Transforming Unionism by Organising? an Examination of the 'Gender Revolution' in New Zealand Trade Unionism Since 1975

Melanie Nolan and Shaun Ryan^*

The proportion of women in trade union movements has increased in all industrialised countries since the 1970s, but these changes have been particularly dramatic in New Zealand. Research has understandably focused on the long period of women's marginalisation. However this paper, based on an oral history project, Toa Wahine, focuses on the period from the 1970s when both women's rank and file and their executive representation increased to proportions that were almost equal to their workforce participation. The role of separate women's structures is seen as crucial to this gender transformation while the influence of the 'organizing model of unionism', which is said to have promoted union democracy and feminised union culture, is seen to have been exaggerated. Above all a New Zealand case study suggests that it is as increasingly inappropriate to assume women's marginality as it is their political unanimity within the trade union movement. These conclusions may seem obvious, but most studies of gender in trade unions continue to examine men and women in oppositional terms and emphasise change in terms of the simple adoption of strategy. The oral histories of New Zealand women trade union leaders suggests otherwise.
[W]hen unions adopt the organizing techniques outlined ... they have higher success rates with women workers.1 I had always been a feminist ... [and] retail in my view, always had an organizing model ... it might not have been that terminology, but that is what we always did ... I think that when they had people from America and things like that coming out and saying how they worked and what they did, it was really what we have been doing all along. We had to maybe fine tune things a little bit ...2
A truism of labour history is that trade unions are male-dominated with women being under-represented in leadership positions and among members of employee representative bodies.3 Yet all union movements are striving to ensure women are organised in greater numbers and better represented at the various decision-making levels. They are attempting to develop a successful mix of organising strategies.4 So in some cases the 'truism' of male domination may not be true for much longer. Women made up 5 per cent of New Zealand trade unionists in the first decade of the twentieth century, 25 per cent by the 1970s and 50 per cent by the 1990s. Women were slower attaining positions of leadership than they were membership in the union movement over the same period, but by the mid- 1990s nearly half the union presidents were women.5 On the basis of percentages alone this might constitute a 'gender revolution'. Having been perhaps the first country in the world to legislate for women's suffrage in 1893 and having a general election in which the main parties were both led by women in 1999, is New Zealand now leading a gender revolution in its trade union movement? The sceptics might suggest that on closer analysis any 'revolution' is less emphatic, sudden and significant than these figures suggest.	1
One problem in assessing this apparent revolution is that the literature on women in trade unions has generally focused on the period before the 1970s. Little has been written of the more recent period, as Alice H. Cook and her co-authors found:	2
For all the reporting of ... the growing numbers of women in the paid labor force, there has been only limited discussion of what women were doing in trade unions and what unions were doing about women workers and women's issues, either in the United States or abroad.6
There are some Australian and New Zealand studies but they, like international studies, have tended to be about one sector or union with few overall considerations of women's recent changing role in unions.7 Jennifer Curtin's doctoral work is an excellent exception, although it too is written in the context of the 'continuing absence of women within the elites of political institutions'.8 Some historians might argue that any 'gender revolution' is too recent history to analyse. While this is a scruple few labour historians would share there is a further problem in that little oral history on women trade unionists of the 1980s and 1990s is being collected which might allow us to analyse the changes. Barry York recently surveyed the National Library of Australia's holdings on trade union leaders. He noted that	3
a definite gap in the Library's interviews is the voice of women unionists. This partly reflects the fact that women have risen to positions of union leadership only in recent times. The Library's Collection would benefit from further recording in the area of union leadership- and especially in capturing the memories of the women.9
Of course there are some recordings but they are not systematic, do not consider trade union women as distinct from women with a wider involved in the labour movement or weave the recordings into a narrative.10	4
In the absence of local material, and little recent historiography, a New Zealand case study is timely. In this paper we concentrate upon the story of gender transformation and changing politics within New Zealand trade unions in the last quarter century, on the basis of oral histories.	5
Toa Wahine Project
We are able to consider gender and political change within trade unions as a result of the Trade Union History Project (TUHP)'s attempts to rectify the absence of women from New Zealand trade union history. The TUHP was established in 1987 by trade unionists and working people interested in history, together with several academics. In its first few years of existence, during the second term of the Labour government (1987–90), the TUHP benefited from generous state assistance by way of grants from the Department of Internal Affairs. As a result, it was able to fund centenary conferences, labour history researchers and provide publication subsidies for books on labour history. With an emphasis on commemoration, most of the histories produced were about the pre-1970s.11 By the late 1990s the TUHP was interested in supporting research on more contemporary change which had been marked by the 'slow walk away' from the arbitration institution from 1968, economic crisis in the 1970s, and economic deregulation in the 1980s.12 The 1991 Employment Contracts Act finally swept away the industrial relations structures which had been established in 1894: trade union registration, compulsory union membership and the award system. Unions were amalgamated, and in some cases, they collapsed, while overall membership numbers dropped. Not surprisingly, the capacity of unions to support history waned too. In 1997 the TUHP dedicated $30,000 to an Oral History Project to record union leaders' experience of the era of change from the 1970s. Shaun Ryan was employed to conduct 30 interviews with paid or honorary union officials. One woman was included.13 This was in part due to the nature of the project. It focused upon people aged over 60 years and retired from union office who had been involved in unions with little oral history previously recorded. Only one or two activists from each union were included. Given this and the fact that union hierarchies had been dominated by men until the 1970s, women were underrepresented. Concerned at the number of women interviewed, but now short of funds, the TUHP applied for a grant from the Australian Sesquicentennial Trust in 1998 to conduct interviews with women who were still working in the union movement having been through the period of change from 1970s onwards. The Trust awarded the TUHP sufficient funds to interview a further ten women.14 This was the Toa Wahine Project. All the interviews were taped, the tapes abstracted and deposited in the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington.	6
The eleven women Ryan interviewed were not selected randomly.15 They were selected on the basis of their prominence in unions and an effort was made to ensure that they were representative of women's unions, national regions and included Maori as well as Pakeha. However funds restricted Ryan to North Island urban areas. The women were not a representative slice of key women of their time but they were considered to be a representative slice of women trade union leaders of their time. As much as their representativeness, it is the nature of the interviews which make them so useful. Earlier oral history interviews and accounts are useful and are referred to in this paper but the various interviewers did not place union transformation and the gender revolution at the centre of the interview.16 While the life stories of the women were recorded, Ryan focused his interviews around the gender revolution in trade unions and probed the women's understandings of women's collective union experience in the last 25 years. His aim was to provide a description of change and record the women's perceptions, emotions, ideas and opinions about it, 'to consider the changes within the union movement through the eyes of women'. We set out in this paper to assess the narratives particularly the causalities they suggest.17	7
