ABSTRACT
In 1990, a group of women workers in Osaka, Japan, formed Onna Rodo Kumiai Kansai (henceforth Onna Kumiai), a women-only union. By 2003, 12 womenonly unions had formed throughout Japan with the largest, Josei Union Tokyo (henceforth Josei Union) which formed in 1995, with 250 members (Josei Union 2003a). The formation of these unions signifies the re-emergence of autonomous organizing, a strategy women workers in a range of Anglophone and Asian countries used as early as the 1880s as a means of addressing issues such as gender discriminatory workplace practices including workplace violence, unequal pay, night work and patriarchal and paternalistic management practices. Women union activists regularly report a lack of understanding and support from male union officials towards issues affecting women (and ultimately all workers) (see Elton 1997: 111; Mody 2005). This may have contributed to the growing interest in women-only unions in some Asian countries where women workers/activists have concluded that women need to create and control their own unions to address issues that male-dominated, ‘traditional’ unions are ignoring or overlooking such as the sexual division of labour (Hensman 1996), discriminatory employment conditions, sexual harassment and sexual violence in the workplace (Parveen and Ali 1996: 142 fn 9). As was the case with women’s departments in Japan’s early unions, the formation of women-only unions in Japan evolved out of frustration with male union leaders’ lack of understanding of the issues confronting women workers such as the poor treatment and employment conditions of temporary workers.
