of the women 's movement and protests of the time (Cotter 2011). A trend was noticed, however, that the progress
Another problem women have in the workplace is getting promotions. Woman who have worked for their company for many years, receiving great reviews and employee-of-the-year awards are often filled by less qualified men (Armour, 2008). The next problem women face is unfair pay. The U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics found that women working 41 to 44 hours per week earn 84.6 percent of what men working similar hou...
It is, therefore, natural for most companies to think that women cannot be as capable as men in terms of assuming strenuous or challenging positions because women, by default, become less participatory and more vulnerable when they start to have family and children. Apparently, this situation has led to various gender discriminations in the labor market. In conclusion, although the roles of men and women have radically changed over the turn of the century, it is still inevitable to have various gender-related occupational differences because the social and biological roles of women and men do not really change. Society still perceives women as the home makers and men as the earners, and this perception alone defines the differing roles of men and women in the labor market.
It can be concluded that women are treated in terms of stereotyped impressions of being the lowest class and greater evidence can be found that there are large disparities between the women and the men 's class. It can be seen that women are more likely to play casual roles as they are most likely to take seasonal and part time work so that they can work according to their needs. They are hampered from progressing upward into the organizations as they face problems like lack of health insurance, sexual harassments, lower wage rates, gender biases and attitudes of negative behavior. However, this wouldn’t have hampered the participation of the women in the work force and they continue to increase their efforts which is highly evident in the occupational and job ratios of females in the industry.