Three aspects of change during these years emerge from the interviews and frame this paper: the role of separate structures and democratic strategies within unionism and the relationship between the two. First separate women's structures were both controversial and essential to the feminisation of unionism. The women interviewed in the Toa Wahine project were unanimous that separatism accompanied changing perceptions of gender representation in the trade union movement. Second, the feminisation of New Zealand unions was seen by a significant number of those interviewed to have involved a change of union organising strategy towards democracy. Some forms of organisation had a more detrimental effect on women's activism than others. Earlier bureaucratic and servicing unionisms were concerned with wages, benefits and the arbitration system; they were official-led, benignly or otherwise, and conservatively contained top-down women's activism. More than half the women interviewed attributed the rising involvement of women in unions to a new union strategy: women attained positions of responsibility in unions because unionism has become more democratic, activist and membership based, characteristics attributed to the 'organising model of unionism' of the 1990s.18 However some other interviews and further research reveal that the model is controversial and certainly postdates significant aspects of change. Indeed, we raise questions here as to whether unionists embracing the new organising model of unionism in the 1990s was critical to gender transformation.19 Third the interviews reveal the lack of ideological consistency among activist women over recent changes. Many other researchers have pointed to the divisions between women activists on the basis of commitments to types of feminism or class ideologies.20 In this case clearly some women were motivated by the pursuit of democratic, activist, membership based agendas while others were principally women 'focused'. But was this the main axis of relations between union leaders? The Toa Wahine interviews reveal the extent of male and female 'collaboration' over change, the lack of a single female trade union culture and the politics which divided groups of men and women. In this paper, then, we raise questions about the process of transformation and point to a more historically accurate and precise narrative of the change. And in the process, the disagreements and debates among the women interviewed proved as revealing as the common story they told.21	8
The Change? Moving Mountains Entirely
Women unionists in New Zealand occupy a position few would have anticipated 25 years ago. While there is still serious under-representation of women in the union movement there was undoubtedly change between the 1970s and 1990s. The Department of Labour conducted its first survey of trade unions which broke union membership down by gender in 1969.22 In 1971 women made up 28 per cent of registered union membership at a time that the proportion of women in the workforce was 27 per cent. However as Bert Roth noted, while 'the extent of trade union membership among women is on a par with that of men ... their interest in unionism is considerably smaller'.23 In one of the first studies of women in unionism in 1977, it was found that there were only two woman presidents of 58 national unions and only one woman secretary.24 By the 1990s New Zealand women were half the paid labour force, they made up half of union members, most unions had formal structures providing for women and women were increasingly represented in union leadership. Indeed, by the 1990s the president of a New Zealand union was, more often than not, a woman. The statistical outline of this transformation has been well-documented in a series of quantitative union surveys in the 1990s: Patricia Sarr's, Out of the Chorus Line and Shifting Sands, Anne Boyd's Moving Mountains.25 The titles indicate the magnitude of the change.	9
Until recently most accounts have concentrated upon women's participation in unions being lower than men's, their lower representation in leadership and their concerns being marginalised. It was accepted that women's disadvantage in the workplace was 'compounded by the fact that relatively few' were represented in their unions.26 Studies have tended to concentrate upon the barriers to women's union participation.27 Most New Zealand studies of unions historically are analyses of male institutions considered akin to working men's clubs.28 Tom Skinner was President of the New Zealand central union organisation, the New Zealand Federation of Labour (FOL), from 1963 until 1979; his autobiography entitled Man to Man set the tone.29 Certainly Nellie Bell was not alone in remembering Skinner as being 'chauvinistic'.30 The aim of the 1979 study of local women in unions by Alan Geare, Joyce Herd and John Howells was to 'examine the barriers that keep working women from participating more fully in their trade union' because they noted 'women comprise nearly one-third of the total labour force, female labour force growth has been twice as fast as the male labour force, and yet women continue to play a very passive role in the New Zealand union movement'.31 The unions were 'run by men, for men'.32	10
In twenty-five years there has been a transition from women's 'passivity' to 'activity' in trade unionism. Despite the 1979 benchmark study and the series of 1990s studies, there is a relative lack of research into how women's present-day situation in the union movement came about. We have some historical and some contemporary studies with little qualitative work linking the two analysing what happened. Implicit in the small New Zealand historiography (but clearly developed in the international historiography) are two explanations for the change. The first argument is that it is little wonder that women have emerged through the ranks of trade unionism because of their changing paid work pattern. One would expect that more women in paid employment would have the flow on effect of more women in the organised trade union movement.33 Given this, the critical change was wider socio-economic change: the rising proportion of women in paid employment. Others have tackled the issue of the rise of women workers and pointed to the demographic transition, the impact of the 40-hour week and part-time employment and the rise of clerical and service occupations.34 Our interest here is on women union leaders. The point is that on the basis of sheer numbers, women's role in trade unions will have increased.35 The second view is that unions previously did not accommodate women's culture. Women lacked self-confidence and/or political working class consciousness. The Second Wave feminist movement resulted in trade union women demanding separate structures, delegate training and positive discrimination within unions.36 When the structures changed as a result of women's agency, then the proportion of women in trade union leadership increased.37 The explanation for women's changing role in unions lies either in the wider context or what unions have done within their own organisations, internal reorganisation and, obviously, some combination of both these explanations. Whatever balance individual accounts give, the prescription for change in the 1970s was industrialisation, feminism and the reform of union culture.	11
Union culture certainly reformed even within unions which were traditionally 'female unions'. In 1974 Mrs McInnes transferred from the Auckland regional office of the Clerical Workers' Union (CWU) to the New Zealand national office in Wellington. To her dismay the national office's sick room did not have what she regarded as the items necessary to treat period pain: a blanket, pillow, hot water bottle and bottle of gin.38 Mrs McInnes' dismay was occasioned because hers was a union in the 1970s with organisers throughout the country demanding that workplaces provide adequate amenities for women employees. From the first awards after World War II, New Zealand clerical employers of six or more women (later four or more) were required to provide suitable accommodation for cases of 'temporary indisposition'.39 The union had been the first to have written into its award in 1966 a provision requiring that employers provide for the 'hygienic disposal' of women's 'sanitary items'.40 Before plastic bags, the widespread use of tampons and such provisions, women in commerce would discretely wrap 'sanitary items' in brown paper bags and take them home in their purses.41 Mrs McInnes was an aging champion for women's rights in her union who had campaigned for these sorts of changes. The CWU had been at the forefront of the campaign for the Equal Pay Act 1972.42 For her the important women's issues after equal pay were physical working environments and the issue of sexual harassment. She refused to be referred to as Reatha (even less her birth name, Dorothy) as a deliberate distancing strategy. As a younger woman she had been sexually harassed in three different workplaces. The point of her experience is that when Mrs McInnes went to the general secretary of the union, David Jacobs, to discuss the inadequacy of provisions, the resources to provide these facilities were forthcoming.43 Mrs McInnes was proud to be part of a progressive union with 'a very fair man' leading it. He had 'strong morals' and would lead the union well from the top. She believed the CWU under such leadership would fight as strongly for over-time rates, three weeks' holiday, hot water, tea and coffee, somewhere to hang your coat and the recognition of repetitive strain injury as for 'women's issues' like the proper disposal of sanitary items and freedom from sexual harassment. By the time she retired in 1984, the FOL had published booklets about sexual harassment.44 Mrs McInnes was content that she had witnessed the transformation of the CWU culture and the more general rise of service unionism. Most of the CWU members were women and the union began to work hard to attend to their interests.	12
Union culture changed although the timing of reform varied between unions. Collectively, a critical mass of female union leaders emerged. There were notable women union executives before 1970s but Jane Runciman (Dunedin Tailoresses Union) Mabel Howard (Canterbury General Labourers Union), Inga Renner and Nan Clark (Wellington CWU) were conspicuous and isolated.45 Connie Purdue complained at a trade union seminar on women in work in March 1975 that there had been no women on the FOL executive since its formation in 1937, fewer women attended FOL annual conferences than in the past and the FOL had never sponsored a female delegate to represent it overseas. Things got worse before they got better. 12.5 per cent of FOL conference delegates in 1976 were women; it dropped to 9 per cent in 1980 before rising to 19 per cent in 1984. Judy Attenberger (Textile/Clothing Sector, National Distribution Union) and others recall the 'antics' and hilarity at FOL conferences when 'women's issues' were discussed in 1970s. There were only a handful of women delegates and when the women got up to speak the men 'read the papers or left the room'. Hilary Brown recalls men laughing at Sonja Davies for speaking on childcare: 'women's issues were a subject of jokes by men'. Nevertheless, the Wellington Shop Employees Union sponsored ten women to attend the first United Women's Convention in June 1975.46 A small critical group of women slowly worked their way to higher representation in particular unions: Muriel Thompson (Post Office Union), Nellie Bell and Therese O'Connell (Clerical Workers' Association, CWA), Sonja Davies (Retail Workers), and Joyce Hawe who was the first of a group of Maori women union representatives (Clothing and Laundry workers).47 They were cause and effect but they certainly worked to introduce systematic changes.48	13
