Doing, Un-Doing and Re-Doing Gendered Union Leadership

Leadership in labour movements is a gendered social process which produces and reproduces masculinised leadership forms, but which may also be challenged and undone by women, and men, trade unionists. In this chapter I address the issue in two interlinked ways. First by investigating how the dominant paradigm is the product of continuous practice by men particularly, but also by women in both the same and different ways, and then by exploring the processes involved in challenging, subverting and changing the model to un-do it, and also to re-do or new-do leadership differently ¹ . It is these processes of doing, undoing and re-doing; the reshaping and reformulating of union leadership that is the main focus here. From this flows a discussion of the key activities of union leadership and how within gendered frames women and men perform these both the same and differently. By challenging the gender order, women especially, have been able to re-prioritise and to some degree, re-shape and extend the frame of gender issues both within union structures and cultures, and in relation to the bargaining agenda.