Geraldine Healy

Women, Power and Trade Union Government in the UK

This paper addresses the under-explored relationship between womens structures and union democracy and argues that womens structural progress is mediated by an enduring gendered oligarchy and an associated struggle to access power resources. It provides, first, an analysis over time of womens structures in UK unions, and second, a case-study analysis of the Manufacturing, Science and Finance (MSF) trade union. The analysis over time demonstrates womens progress in achieving positional power, but conceals the complexity of the way different resources are used to constrain and enable women trade unionists. Copyright Blackwell Publishers Ltd/London School of Economics 2000.

Transforming union women: the role of women trade union officials in union renewal

This paper draws on a qualitative case study of senior union women in the trade union Manufacturing, Science &Finance (MSF) to provide insights into the way women officials use their agency to recruit women members and to encourage their activism. The focus on senior trade union women is important since these women are potentially in a more powerful position to have an impact on patriarchal union culture.

Structuring Commitments in Interrupted Careers: Career Breaks, Commitment and the Life Cycle in Teaching

Recent interest in work commitment has been within a unitary paradigm in both the sociological literature on womens commitment to work and in the human resource management literature on the need to generate commitment to work. The paper argues that the ‘commitment concept’ is a social construction with a multiplicity of meanings and that its usage is subjective, contradictory, temporal and frequently gendered. Debates focusing on the ‘masculine’ job model of commitment tend to provide only partial insights by an emphasis on the continuous, linear career and thereby neglect, or negate, the work commitment of women who take a career break. Drawing on a large study of professional teachers, the paper enables a comparison of commitment indicators between stages within a life history and between ‘returners’ and other respondents. The findings demonstrate how commitments change over time and indicate that the commitments of returners are the outcome of the interplay between ‘choices’ and the different structural conditions they encounter during their life cycle which may lead to ‘career curtailment’ or, in times of labour shortages, career opportunities.

Academic Employment and Gender: A Turkish Challenge to Vertical Sex Segregation

This article explores the paradox of women’s academic employment in Turkey. There is a low rate of female labour market participation in the formal sector, yet a higher proportion of women professors than in any of the 25 European Union countries. We use a range of data to set the Turkish labour market and its higher education sector in comparative European perspective, then present findings from two qualitative studies of Turkish professors, concluding that ideological state support rather than legal frameworks of equal opportunities laid the foundations for women’s hierarchical achievements in Turkey. However, the explanation is multilayered and lies in the cumulative and interrelated effect of state policy, institutional transparency, increased labour demand, the home-work interface, and the agency of the professors themselves.

Women's equality in the Scandinavian academy: a distant dream?

While Scandinavian countries are deemed the most equal in the world, vertical sex segregation remains resilient in the Scandinavian academy. This article investigates women’s equality in universities in three Scandinavian countries, Denmark, Norway and Sweden, countries where women’s share of professorships is below the EU average. It explores the perception of Swedish, Danish and Norwegian women academics with respect to sex equality, hiring and discrimination. In doing so, it exposes the resilience of inequality regimes in Scandinavian universities and thereby questions the reality of sex equality in countries deemed the ‘most equal’. However, the article also finds that Norwegian respondents were less likely to report discrimination and it reflects on the reasons for differences between the Scandinavian countries.

A global link between national diversity policies? The case of the migration of Nigerian physicians to the UK and USA

This paper considers global diversity management in relation to migration from Africa, specifically Nigeria, of doctors to the UK and the USA. It seeks to demonstrate the importance of global diversity strategies for African countries, often driven by ethnic tensions. It argues that these tensions play their part in the decisions to migrate. It also brings in the triadic relationships to global diversity analysis and demonstrates that diasporic professional groups play often hidden roles in the diversity structures of the destination country and provide important means of connecting with their country of origin.

Equality and diversity actors: a challenge to traditional industrial relations?

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore four types of equality and diversity actors at both the national and the local level and the extent to which such actors may be seen as either alternative sources of loyalty and as replacements in competition with trade unions or as complementary to existing union structures.Design/methodology/approach – The research method is multi‐level and based on national level policy analysis and on two local NHS trust case studies. It relies on 30 interviews with policy advisers and key actors (i.e. officials of trade unions, Black networks, identity groups and community groups) and 66 case study interviews; in sum, a total of 96 participants were involved in the study. The paper also involves documentary analysis of Department of Health strategies on equalities and diversity, BMA reports and advisory documents, and policy and advisory documents of the two hospitals.Findings – Findings indicate that the interrelationship between networks reflects both the complement...

Work–Life Balance and Family Friendly Policies – in Whose Interest?

Whilst there is much hype about the importance of family-friendly policies, there is very little evidence to inform our understanding of what happens in practice. These three Rowntree studies go some way to filling that gap. They are particularly timely given the 2003 extension of legislation on flexible working and parental leave. Dex and Smith set out to investigate a number of key questions: which employers have FF (family-friendly) policies and practices, the take-up by employees, employee eligibility, awareness and impact, and the effect on businesses of such policies. Their main data source was the Workplace Employee Relations Survey (WERS). Their findings are important and challenge preconceptions about, for example, union involvement, and raise awareness of the conditions when FF policies and practices are most likely. FF policies were more common in organizations and establishments which were large, in the public sector, recognized unions, and had

The industrial relations of appraisal: the case of teachers

The industrial relations of appraisal is a neglected area. Here the author examines the introduction of an appraisal scheme of a unionised, public sector occupational group, and shows how an apparently individualised approach is collectivised by union involvement. It draws on documentary sources, quantitative and qualitative data in the analysis.

Competing rationalities in the diversity project of the UK judiciary: The politics of assessment centres

Assessment centres (ACs) are increasingly used to recruit highly qualified staff, yet there are few attempts to appraise their introduction from a diversity perspective. This article addresses this gap by exploring the introduction of ACs as a means of increasing the diversity of the judiciary in the UK. It analyses the underpinning politics guiding the processes and subjective experiences of ACs using Weber’s identification of types of rationality and argues that substantive rationalities drive the formal rationality of the AC. The study demonstrates the theoretical value of incorporating diversity into the rationality framework and shows that the design, management and implementation of ACs are shaped by the competing rationalities that surround and imbue judicial work. While ACs may be introduced to demonstrate fair selection practices and challenge the reproduction of unfair discriminatory practices, such formal interventions are inevitably partial and bound by the distinctive institutional context and the societal context of inequalities.