The changing culture became associated with separate women's structures and always attracted some opposition. Davies founded the New Zealand Working Women's Council in 1976. She introduced the Working Women's Charter at the second Working Women's Convention in 1977 holding 139 'charter' or education weekend meetings throughout the country. The Charter was a broad-based political agenda which included proposals for equal pay for equal value, flexible working hours and paid parental leave. Many of these clauses were controversial but the one calling for freely available, safe abortion, contraception and sterilisation was positively divisive.49 The FOL adopted the charter when it considered it for the third time in 1980 and the Public Service Association (PSA) and the Post Primary Teachers' Association (PPTA) followed the next year but the NZ Educational Institute (NZEI) — a numerically female-dominated union of primary school teachers - resoundingly refused to adopt it and feminists organised outside the institute.50 The Auckland Feminist Teachers were set up in 1979 in part as a response.51	14
The integration of separate women's structures regionally and nationally proved even more divisive. The women's sub-committee of the Wellington Trades Council was established in 1979.52 The FOL set up a Women's Advisory Council in 1980 and the Combined State Unions (CSU) followed in 1984 involving women unionists such as Therese O'Connell, Wendy Davis, Otere Halliyard, Sue Iverson, Sue McNabb, Brenda Lowe and Nicky Treadwell. The FOL endorsed women's organisations being formed at national and district levels. It became FOL policy that each trades council form a Women's Sub-Committee. When the FOL and the CSU formed the Council of Trade Union (CTU) in 1987, it was decided to keep separatist structures in place. Each of these decisions, particularly the last, was close-run. The CTU's Constitutional and Policy Committee narrowly voted in favour of women and Maori committees full voting rights in the national and regional structures. The card vote was 265,463 for and 265,187 against.53 Wellington Drivers' Union secretary, Jackson Smith, opposed separatism either on the basis of race or gender citing his union which had a 62 per cent Maori membership, an executive comprising of 50 per cent Maori representatives and had a Maori president and secretary. He argued that sexism or racism was not the most significant issue; the need for workers to unite and support a living wage and to fight unemployment was greater. Similar debates raged within a number of unions. Take the Post Office union, for example. A 1986 Auckland remit asked the union to establish a women's advisory committee 'to research and make recommendation on industrial issues of particular relevance to women'. The executive, as it was entitled to do, decided not to put this remit in the conference order paper. Delegates took the unusual step of voting from the floor to reinstate this remit and then endorsed it. Bowing to rank and file pressure, the executive at its November meeting appointed a woman's committee of four members, chaired by Wendy Gosney and it later appointed a Maori Advisory committee chaired by Margaret Green. The first national women's seminar was held in Wellington in July 1989.54	15
Against this backdrop of debate, most women found their way to representative positions in the trade union movement in the 1980s through election and appointment. In 1978 Davies became the first woman to be elected to the FOL's national executive. In 1985 she became the FOL Vice-President. Joyce Hawe, was the first Maori woman elected to the FOL executive in 1981. Therese O'Connell was elected Vice-President Wellington Trades Council in 1984. Helen Pearce/Watson was the first PPTA Women's Officer and was appointed the New Zealand CWA women's rights officer in 1986. The first woman from New Zealand attended an ILO conference in Geneva in 1981.55 Women had indeed 'come out of the chorus line' but the significant point is that they had done so after an involvement in women's union committees.	16
Particular separatist structures waxed and waned. This had always been so. A younger generation of women teachers saw no point in the 1960s of maintaining longstanding separate women's representatives on the union executive.56 Similarly, women's separate representation on the PSA executive, which had existed since 1914, was abandoned after the 1960 Equal Pay Act. Equal pay seemed to undermine their capacity to efface '[a]ny impression ... in the minds of female members ... that their interests [were] subordinated to those of male members'.57 Similarly the CTU structures waxed and waned from 1987. Indeed, the CTU Women's Subcommittee was in recess for most of the 1990s. The CTU tried to kick-start the process in 1997 with a seminar on equal pay, the Closing the Gap conference.58 The Women's Subcommittee was not resuscitated until the end of 1999. Contradictions appear and the 'progress' is not inevitable. For example, Judy Attenberger was appointed Special Projects Officer because 'the blokes ... had an aversion to me being called the 'Women's Officer''.59 Lois Hampstead noted that the women's structure with the National Distribution Union (NDU) has disappeared since the Employment Contracts Act in 1991. She felt the position of NDU's women's spokeswoman was 'really just a token'. Indeed, Hampstead and others detected a backlash against the feminisation of unionism at the time of the union amalgamations of the 1980s and 1990s; in her case the Shop Employees Union and Drivers Union into the Distribution Workers Federation in 1987 (it subsequently became the NDU).60	17
We can point to the waning of women's structures in particular unions at particular times but generally separatist structures proliferated in the 1980s. Organisations, including working women's, began to stress the differences between women and to debate future feminist strategies. Sexual orientation, racial and class loyalties began to compete for women's 'sex solidarity'. They had their organisational expression in both informal networks and incorporated societies such as Lesbians in the Public Service (LIPs) and the Working Women's Council.61 Hine Te Apatu was employed as the first Maori organiser for the New Zealand Nurses Union in 1990 and was immediately involved in setting up the Nurses Union Runanga Komiti and its first meeting or hui in March 1991. The Wellington Trades Council's Women's Subcommittee called three meetings to as part of the Trades Council's anti-government Cuts Campaign and ended up forming Women Against the Cuts, an organisation that aimed to counter the National government's cuts to social welfare payments. The Auckland Working Women's Resource Centre set up in 1984 was an alliance of women clerical, hotel workers, woollen workers, distribution and early childhood workers unionists although over half its management committee was made up of women from just two unions.62	18
By the 1990s a case might be made that women, or at least some women, had gone beyond the separatist phase. In 1990, Sue Piper, one of the women Mrs McInnes had worked with earlier in the CWU, was re-elected as President of the PSA, the largest public service union and one of the largest national unions, with an all-women executive.63 For 'a long, long time' she had been the only women member of the PSA Executive, just as her mother had been on the printer's union executive in the 1950s.64 She was always uncomfortable with the centralised award system which she regarded as 'theatre' because the process was 'so divorced from the membership'. She stood for the PSA presidency on a ticket of 'active participation in the decision making process ... a union run by the membership for the membership'. And she reflected that she was 'elected for my politics rather than my gender'.65 Nevertheless, Piper had been chair of PSA Child Care Centre, attended women union seminars and been deeply influenced by the women's movement.66 She had been involved in the PSA review of women's policy and was an enthusiastic supporter of the Working Women's Charter. She was happy to describe herself as a feminist. Indeed, all the women interviewed at some time had been involved in women's trade union institutions.67 At the least, separatism was a necessary phase with all the women maintaining the need for vigilance over gains made.	19
Union Changes: Evolutionary or Radical?
If separatism, that is separate formal women's structures, was concomitant with the feminisation of New Zealand trade unions, was the structural instability of the union movement also relevant? At first glance, the late twentieth century does not seem propitious for women unionists. New Zealand unionism was under attack by the National government of Robert Muldoon (1975–84). This anti-union climate was the backdrop to the bombing of the Wellington Trades Hall which killed the caretaker Ernie Abbott shortly before the 1984 election. But it was the Labour government (1984–90) and its deregulation policies that rocked union structures. The Industrial Relations Amendment Act 1984, the Labour Relations Act 1987, the State Sector Act 1988, and the Labour Relations Amendment Act 1990 were the warm-up acts to Employment Contracts Act (ECA) 1991 of the National government which was elected in 1990. The ECA introduced 'enterprise bargaining' and individual contracts and 'took away collectivity' as it had been known. The ECA reintroduced voluntary unionism, abolished the award system and placed an emphasis on negotiation at the level of enterprise. For the purposes of our discussion, the significant effect of the ECA was its contribution to rapidly declining union numbers, an increase in union officials' workloads and an accelerated flurry of union amalgamation.68	20
