ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to the electoral processes themselves and indicates the responses of individuals and groups to the new sources of power. The Local Government and Health Care service groups were each allocated four representative seats on the National Executive Council: two women’s seats, one men’s seat and one general seat. The chapter illustrates the opportunities that multi-representative constituencies provide for organised groups to stand for election across all representative seats in the constituency. More recently, Colgan and Ledwith refer to organised electoral activity amongst self-organised groups. Women in both service groups therefore had a choice of whether to stand for the women’s seats or the general seat. Two women and one man stood on a slate ‘explicitly supporting UNISON’S equality policies’. The chapter concludes that whilst proportionality and fair representation facilitated an increase in the number of individual women taking up representative seats, the need to gain representation for women as an oppressed social group still remains.
