FiLiA Trade Union Women’s Network - Join us!
By Kiri Tunks FiLiA Trade Union Women's Network
Cover image credit: Maggy Dago
Trade unions have been good for women. The UK trade union movement has a membership of around 6 million and the majority of those members are women. Unions do great work in winning better pay and conditions as well as lobbying for change across society.
For example, the trade union movement in the British Isles is firm in supporting women’s reproductive rights and a woman’s right to choose, most notably in Ireland where unions played a key role in the campaign to ‘Repeal the Eighth’. In recent years, many unions have provided excellent guidance and support for women dealing with the menopause in the workplace or calling for action to challenge sexism in our society. And unions have been successful in winning equal pay claims for large groups of women workers
But unions have also let women down.
Never has this been truer than in the last few years with the unions’ response to the debate on sex and gender and the revelations of endemic misogyny and sexism in the movement at large.
Like many union members, women’s relationship with their trade union largely operates on a service model, somewhere to go when you are in trouble. And unions have the structures, systems and knowledge to be able to provide vital support and advice. But too many women say that they are patronised or worse, given poor advice or treated badly.
Unions are making policy decisions which many in the wider membership are not aware of or involved in. Women feel that unions take our membership, and our money, too much for granted and the leadership can feel disconnected from the grassroots.
Unions need to do more to effectively address the complexities of women’s lives. There are still too many obstacles which prevent women’s active involvement and unions need to do much more to remove them.
Unions are missing out on the strength and insights of too many working women because women don’t know how to navigate the union’s systems and are put off by bureaucratic processes and procedures. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
We know that when women come together collectively we are effective forces for change.
Increasing women’s involvement and agency in trade unions will not only improve the work unions do for women, it will enrich and strengthen the trade union movement in its ability to win real and effective change for all its members.
Last year, FiLiA commissioned research into what trade unions think matters for women and found significant overlap with FiLiA’s objectives. We set up a strategy group to discuss how to support women in the trade union movement.
In 2025, we want to build a network of women in trade unions across the UK.
We want this network to provide connections, information, support and training to help women take up power and space in their unions.
We want to put women in touch with each other and grow the collective knowledge and skills of women in the workforce and the trade union movement.
If you want to get more from your union and work with other women to do that, then the FiLiA Trade Union Women’s network is for you.
You can use this form to join the FiLiA Trade Union Women’s network.
We will be in touch in the New Year with next steps.
FiLiA Trade Union Women's Network