First, there was a marked decline in union membership.69 There were 259 unions with 683,006 members or a density of 43.4 per cent in December 1985. A decade later there were just 82 unions with 362, 200 members or a density of less than half at 21.7 per cent.70 Some unions were particularly hard-hit by decreased membership and loss of revenue. The Service Workers' Union (SWU) 'lost' 18,000 unionists when the Tearooms and Restaurants Award lapsed. Five thousand unionists in rest homes were 'lost' when the union failed to achieve a national contract. Health reforms and the use of contract labour decimated the ranks of unionists amongst cleaners and hospital workers. The National Secretary Darien Fenton observed that,	21
If you believe our membership figures at the formation of the SWU in 1991, we had 70,000 members. By 1993, we had 30,000 and ... [in May 2000] with two other amalgamations under our belts, we have just over 20,000.71
Worse, the CWU, regarded as a hotbed of feminism which spearheaded pay equity in the 1990s, became insolvent and went into liquidation under the new legislation in 1992. From the perspective of her sector, Joyce Hawe remembers that the ECA meant 'everything was taken away from us, at the same time the clothing industry was starting to disintegrate' with wider economic change and tariff removals.72	22
Second, the ECA increased workloads and resulted in decreasing incomes for trade unions. Enterprise negotiations were more time consuming than the centralised awards.73 There was a rapid rise in personal grievances after 1991 in the Employment Court. At the same time, the National government stopped funding the Trade Union Education Authority (TUEA) in 1990–91. The CTU appointed an Education and Organising Officer in 1994 and even if we count the coordinators of the Skills Development and the Workplace Reform projects, Stephanie Doyle and Margaret Hanlon, this compares poorly with the 25 TUEA staff in 1991.74 The union movement had to pick up the costs of and responsibility for delegate training. Nevertheless, unionism was considered to be more 'genuine' in the 1990s. In retrospect, there is not much sympathy for compulsory trade unionism and pre-1991 unionism amongst most leading women unionists. As Hazel Armstrong suggested, it was 'Damn nice to organise under it, but it's been easier to justify unions with voluntary membership'.75	23
The most common response to deregulation was the formation, thirdly, of larger amalgamated unions. The largest 'union' of them all had been formed with the CTU in 1987. Many regard the FOL as having been blue collar and by contrast associate the CTU with white collar and female-dominated affiliates in the public service, education and banking sectors. In 1993 the rival Trade Union Federation (TUF), consisting of 12 blue collar unions was born. However, in 2000 TUF and CTU re-amalgamated with CTU Ross Wilson as President and ex-TUF Maxine Gay as vice-president. The amalgamation movements of the 1950s had had detrimental effects on women's unionism but the amalgamation movement of the 1990s provided the opportunity to unravel traditional and gendered hierarchies. There was a transition from occupationally-based, general unions to industry-focused unions. For example the Butchers' and Grocers' Union amalgamated with the National Distribution Union in 1987 and lost some measure of its masculinist profile in the process. Ironically, the winding up of the insolvent CWU in 1992 meant the feminist activism which was centred in this union has been distributed across a number of unions. The union profile reflected wider occupational change. The large female-led unions in the public sector and education sector became the highest profile, if not 'strongest', unions.	24
Few would have predicted that women's position within trade unions would improve at a time when the movement was in crisis, there was organisational instability, restructuring and increasing demands on unions. It seems ironic that declining union membership, overworked union leaderships and amalgamations in the late twentieth century coincided with increasing feminisation of unionism.	25
One reason for this emphasised in the Toa Wahine interviews was that unions were cultivating their membership assiduously. The challenge for unions under the new post-1991 system was to maintain collective awards. In order to maintain collective awards, the membership had to be maintained. Many of those interviewed noted that it resulted in a strategic change from a servicing model to an organising model of unionism. There are various names for the types of unionism but these were the labels those interviewed used.76 As indicated above, we have doubts over simple stories. Even the gender story — whereby unions were once male and paternalist and dynamic feminist women changed that — raises questions. Structures prompted by ginger groups still have to be agreed to by unions democratically. Similarly we need to be critical of accounts that suggest that unions became democratic and allowed large numbers of women to rise up through their hierarchies only once they were orientated towards bureaucratic and servicing goals and adopted the organising model of unionism.	26
Certainly some unions publicly adopted 'the organizing model of unionism'. The SWU sent a number of unionists in the late 1980s, including Paul Chalmers, its Education Officer, to the United States to study union methods, the importance of union mergers, the recruitment and organisation methods, and enhanced planning practices. In return visits Val Ervine of the United Federation of Clothing Workers and Marge Kruger from the CWA propagated the concept of 'organizing model' to New Zealand unions more widely in the early 1990s. It involved a focus on workplace activism; mapping and analysing workplaces and strategically building workplace organising committees. In 1994 the CTU ran a series of workshops and seminars, facilitated by United States' trade unionist, Teresa Conrow, together with the CTU's organising co-ordinator, Jane Benefield, in an attempt to help unions improve their recruitment and organising amid a climate of contraction.77 Five hundred unionists attended sessions on 'Organizing Model' involving a simple message: unions should identify issues by assessing how many people are affected by the issue, analyse whether people could be mobilised around the issue, assess whether the issue would increase the visibility of the union, reach out to underrepresented groups, and, above all, only act when the issue was winnable or partly winnable.78 Subsequently the CTU encouraged its affiliates to adopt new methods of mobilising members through 'organization, education and action' which involved as many unionists as possible and a rational use of their reduced resources.	27
Most of the women interviewed had attended the 1994 seminars and more than half of them cited the organising model of unionism as the reason why women continued to make gains in representation despite conditions which would seem to be antipathetic to women's progress (increasing union's size and workloads, and a loss of women's structures). Under the organising model of unionism, women were serving their union apprenticeships as delegates not as women's representatives. Sue Piper's view that it 'hardly mattered if you were a woman' is crucial here. The message for all the unions is that delegates 'are the key to union involvement' in the 1990s.79 Unions with predominantly small workplaces, high turnover, part-time, young casual workers could survive with strong delegate structures and a culture of activism. Significantly, all the women interviewed had been at one stage, union delegates.	28
Nevertheless, when we examine the union organisation more closely we can see slower, longer-term and continual change. Most of the women interviewed were union delegates before the 'organising model of unionism' was prevalent. Indeed the dichotomy between servicing and organising, and indeed, bureaucratic unionism, is an artificial demarcation. Union strategies changed incrementally.80 None of the women mentioned the industrial democracy seminars such as the national two-day seminar in 1988 which TUEA ran. A group of the Toa Wahine women interviewed, including Lois Hampstead quoted at the outset of the paper, argued that the organising model predated the 1990s. From the 1960s to 1980s there was increasing membership and most unions became more representative of their memberships although the emphasis of their activities was on servicing.81 An emphasis on servicing and national negotiation characterise even those unions who officially adopted the 'organizing model'. Indeed Sarah Oxenbridge noted that '[o]rganizing and servicing functions are interlinked and neglect of servicing functions impacts upon organizing performance'.82 The transformation in union models has been as gradual as women's increasing union participation. For all their concern with rank and file activism, most unions maintained and cultivated their external and representative interests. For the purposes of our argument, timing is most important. Unions with overwhelmingly female membership changed most dramatically towards participatory unionism in the late 1960s. Two examples of the more seamless change are the Shop Assistants' and the CWU.	29
The Wellington Shop Employees' Union was in financial disarray and inactive in 1972. A third of the membership was unfinancial. A new secretary, Graham Kelly, was appointed. Sonja Davies was appointed first as a field officer and then industrial advisory officer. Geoff Smith was elected President. These officials were responsible for a raft of new initiatives including 'a delegate structure, a new journal, training seminars and stopwork meetings'. A shop steward or job delegate system had always existed in theory. It was re-established in practice in 1973 and 1974 and formal training sessions were begun. Residential delegate seminars were held from 1975. Gradually other districts followed suit. Nelson adopted the delegate system in 1979. The 1983 New Zealand Federated Shop Employees Association Conference focused on strategies for and ways of promoting the activity of women in the union movement.83	30
