ABSTRACT
Since the rise of the women’s and civil rights movements in the 1960s and 1970s, women’s representation in unions has improved, and union bargaining agendas more actively promote issues of particular concern to women workers. This chapter focuses on the US to examine trends in union coverage and its advantages by gender, updating earlier analysis by Hartmann, Spalter-Roth, and Collins. It examines trends between 1989 and 2018 on union coverage by gender, race and ethnicity, sector and education, highlighting the dramatic decline of union coverage in the US during the last three decades. The chapter shows the continuing role of occupational and sector segregation in understanding gender differences in union membership, and the growing role of the public sector, and women’s work in this sector, for the union movement in the US. It then presents data on the union wage and benefits advantage. The chapter concludes with a discussion on the role of unions for equality.
