Sue Ledwith

Home and away: preparing students for multicultural management

University business schools are key providers of future managers, and in the UK, business and management students are an increasingly international and diverse body. How do their learning experiences draw on these resources of diversity and multiculturalism to prepare students for working in a global economy? This article draws on two studies of business and management undergraduate students at a new UK university. Each was in a different university school, using different research methods. Both came to similar conclusions; that strongly ethnocentric attitudes prevailed among home, UK students, systematically leading to feelings of exclusion and disadvantage among international students, whatever and wherever their origins. However, in terms of gaining understanding and skills in the field of multiculturalism, it was the international students who had the advantage. The implications for preparation of students for careers in the global economy are explored, and the positive results of some subsequent initiatives discussed.

Gender and diversity

Among trade unions, women, black, disabled and lesbian and gay members are increasingly recognised as significant in the drive for increases in membership. In turn, unions have come under mounting pressure from these constituencies to ensure that their interests and concerns are represented within the union and at the bargaining table. The challenge is how to reformulate notions and practices of trade union democracy to recognise that membership is increasingly diverse and diversely politicised. Here we examine how traditional approaches to trade union democracy have been revised following demands for gender democracy and the need to reflect membership diversity, and consider whether such strategies are sufficient. We do so by drawing on research with two unions; the print union, the GPMU, a private sector industrial union where women make up only 17 per cent of the membership, and the public service union UNISON, where women are three‐quarters of the members.

Sisters organising — women and their trade unions

Women make up almost half of the British workforce. Yet only one-third of trade union2 members are women, and within their unions women rarely reach the top; in 1994 there were four female general secretaries. Throughout the 1980s there were never more than five unions led by a woman, and in only a third were women represented on national executive bodies in proportion to their membership.

Gender politics in trade unions. The representation of women between exclusion and inclusion

How can we account for the persistence of exclusion of women from organizational power and leadership in trade unions in spite of their increasing proportion of the labour force and of trade union membership? For a while, often as part of revitalization strategies, trade unions have put in place extensive structural reforms to encourage gender equality, but in practice these do not result in gender proportionality in formal positions in unions. We have to seek for deeper explanations, and this article explores how at a more profound level cultures of exclusionary masculinity are strongly embedded especially in traditional unions and among traditional male leaderships. However, there is also increasing evidence of changing attitudes among younger and more diverse workers and trade unionists, those from different cultural and ethnic groups, migrant workers, men as well as women, as their experiences of increasingly precarious work align with patterns long established by women juggling family and part-time insecure work. An optimistic reading of these changes sees the possibilities for increasing inclusion and gender equity within trade unions.

Women as organisational change agents

This is a book about women, their work organisations, and change. It focuses on the strategies which women develop in order to survive, develop and progress in gendered organisational life, and by which women may become organisational change agents. The increasing movement of women into the labour market is in itself a significant source of change. Just by ‘being there’ women inevitably bring new and different perspectives on employment issues and so become catalysts for change within their organisations. In this book our main exploration is of women’s own agency: ways in which women themselves assess their position and role in their work organisations, how they cope with gender politics and work out and negotiate ways and means of progressing their own, and perhaps a wider, more ‘women-friendly’ organisational agenda. Our enquiry is set within the context of recent significant restructuring of work and work organisations; the product of wider social, political and economic changes. Thus change, and the opportunities and challenges it offers to women and men, supplies the main underpinning theme throughout the studies in this book. However, the book’s major concern is with the impact of women as active ‘change agents’ within organisations.1

Women and the City

literary women’s studies and comparative literature are traditionally applied. The search for critical and analytic methods adequate to the purposes of the Society seemed to be the underlying aim of the whole meeting. Somehow, the very notion of literature seemed inadequate to the flourishing intersections encouraged by cultural, media and gender studies, not to mention the impact of women historians in Italy, whose considerable influence led to the creation of the

Movers and shakers: creating organisational change

This book has focused on women and their work organisations during a period of extensive social and economic restructuring. In particular the case study chapters have explored some of the opportunities and threats to women’s positions and progression within a range of different organisations. We have focused especially on the impact made by women themselves, through their increased presence in the workplace, by their individual actions in pursuit of their own careers, and by their collective strategies — in two main senses. Firstly whereby women use a collective or joint forum for the particular purpose of achieving their own individual career goals, and secondly where they do so as a strategic and explicit means of pursuing challenge and change to gender relations in patriarchal organisations.

Outside, inside: gender work in industrial relations

Purpose – This paper aims to examine the role and experiences of women working in the industrial relations (IR) academy and to explore the recent claim that the subject of industrial relations has “been very receptive to the contributions of feminist analysis”.Design/methodology/approach – An examination is made of the liminal position of women IR scholars in the IR academy and their concern for feminist and gender analysis. Parallels are drawn with IR and trade unions, focusing mainly on Britain, which also occupy, simultaneously, insider and outsider spaces. This approach draws on the relevant literature and is then tested through a questionnaire survey of women scholars working in the field, the author included, together with interviews and interactive discussions about the findings.Findings – Gender politics remain highly contested in the IR academy, with women and their work experiencing considerable marginalisation and exclusion. Nevertheless women IR scholars display a high level of commitment to t...

Gender, union leadership and collective bargaining: Brazil and South Africa

Links between gender politics and leadership in trade unions and how these impact collective bargaining gender agendas are explored in this study of trade unionism in Brazil and South Africa. What the International Trade Union Confederation and others refer to as ‘unexplained’ gender pay gaps are discussed in relation to the absence of women in the collective bargaining process. This examination draws on research in both countries and concludes that gender leadership gaps and gender pay gaps are related.

Women Migrating to London, Berlin and Istanbul: A Research Study

This chapter gives information about the demographic, cultural, religious and marital backgrounds of 120 migrant female domestic workers found in three cities: London, Berlin and Istanbul. The women belonged to 28 different nationalities and had affiliations with 10 different religious sects, either under Islam or Christianity or defined themselves as atheists. This chapter presents the biographical data about the women. The chapter also discusses the complexities of carrying out research in three countries, each with a different first language, among what are usually seen as ‘hard to reach’ migrant workers. The epistemological and political positionality of the two authors is also set out.