Similarly change in the CWU accelerated in late 1960s when it began to actively woo its members through organising and offering services to its members. A Report to the Wellington Management Committee in June 1967 argued that the union's activities had comprised of three things: making awards through the association; contributing to the FOL through the association; and the financing of these two activities. The only way the union could do more than this was to raise subscriptions. But it would only be able to raise subscriptions if members 'had a greater confidence' in the union and there was an 'increase in services and information to members'.84 Despite such realisations, the Annual General Meeting in July lapsed for want of a quorum.85 Connie Purdue was one of those who cultivated such a new unionism. She had been appointed Social and Welfare Officer of the Auckland CWU in 1968 after suggesting to the union that they needed some organisation to bring the female members together socially and to interest them in union affairs.86 Only about 12 of their 20,000 female members went to union meetings. Purdue organised a union luncheon club, wedding gown, bathing suits and boutique fashion parades, self-improving classes, counselling services, a union social-travel office and holiday motels.87 The Wellington union got a special exemption from the 1967 Finance Regulations to establish a credit union. The clerical, retail unions and councils conspicuously quiescent in the 1950s came alive in the second equal pay campaign in the late 1950s. When the Council of Equal Pay and Opportunity (CEPO) went 'national' the CWU, the Canterbury Shop Assistants' Union and unionists of the left were major players in the campaign.88 Together with a number of liberation movements, such as Women for Equality, they prodded the more conservative trades halls.89 Hazel Armstrong became involved in the national CWU in the 1970s when this change from collective to representative or service unionism was accelerating. She was appointed in 1972 to be inaugural editor of Paper Clip, the CWU newspaper. David Jacobs, Reatha McInnes and Graeme Kelly supported Armstrong's desire to 'create something that was interesting to women and culturally New Zealand oriented'. She remembers Dave Jacobs as 'a democratic unionist' who tried to get all unionists, particularly women, involved in the union.90 It is hard here to discern the difference between servicing and organising and between top-down or floor-up ynamics.	31
More than half the women interviewed in 1999 discussed how their unions had adopted 'the organizing model of unionism' in order to maintain members and collective contracts. They attributed women's changing role in the union to the model of unionism adopted to confront deregulation. Nevertheless, their own accounts of their union's culture indicates a movement towards participant unionism well before the 'organizing model of unionism' was identified and named. Indeed by that time, New Zealand unionism had gone a long way along the path to feminisation. Above all the interviews indicate the extent to which some union leaders projected backwards the rhetoric of the 'organising model' on a history which is more seamless than revolutionary.	32
The Politics of Feminisation: the Fault Lines
The Toa Wahine interviews simply do not allow us to view the fault lines within New Zealand unionism in the last part of the twentieth century only along gender lines. There is an on-going debate within the movement over the role of separatism for particular groups such as women and Maori. However as overseas studies of women in trade unions suggest it is	33
increasingly recognised within trade unions that the unity of a trade union must be built on the basis of both emphasising solidarity and respective diversity ... There is also an on-going debate within trade unions about the extent to which male and female workers have the same or different priorities for collective bargaining and union organising.91
Certainly male and female trade union leaders disagree over the importance of separatist and democratisation strategies. They also sometimes agreed over what to give priority to amid a rapidly changing industrial environment. As Kathy Sklar has suggested we need to consider both the experience women have in common with other women and the experience they have in common with 'men of their own social class' when we are considering change over time.92	34
One of the most controversial issues among the trade union women interviewed was the importance of the women's movement for the gender revolution. It is significant that women like Angela Foulkes, the first woman President of the Bank Officers' Union (BOU) 1982–87, CTU Vice-President 1987–91 and CTU Secretary 1991–99, Sue Wetere (SWU) and Joyce Hawe declared that the women's movement had no perceptible influence on their unionism. Foulkes believed that she had 'made a difference for women in banks' and 'for women in unions' whose work had been undervalued. Banks were notoriously sexist, preferring 'ladies' to stay on the ground floor as tellers'. The BOU was 'a boys' hierarchy thing' too; the conference was held in the Cosmopolitan Club, which women could enter only if escorted by a man.93 Foulkes was involved in the introduction of Womens' Seminars in the BOU and the anti-discrimination actions of the 1980s which included taking the Human Rights case against Westpac94 The Left often criticised Foulkes as being 'a sell-out and a bourgeois' because she and the CTU were 'too cautious, too timid, too damned Right'. They did not call a general strike over the introduction of the ECA in 1991. She in turn always regarded the women's movement as 'middle class'. She argued the CWU demise was partly a result of their radical agenda having little to do with a more conservative 'clientele'.95 Hazel Armstrong acknowledged the limits of the influence of the second wave feminist movement when she says that the 'Working Women's Charter was 'trying to drive [women's issues] ... down into the working class'. They disagree over the extent to which they would argue that the feminist movement has evolved from involving 'mostly middle class women' and the success of the transition.96 Others like Judy Attenberger report that 'One of the major things in my life ... was Germaine Greer'.	35
No matter how indirect one regards the feminist movement, it is clear that women gained confidence during the 1970s and 1980s collectively. Both Judy Attenberger and Lois Hampstead recall women were reluctant to speak at meetings when they were first involved in the trade union movement: 'I can't remember, very often, a woman speaking'. Maryan Street noted that the feminist teachers within the PPTA were 'skilled union women' and they taught other women valuable meeting procedure and lobbying techniques which they did not possess.97	36
From the 1970s, the number of union officials expanded, their education levels increased and the unions had a far wider organisational range. Increasingly, unionists were motivated by a wider range of interests, feminist, Maoist as well as pragmatic ideologies. For some, the YMCA and Play Centre movement were their political crucibles. Most of those interviewed cited individuals as much as structures or ideologies for their politicisation. Some like Maxine Gay and Lois Hampstead attributed their politicisation to Sonja Davies. Lois Hampstead praised Maryan Street and the Auckland Working Women's Resource Centre. Maxine Gay made special mention of Anna Green and the Labour Studies Centre at Waikato University. Maryan Street emphasised Helen Ryeburn, Charmaine Pountney and Karen Sewell and the importance of strong effective PPTA women rather than a 'feminist analysis itself' for her unionisation. All the women made mention of the importance of their participation in international conferences.98	37
Second, they all discussed cross-gender solidarity. This finding contrasts with other studies which suggest that male unionists 'have rarely been advocates of gender equality'.99 Cross-gender alliances within the trade union movement and male and female collaboration were important to all the women. Hazel Armstrong claimed to have been 'Lucky with my bosses in the unions'. Hazel Armstrong and Reatha McInnes praised Dave Jacobs of the CWU and Maxine Harris praised Chip Bailey of the Drivers' Union for converting her to equal pay. Judy Attenberger recalled Frank Jackson fondly as a 'really good bloke' who asked her to become a union official. Bill Andersen and Mike Jackson were important links for her on the Dispute Council of the Auckland Trades Council. Margaret Brand was so impressed with Dan Long (PSA) that she married him; similarly Hilary Thomas married Barry Brown.100 Hazel Armstrong talked about the 'support of Ken Douglas and Pat Kelly'. Joyce Hawe was 'taught a lot' by Frank Thorn, Tony Neary, and Jim Knox. Sue Piper's mentors were Barry Tucker and Colin Hicks, both of the PSA. All the women referred to 'men who were supportive'.101 Maryan Street divided men into 'those who were friends and those who were threatened'. Some male unionists saw feminists as 'ball breakers' and some male employers complained about Maxine Gay as the 'bitch from the CWA'.102 Angela Foulkes praised Don Aimer of the BOU and described him as a feminist. He was responsible for the appointment of women in unions starting with a field officer. He used Human Rights legislation and when he faced resistance from male members he threatened to expose the male executive in the BOU journal.103 On this issue the 1999 interviews were completely in accord with the generation which worked for equal pay in the public sector in the 1950s.104	38
