If you were following me on Twitter while I was in Brighton last week at TUC Congress you might have noticed a bit of a theme developing in my feed regarding the dearth of women speakers and delegates there. If you weren’t, well obviously you wouldn’t have noticed, so here are some examples:
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Unsurprisingly this apparent absence of women from the rostrum and from the hall prompted quite some discussion among some of us, so when I got home I decided to take a closer look at the stats to see if it was all a figment of our collective imaginations, or whether it was indeed the case that women were underrepresented at the trade union movement’s most important decision-making forum.
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Thankfully the TUC provided male/female membership numbers for individual trade unions in the Congress Guide 2012 that was issued to all delegates. The guide also gave the individual unions’ male/female delegation numbers. So I’ve now put them all together and made this:
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Looking at the totals I suppose the first thing I should point out is that considering the unions listed here actually represent more men than they do women, because men make up the majority of members of these unions, it’s only right that there were more men than women representing the membership of trade unions at this year’s TUC Congress. That aside however, I do think there are some interesting figures here that bear closer analysis.
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So for example, while men make up 51.1% of the membership of the trade unions listed here, they actually constituted 58.2% of the delegates at this year’s Congress. For women the figures are 48.5% and 41.8% respectively.
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Also, out of 20 trade unions that have a majority female membership, 14 sent delegations to TUC Congress that were composed of either an equal number of men and women (seven) or a majority of men (seven). While out of 27 trade unions that have a majority male membership, only three sent delegations to TUC Congress that were composed of either an equal number of men and women (one – NASS) or a majority of women (two – EQUITY and the NUJ).
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I think what surprised me the most though was that even some of the bigger female majority unions like USDAW, the NASUWT and the PCS sent more men to Congress than women, while the UCU, which has almost equal numbers of men and women in its membership, sent more than double the number of men (16) than women (7).
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UNISON has a rule book commitment to proportionality, which it defines as: “the representation of women and men in fair proportion to the relevant number of female and male members comprising the electorate,” which is why it comes out of any analysis like this quite well. But even UNISON didn’t get it completely right. According to the figures provided in the TUC Guide, men make up 30% of UNISON’s membership and women 70%. The UNISON delegation however was 23 men (34.8%) to 43 women (65.2%): if the union had been abiding completely by its own rules on proportionality, it should have sent 20 men and 46 women.
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Unfortunately I don’t have the figures on how many men actually spoke at Congress compared to how many women, but the impression I got as a delegate was that we saw far more men at the rostrum than we did women. Certainly the bigger debates, by which I mean those that the media were most interested in, were heavily dominated by men.
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Later this year when Brendan Barber retires/moves to the board of Transport for London, the TUC will have its first ever female General Secretary. Frances O’Grady opened her speech to this year’s Congress by saying: “Well Brothers. You’ve been thinking about this for 144 years. Now….I don’t want to rush you but…” Well maybe we don’t want to rush them, but judging by some of these figures it’s probably about time we gave the brothers a bit of a nudge.
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Still, it will be interesting to see whether having a woman General Secretary will have an impact on gender representation at future TUC Congresses…
Too Much To Say For Myself 
Interesting Cath, especially this: while the UCU, which has almost equal numbers of men and women in its membership, sent more than double the number of men (16) than women (7). I am a member of UCU so am happy to put forward a question to them about this?
Thank you for bringing this to attention Cath. After being refused a job serving tea at the conference due to my gender I thought no one would stick up for me.
Its really heartening to see you fight this inequality.
Good article Cath and you might find the following useful, from the report:
WOMEN IN TRADE UNIONS: MAKING THE DIFFERENCE.
Research on Women and Decision-Making in Trade Union Organisations.
On the other hand, at the same time as this positive finding, few organisations have adopted a policy of making specific reforms to make it easier for women to take part in meetings, yet “lack of time” and “how meetings are run” were given as major obstacles to women having access to decision-making positions. Therefore, more Confederations should take this issue into account by making sure, for example, that the timetable and times of meetings are controlled, by making sure that everyone can speak, by avoiding meetings at times that pose problems for people with family responsibilities, etc. Moreover, the research identified “women’s lack of confidence in their own abilities” as the second reason limiting the numbers of women in decision-making bodies
In this regard, mentoring – a procedure few Confederations make use of – could be envisaged. Advice and support from a respected person (male or female) can be of great help to female trade unionists who want to take on union responsibilities. In addition, training women to qualify them for trade union activity is particularly important and must be pursued by Confederations in the same way as equality awareness and training for men and women.
Between 1993 and 2002, despite some backlash, a relative increase in the proportion of women was observed in most Congresses, Executive Committees and in half of all Management Committees and/or Offices for day to day affairs. Despite this positive trend, it is rare for Congresses and Executive Committees to be representative of female membership, but this is the case in half of all Management Committees and/or Offices for day to day affairs. Similarly, a positive trend was observed in terms of the number of women at the head of trade unions (although power is still mostly in the hands of men and although sometimes Chairwomen or women General Secretaries have to share this job with a man) and who run Departments (although there are more women who chair Departments related to social/women’s issues than are responsible for economic policy and collective bargaining). It is vital that Confederations continue the work already agreed to in order to reduce the shortcomings in terms of women being represented in their decision-making bodies.