International Women’s Day?

When you enable a male to take up a place on a delegation for a women’s trade union delegation, you deny a woman her place, as well as deny all the women she may represent.

A male cannot fully understand how the world looks and works to a woman. He has no experience of her class struggles, nor of the many ways misogyny impacts her. He won’t know why women fight hard for their rights, because he doesn’t have experience of being denied them. He doesn’t know how hard it often is for women to get their voices heard, he has never been silenced that way. He doesn’t know how uncomfortable his presence can make a woman feel, particularly when he chooses to force himself into her places. (More worryingly, some men do know this and they enjoy it)

He won’t know, unlike the Sandie Peggies or the Darlington nurses of this world, how humiliating it is to have to try and explain why dealing with issues that only befall women is best done in a place where they should expect privacy. He won’t have to expose his deepest shame by referencing sexual assault or the shame of exposed period blood in order to try and convey why they need that privacy or why his presence compounds their discomfort. Nor will he know how frightening it is to realise that her trade union will ignore all of this and side with him, leaving her to fight alone.

When a man gains a place on a TU women’s delegation he is therefore not there to represent women, he is there to represent his own needs. He places these over and above those of women, and sadly, he is ably assisted to do so by the very organisation that should tell him to step aside. It’s not that his identity experience goes unrepresented. The vice-like grip on LGBT+ seats and committees ensures ample opportunities for trans identified people who can represent that small number of members with similar needs. Meanwhile women lose another seat at the table, one for which they fought hard for generations only to see it given away.

Individualism is the antithesis of unionism. It serves one, not many. The most scant amount of class analysis will reveal the extent to which women remain poorly represented with the levers of power. Trade unions are honour and duty bound to do something about it, including asking men (in case they haven’t realised they’re taking up a lot of space) to budge up.

We understand this clearly when talking about race. Reserved seats and specialised recruitment & training have gone some way to redressing that balance and it would be a bold trade unionist who complained. Yet for women, the entrenched fear of telling men ”no” results in unions looking the other way, or worse (as in the celebratory social media post above) smiling and applauding a moment in their own demise.

It’s not possible to stay on this fence much longer. Members aren’t stupid, including the ones outside the discussions who just want to “be kind”, and they quickly lose respect for a union leadership that seems more focused on ideological tub-thumping than on the day to day problems of their colleagues. Admittedly some reps avoid spending enough time in the trenches to fully appreciate the trials of the day to day job. But to those who look at dwindling membership, pathetically poor ballot turnouts, and a membership that won’t engage in industrial action because they can’t afford to lose pay, it’s long past time to have a reality check.

International Women’s Day provides just one day in the year for a focus on women. Just women. There are so very many other days for everyone else, yet half the workforce must settle for scraps and patronisation.

This year’s theme is “Give to Gain”. The irony is that women have been giving for far too long and have yet to gain full equality. How long before it’s our turn?