On the other hand, most of the women interviewed lamented the lack of feminist accord in the union movement. It may have appeared otherwise immediately after equal pay legislation in 1972. A wave of feminism emerged, motivated by the common experiences which united women in their disadvantage. This feminism was inclusive and working women's representatives attended the United Women's Councils from 1975. The Working Women's Alliance was formed. Together, feminists successfully lobbied for the Human Rights Commission Act of 1977 which outlawed sex discrimination, maternity leave in 1980 and other measures which the Parliamentary Select Committee on Women's Rights had recommended in 1974. But this was never translated into a feminist union organisation after the 1970s. Instead of union, working women's organisations divided over new issues: minimum wage, pay equity, and the need for paid parental leave in the 1980s. It was a matter of priorities and differing views of the process to achieving equity. Almost without exception the disagreements with other women and the elections that they contended against other women are among their most marked experiences. They indicate the limits of solidarity between women unionists. By concentrating upon inter-gender relations within trade unions we may well fail to notice other significant political issues.	39
Pay equity was particularly disputatious. Some thought that voluntary measures should be encouraged rather than positive EEO methods or compulsory legislation. Calls for legislation began in earnest in late 1985 when the National Advisory Committee on the Employment of Women (NACEW) lobbied for a ministerial review of the equal pay legislation to examine the reason why there a gap remained between men's and women's conditions of employment.105 Subsequent reports of the study on equal pay legislation and the Working Group on Equal Pay and Equal Opportunity recommended further legislation.106 The Arbitration Court's dismissal of the CWU pay equity claims in 1986 also lent support to call for legislation.107 The possibility of pay equity legislation was the catalyst for the formation of a number of groups in the late 1980s. A seminar on pay equity at the Continuing Education Centre at Victoria University of Wellington prompted the formation of the Coalition for Equal Value Equal Pay in which women unionists and NACEW activists predominated.108 The Auckland Working Women's Resource Centre and individual trade unions, particularly those representing high proportions of women and with increasing numbers of women officials, like the CWU in Dunedin co-ordinated the campaign throughout New Zealand.109 The CEPO and others revived to oppose the State Services Bill and kicked on to support pay equity.110 These organisations went into recess when opposition to the bill won the day; upon its election, the National Government repealed the Employment Equity Act and closed the Employment Equity Office in 1990. Throughout leaders like Foulkes opposed the energy put into the campaign; she argued that she 'never believed it would deliver a cent to women'. The Paid Parental Leave Campaign was 'a case of middle class capture' when the case for the most vulnerable low-paid women or those whose benefits had been cut had not advanced. She reckoned that a measure such as permanent part-time employment for women as was won in the 1970s was more important than paid parental leave - which was finally won in 2001 with effect from 2002. Hilary Brown (Laundry, Caretakers and Cleaners) stressed that money was the 'most important thing for low paid workers' and one of her greatest triumphs was a foul laundry allowance in the late 1970s. Lois Hampstead pointed to additional annual leave, protection of statutory holidays, clothing allowances and service allowances as important victories in the 1990s.111	40
While there are organisations such as the Coalition for Equal Value Equal Pay which had many women union officials as members, an umbrella organisation has never been formed over the issues which surveys indicate are central to women unionists. The surveys and research reveal similar concerns among working women about the provision of affordable and flexible high-quality childcare facilities, the problems of those in part-time work, sexual harassment and the predominance of women in lower occupational grades.112	41
The issue of a women's union culture is difficult when we start to probe the system of women's structures. What 'women's culture' are we talking about? There are several feminist perspectives amongst union women. Perhaps the most striking aspect of the interviews was the degree to which women felt very sensitive to the variety of political positions within the movement which cut across gender. They bemoaned the lack of solidarity between women in the union movement. They bemoaned their 'naivety'. Union campaigns and elections saw women opposed to one another and clearly divided politically. Sonja Davies and Connie Purdue's bitter clashes over the Working Women's Charter were replicated throughout the movement.113 Maryan Street stood against Shona Herne for a position on the PPTA Executive in 1983. Hilary Brown and Judy Attenberger stood for the same executive position of the FOL in 1986. It was the last executive before the formation of the CTU and Hilary won by six votes. 'It was hurtful,' recalls Judy Attenberger. Angela Foulkes and Therese O'Connell, with the support of the Workers' Communist League, contested the position of Vice-president of the CTU in 1987. Foulkes remembered it as	42
quite a nasty campaign. Quite personalised. Quite divisive. To me, I think ... Well it wouldn't shock me now, but it shocked me at the time [there were] ... a whole set of differences. But then I suppose, in the jargon, Therese was quite rightly I suppose, well no, Therese was seen to be more of an activist and I was seen to be bureaucratic or corporatist or whatever ... but the fact the CWU couldn't have organised themselves out of a paper bag and that Therese's most, greatest activity was to tell rude jokes and sing a lot which makes her a really lively creature ... [she represented] the activist cheerful side of the union movement ... 114
Maxine Gay and a number of others were politically opposed to Foulkes' role in the CWU'S liquidation and the CTU's passivity during the National government (1990–96 and a National-New Zealand First Coalition 1996–99).	43
I disputed the end ... the so-called insolvent union ended up paying ... something like 96% of its requirements. 96% of its requirements! It wasn't insolvent. Not by a long stretch of the imagination. Angela Foulkes played a foul role in the dissolution of the CWU ... 115
These elections and disputes encapsulated important issues of controversy between women, personality and politics. Splits long the lines of personality among male trade unionists are well-known. The clashes of personality, for example, between Tony Neary and Fintan Patrick Walsh, President of the FOL, in the 1950s and 60s are well-documented. They slugged out their differences in the Courts, in the infamous People's Voice libel cases, and at annual conferences. More recently, the splits between the women have been politically important.116 The women themselves had expected opposition from men in the union movement on the basis of gender and political grounds but not from other women.117 Their testimony indicates the extent to which the union movement was divided by temperament as much as gender.118	44
Conclusion
Contemporary women are unionised in the same proportion as men in New Zealand. Internationally, this is unusual. Indeed, women made up 57 per cent of the New Zealand CTU's membership by the end of the twentieth century. Angela Foulkes the CTU secretary celebrated the fact that the council was "full of girls". Surveys also found that women made up 51 per cent of the union delegates. Women were equally represented in regional and district union committees. However they were still under-represented in the national committees.119 Relative equality in numbers has been recent but continual since the 1970s.	45
These figures do not indicate the limits to the transformation in the gender politics of the trade union movement. The sceptics are right to question the extent of the 'gender revolution' in New Zealand trade unionism. The Toa Wahine interviews reveal considerable concern over the extent to which there is continuity. All the women were aware of the legacy of past structures. Attitudes, too, have changed much more slowly than the equalising proportions suggest. Hazel Armstrong speaks for every woman unionist interviewed when she noted that unions now consider issues of childcare, paid parental leave, and part-time employment in ways never dreamt of in the 1970s. However all the women complained, as did Armstrong, that 'sexism is the biggest challenge. It is exhausting because it comes from within'.120 Similarly Maxine Gay believed that trade unionism	46
has changed, yes ... but it still has a long way to go. I think for me that that will be the last battle, dealing with sexism will be the hardest one ... and that is partly because the enemies are much less-defined.. [compared to race and capital] ... sexism is pervasive and there the enemy is not so well defined. It's your comrade, and it's your father, your brother, your son, your lover, it's the person that you care deeply about and you know and so you don't want to annihilate. So there you actually wish to build trusting and healthy relationships ... women in the trade union movement ... We do have a bigger battle, we have all the battles men have and then we have an additional battle, an added responsibility ... 121
It was not the case that 'women unionists were no different than men in the movement'. The proportions do not indicate the disappearance of gendered experience within unionism.	47
The continued existence of gendered experience is no surprise, as no revolution is ever complete. Having said that, the proportion of women within the New Zealand trade union movement, including leadership, has increased from about a quarter to one half. This is significant and few would have predicted it in the 1970s. Martha Nightingale's 1991 survey of women within the Victorian trade unionism suggests that a similar trend is occurring in Australia.122 The Australian story is probably similar to the New Zealand case study: women's separate organisation was crucial; it is a long term change that has been overshadowed by the malaise of the trade union movement in the 1990s with the new organising model of unionism in the 1990s unable to explain the transformation. Gender collaboration is as important as inter-gender divisions in the process.123 It is striking that one of the few issues on which the New Zealand women union leaders were agreed is that there were limits to the gender revolution. They disagreed over what is to be done about it. They disagreed over the role of past union strategies in attaining change that has occurred. These political disagreements are between union women all of whom are feminist. Most notably, these women expected that female unionists would have organised themselves in a more united and caring fashion than they have done.	48
We know more about the roots and development of gendered divisions within the union movement than about how they have begun to crack. Above all, a consideration of recent issues nudges us away from considering the relationship between men and women, masculinity and feminism, in the union movement only in oppositional terms. More studies along that line would also be a revolution.	49
Endnotes * Shaun Ryan did more of the interviewing and Melanie Nolan did more of the writing involved in this paper. The authors of the paper would like to thank Pat Walsh and the two anonymous readers for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. 1. New Zealand Council of Trade Unions, Organizing Women Workers: Mobilizing Women Workers: Mobilizing Women Workers Using the Organizing Model, CTU, Wellington, 1995, p. 3. 2. Lois Hampstead, interviewed by Shaun Ryan, November 1999, Oral History Centre, Alexander Turnbull Library (ATL). 3. Anne Forrest, 'A View from Outside the Whale: the Treatment of Women and Unions in Industrial Relations', in Linda Briskin and Patricia McDermott (eds), Women Challenging Unions: Feminism, Democracy, and Militancy, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1993, pp. 325–326. 4. Anne Trebilcock, 'Strategies for Strengthening Women's Participation in Trade Union Leadership', International Labor Review, vol. 130, no. 4, 1991, pp. 407–426. Linda Dickens, 'Gender, Race and Employment Equality in Britain: Inadequate Strategies and the role of Industrial Relations Acts', Industrial Relations Journal, vol. 28, no. 4 , 1997. 5. Melanie Nolan, 'Employment Organisations' in Anne Else (ed.), Women Together: a History of Women's Organisations in New Zealand: Nga Ropu Wahine o te Motu, Daphne Brassell/Department of Internal affairs, Wellington, 1993, pp. 195–207. 6. Alice H. Cook, Val R. Lorwin, Arlene Kaplan Daniels, The Most Difficult Revolution: Women and Trade Unions, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1992, p. 1. 7. See for instance Sheila Cunnison and Jane Stageman (eds), Feminizing the Unions: Challenging the Culture of Masculinity, Avebury, Aldershot, 1993 and Melanie Oppenheimer & Maree Murray (eds), Proceedings of the 5th Women and Labour Conference, 29 September – 1 October 1995 Macquarie University, Macquarie University, Sydney, 1997. 8. Jennifer Curtin, Women in Trade Unions: Strategies for the Representation of Women's Interests in Four Countries, PhD thesis, ANU, 1997, p. 2, see also pp. 1–13 and 81–87. 9. Barry York, 'Trade Union Leaders in the Oral History Collection', NLA (National Library of Australia) News, vol. xii, no. 12, September 2002, p.3. 10. Curtin's work, 'Women in Trade Unions', involved 17 interviews of Australian women unionists between August 1994 and April 1995 but these are not available in a public repository. 11. 'TUHP Achievements', Trade Union History Project Newsletter, no. 30, July 2002, pp. 2–4. 12. A. Bollard and R. Buckle (eds), Economic Liberalisation in New Zealand, Allen and Unwin, Wellington 1987. Jane Kelsey, The New Zealand Experiment: a World Model for Structural Adjustment, GP Print, Wellington, 1996. 13. Shaun Ryan, 'No Straight Answers: Personality, Politics, Religion and the Oral History of New Zealand Trade Union Activists', unpublished paper to the National Oral History Association of New Zealand Conference, Massey University, Palmerston North, 1999 and 'Bullshit & Grand Conspiracies: the Confessions of an Oral Historian' unpublished paper to the TUHP AGM, Wellington, 1999. 14. The TUHP applied for $12,000 and was awarded $7,000. 15. Shaun Ryan interviews with: Hazel Armstrong (b.1952), November 1999; Judy Attenberger (b.1938), November 1999; Hilary Brown (b.1929), March 1999; Angela Foulkes (b. 1948), September/October 1999; Maxine Gay (b.1951), October/December 1999; Lois Hampstead (b.1947), November 1999; Joyce Hawe (b.1930), September 1999; Reatha McInnes (b.1918), December 1998; Sue Piper (b.1951), November 1999; Maryan Street (b.1955), November 1999; Sue Wetere (b.1949), October 1999; all in ATL. 16. Sonja Davies, Bread and Roses: Sonja Davies, her story, Penguin, Auckland 1984, and a feature film made out of it. Therese O'Connell is one of the few trade unionists for whom we have archival sources, 1970–92, MS Group 0223. The ATL has a range of interviews: Maxine Harris and Rona Bailey interviewed by Kerry Taylor; Freda (Fuzz) Barnes interviewed by Judith Fyfe; Ellen Edith (Nellie) Bell interviewed by Sarah Dalton. In 1985 the PSA collected oral testimony from a dozen women involved in the union from the 1940s until the 1960s as part of its commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the public sector equal pay act: Interviews with Mary Boyd, Grace du Faur, Maureen Evans (Dench), Margaret Long (Brand), Joyce McBeath, Margot Jenkins (Rodden), Jim Ferguson, Beverley Hurrelle, Barry Tucker and Cath Kelly (Eichelbaum), plus a group discussion (Mary Boyd, Rona Bailey, Maire Dwyer, Margaret Long), 1987 held at the Equal Pay Oral Archive, Dan Long Memorial Library, PSA. See also Melanie Nolan, comp. and Margot Roth (ed.), Fifty Years of Struggle: the Story of Equal Pay. TUHP Annual Seminar 25 October 1997, TUHP, Wellington, 1998. 17. M. Miles and A. Huberman, Qualitative Data Analysis. An Expanded Sourcebook, (2nd ed.) Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, 1994. 18. For a discussion of the organising model of unionism in New Zealand, Australia and Britain see, respectively: Sarah Oxenbridge, Running to Stand Still: New Zealand Service Sector Trades Union Responses to the Employment Contracts Act 1991, PhD thesis, Victoria University of Wellington, 1998, pp. 70–80; E. Heery, D. Simms, R. Simpson, R. Delbridge and J. Salmon, 'Organising Unionism Comes to the UK', Employee Relations, vol. 22, no. 1, 2000, pp. 38–57. 19. Bill Fletcher Jr. and Richard W. Hurd, 'Beyond the Organizing Model: the Transformation Process in Local Unions' in K. Bronfenbrenner, S. Friedman, R. Hurd, R. Oswold, and R. Seeber (eds), Organising to Win: New Research on Union Strategies, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1998, pp. 37–53. 20. See for example, Jane Lewis, 'The Debate on Sex and Class', New Left Review, no. 149, 1985, pp. 108–120. 21. R. Yin, Case Study Research: Design and Methods (2nd ed.), Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, 1994. 22. Mrs E. Bell, President of the Clerical Workers Union, address to the Federation of Labour (FOL) annual conference in 1969 on women's inactivity: 'Women in Trade Unions: New Zealand', Labour and Employment Gazette, vol. xix, no. 3, August 1969, p.12. 23. H. Roth, Trade Unions in New Zealand. Past and Present, Reed Education, Wellington, 1973, p.130. 24. K. E. Threadwell, 'Women in Trade Unions', unpublished research paper, F.O.L, Wellington 1977, pp. 7–8. See also 'Women and New Zealand Trade Unions', N.Z. F.O.L. Bulletin, September 1976 and The Role of Women in the Distribution Industry: Report by the Distribution Council August 1976, Distribution Council, Wellington 1976. 25. Patricia Sarr, Out of the Chorus Line: the Progress of Women in New Zealand Unions, CTU, Wellington, 1992 and Shifting Sands: Women in New Zealand Unions 1993, CTU, Wellington, 1993. Anne Boyd, Moving Mountains: the Progress of Women in New Zealand Unions 1997, CTU, Wellington, 1997. 26. Barbara M. Werheimer and Anne H. Nelson, Trade Union Women: a Study of Their Participation in New York City Locals, Praeger Publishers, New York, 1975, p. 7. 27. Edmund Heery and Joan Kelly, 'A Cracking job for a woman': a profile of women trade union officials', Industrial Relations Journal, vol. 20, no.3 1989, pp. 192–202. Martina Nightingale, Facing the Challenge: Women in Victorian Unionism VTHC, VTHC (Victorian Trades Hall Council), Melbourne, 1991, pp. 10–20. Pamela Roby and Lynet Uttall, 'Putting it all together: the Dilemmas of Rank-and-File Union Leaders' and Lois Gray, 'The Route to the Top: Female Union Leaders and Union Policy' in Dorothy Sue Cobble (ed.), Women and Unions: Forging a partnership, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, 1993, pp. 363–377 & 378–393 respectively. Julie White, Sisters and Solidarity: Women and Unions in Canada, Thompson Educational Publications, Toronto, 1993. Elizabeth Lawrence, Gender and Trade Unions, Taylor and Francis, Bristol, 1994. Carmel Shute, 'Unequal Partners: Women, Power and the Trade Union Movement' in Norma Grieve and Ailsa Burns (eds), Australian Women: Contemporary Feminist Thought, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1994, pp. 166–178. Kathie Muir, 'Difference or Deficiency: Gender, Representation and Meaning in Unions' in Barbara Pocock (ed.), Strife: Sex and Politics in Labour Unions, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1997, pp. 172–193. 28. Society for Research on Women Wellington Branch, Women and Trade Unions: an Exploratory Study in Three Wellington Unions, Society for Research on Women, Wellington, 1991. Alison Enright, Standing Together: Report on Women's Participation in the Diary Workers' Union, prepared for the New Zealand Dairy Workers Union by the Centre for Labour and Trade Union Studies University of Waikato Hamilton in association with the Working Women's Resource Centre, Auckland, 1995. 29. Tom Skinner with John Berry, Man to Man, Whitcouls, Christchurch, 1980. See an excellent analysis of one powerful man's influence, Megan Cook, Gender and Paid Work in New Zealand, 1950 to 1972, MA thesis, University of Otago, 2000, ch. 2. 30. Nellie Bell, interviewed by Sarah Dalton, ATL. 31. Alan J. Geare, Joyce J. Herd, John M. Howells, Women in Trade Unions: A Case Study of Participation in New Zealand, Industrial Relations Centre, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, 1979, p. 5. 32. Judy Attenberger, interviewed by Shaun Ryan, November 1999, ATL. 33. Philip S. Foner, Women and the American Labor Movement: From World War I to the Present, The Free Press, New York, esp. ch. 27. 34. Lisa Davies with Natalie Jackson, Women's Labour Force Participation in New Zealand: the Past 100 years, New Zealand Social Policy Agency, Wellington, 1993. 35. Karen Threadwell, 'Women in Trade Unions', unpublished research paper. See the argument implicit in work such as Bert Roth, Along the Line: 100 years of Post Office Unionism, New Zealand Post Office Union, Wellington, 1990, pp. 84, 145–46. 36. Boston, Women Workers and the Trade Unions, ch. 11, 'You'll have to do it yourselves, 1968–1975', esp. pp. 278–280. 37. Sonja Davies, 'Women in New Zealand', in John L. Robson and Jack Shallcrass (eds), Spirit of an Age: New Zealand in the Seventies: Essays in Honour of W. B. Sutch, Reed, Wellington, 1975, p. 145. 'Women in Trade Unions', PSA Research Paper, no. 4 (1976), p. 8. National Council of Women of New Zealand, What Price Equality? Women and Work in New Zealand, NCW, Wellington, 1974, p. 49. 38. Mrs McInnes, interviewed by Shaun Ryan, December 1999. 39. See Northern Wellington (twenty-five miles radius), Westland and Otago and Southland Clerical Workers' Award, Book of Awards, vol. 38, 1938, p. 1593. 40. Department of Labour, New Zealand Clerical Workers' Award, Book of Awards, vol. 66, Government Print, Wellington, 1966, p. 3067. 41. For one of the few discussions of the disposal of sanitary products in postwar New Zealand society, see Barbara Brookes and Margaret Tennant, 'Making Girls Modern: Pakeha Women and Menstruation in New Zealand, 1930–70', Women's History Review, vol. 7, no. 4, 1998, pp. 573–4. 42. Carolyn Moynihan, On Your Side: a History of the Northern Clerical, Administrative and Related Workers Union 1936–86, Northern Clerical Union Auckland, 1986. 43. Mrs McInnes, interviewed by Shaun Ryan, December 1999. 44. NZFOL National Executive, No Laughing Matter, FOL, Wellington, 1984. 45. Melanie Nolan, 'Jane Elizabeth Runciman 1873–1950' (Secretary Dunedin Tailoresses Union, 1908–1945), Dictionary of New Zealand Biography (DNZB), vol. 3 1900–1920, Bridget Williams Books/Department of Internal Affairs, Wellington, 1996, pp. 447–49; Jim McAloon, 'Mabel Bowen Howard 1894–1972', (Secretary Canterbury General Labourers' Union 1933–1943), DNZB, vol. 5, 1940–1960, Auckland University Press/Department of Internal Affairs, Wellington, 2000, pp. 239–40; Inga Renner, secretary and various official holder, Wellington Clerical Union 1938–1960, see Peter Franks, 'Hurrah, Hurrah, for F.P. Walsh? The Clerical Workers' Union 1938–1960' in Pat Walsh (ed.), Trade Unions, Work and Society, Dunmore Press, Palmerston North, 1994, pp. 127–154; Melanie Nolan, 'Nada Hazel Clark 1922–1964' (Secretary Wellington Trades and Labour Council 1959–1964 & Acting Secretary NZFOL 1962), DNZB, vol. 5, pp. 104–5. 46. Kevin Hince with Kerry Taylor, Jacqui Peace and Michael Biggs, Opening Hours: History of the Wellington Shop Employees Union, Wellington Shop Employees Union, Wellington, 1990, p. 74. 47. See reference to Muriel Thompson (Assistant Secretary Post Office Union, January 1967 & General Secretary 1967–83) in Roth, Along the Line, p. 207. Ellen Edith (Nellie) Bell (President NZ Clerical Association 1965–1980, interviewed by Sarah Dalton, ATL. Therese O'Connell papers. Sonja Davies, Bread and Roses. Joyce Hawe interviewed by Shaun Ryan, September 1999, ATL. 48. Linda Hill and Rosemary Du Plessis, 'Tracing the Similiarities. Identifying the Differences: Women and the Employment Contracts Act, New Zealand Journal of Industrial Relations, vol. 18, no. 1, 1993, pp. 31–43. Linda Hill, Organising the Markets for Women's Work: Feminism and Unionism in New Zealand, PhD thesis, University of Canterbury, 1994. Pat Walsh, 'The Privatization of Social Aspiration: Trade Unions in New Times', Sites, vol. 20, 1990, pp. 99–109. 49. Moynihan, On Your Side, pp. 98–99. Therese O'Connell Papers, ATL, Acc 90–214 Box 1/1. 50. Christine Dann, Up from Under: Women and Liberation in New Zealand 1970–1985, Allen & Unwin/Port Nicholson Press, Wellington, 1985, pp. 92–95. See discussion, PSA Journal, October and December 1980 issues. 51. Helen Watson, 'Learning to Win the Game: Auckland Feminist Teachers', Women's Studies Journal, vol. 7, no. 1, May 1991, pp. 55–65. 52. See material in Therese O'Connell papers such as 'Women in Trade Unions', Report on a Wellington Trades Council Seminar, September 1979'; Frances McCallion, Women discuss discrimination, Socialist Action, 10 August 1979 p. 4; Report on a seminar organised by the Women's Subcommittee of the Wellington Trade Council, 4 Aug 1979; and Women's Sub-Committee report, Wellington District Council NZFOL Annual Report for the Year October 1981–September 1982 Acc 90–214 Box 1/1, ATL. 53. See papers associated with the Inaugural NZCTU Policy Conference's endorsing of structures to ensure women and Maori representation at all levels, Therese O'Connell Papers, ATL, Acc 90–214. 54. Roth, Along the Line, p. 271. 55. 'Busy and Successful Decade for Women', New Zealand Tribune, 11 March 1991, p. 3. 56. Felicity Burton, The New Zealand Women Teachers' Association 1901–1964, unpublished MA research essay, University of Auckland, 1986, p. 83. 57. Public Service Journal, 15 May 1914, p. 2. 58. NZCTU, Closing the Gap: Presentations to the Forum on Equal Pay 13 June 1997, CTU, Wellington, 1997. 59. Judy Attenberger, interviewed by Shaun Ryan, November 1999. 60. Lois Hampstead, interviewed by Shaun Ryan, November 1999. 61. Working Woman, June 1990, ATL. 62. The WWRC Management Committee for instance included: Phyllis Comerford, D. Gill Day, Lesley Harry, Maureen Sakey, Maryann Street, Alex Woodly (CWA), Chrissy Aro (Woolen Workers), Helen Duncan, Fiona Johnston (NZEI), Leonie Morris (Hotel Workers' Union), Kerry Davies, Lois Hampstead, Glenda Hinchey (NDU),Lisa Thompson (Early Childhood Workers Union), Jocelyn Gibson (PEWU). 63. There are various reports of this all-woman executive, see for instance, PSA Journal, September 1991, pp. 1–3 & June 1992, p. 3. 64. Peter Franks, Print and Politics: a History of Trade Unions in the New Zealand Printing Industry, 1865–1995, Victoria University Press, Wellington, 2001, ch. 3. 65. Sue Piper, interviewed by Shaun Ryan, November 1999. 66. Particularly the PSA sponsored women's conferences in 1976, 1983 and 1990. 67. D. Ledwith, F. Colgan, P. Joyce and M. Hayes, 'The Making of Women Trade Union Leaders', Industrial Relations Journal, vol. 21, no. 2, 1990, pp. 112–25. 68. Anne Boyd, Bargaining Under Attack: the Review of Bargaining Provisions under the ECA, CTU, Wellington, 1995. 69. The 2002 CTU conference was the first held for a decade against a background of rising membership. 70. A. Crawford, R. Harbridge and K. Hince, 'Unions and Union Membership in New Zealand: Annual Review of 1996', New Zealand Journal of Industrial Relations, vol. 22, no. 2, 1997, pp. 209–216. 71. Labor Council of NSW, Workers Online, no. 52, 5 May 2000, p.1. 72. Joyce Hawe, interviewed by Shaun Ryan, September 1999. 73. S. Hammond and R. Harbridge, 'Women and Enterprise Bargaining: The New Zealand Experience of Labour Market deregulation', The Journal of Industrial Relations, vol. 37, 1995, pp. 359–376. 74. CTU Work: Newsletter of the NZ Council of Trade Unions, July 1994. 75. Hazel Armstrong, interviewed by Shaun Ryan, November 1999, ATL. 76. E. Heery and Joan Kelly, 'Professional, Participative and Managerial Unionism: an Interpretation of Change in Trade Unions', Work, Employment and Society, vol. 8, no. 1, 1994, pp. 1–22. 77. CTU Work: Newsletter of the NZ Council of Trade Unions, July 1994. See also Teresa Conrow, 'Contract Servicing From an Organizing Model: Don't Bureaucratize, Organize!', Labour Research Review, no. 17, Spring 1991, p.51. 78. CTU, Organizing Women Workers: Mobilizing Women Workers Using the Organizing Model, CTU, Wellington, 1995. 79. Judy Attenberger, interviewed by Shaun Ryan, November 1999. 80. R. Undy, V. Ellis, W.E.J. McCarthy, and A.M. Halmos, Change in Trade Unions: the Development of UK Unions since the 1960s, Hutchinson, London, 1981. P. Lange, G. Ross and M. Vannicelli, Unions, Change and Crisis: French and Italian Union Strategy and the Political Economy, 1945–1980, George Allen and Unwin, London, 1982. 81. P. Brosnan, D. Smith and P. Walsh, The Dynamics of New Zealand Industrial Relations, John Wiley, Auckland, 1990. 82. Oxenbridge, 'Running to Stand Still', pp. 456, 482. 83. Hince et al., Opening Hours, p. 70. 84. Report to Management Committee, 22 June 1967, Wellington Taranaki and Marlborough Clerical Workers' IUOW Minutes, 22 June 1967–16 December 1971 MS Group 367 Acc 92–16, ATL. 85. Ibid., Annual General Meeting, 7 September 1967. 86. Purdue had a background in the tailoresses' and drug workers' unions, 'Autobiography, November 1991', Women's Heritage Trust collection, Auckland Public Library. C.M. Purdue to D. Jacob, Secretary Auckland Clerical and Office Staff, 11 July 1967, Auckland Women's Archives, Auckland Museum Collection, MS 1500. 87. An album of these activities of press photos and of the Clerical Luncheon Club is held at the Auckland Women's Archives, Auckland, Museum Collection. 88. Newsletter, Equal Pay for Equal Work, Council for Equal Pay and Opportunity's newsletter, no. 2, October 1969, p. 1. See also Jacqueline Steincamp, 'Christchurch Equal Pay Committee Comes Apart at the Seams', New Zealand Monthly Review, June 1970, pp. 9–10. 89. Sylvia Baynes, 'Waiting for the Suffragettes' in Maud Cahill and Christine Dann (eds), Changing Our Lives: Women Working in the Women's Liberation Movement, 1970–1990, Bridget Williams Books, Wellington, 1991, p. 37. 90. Hazel Armstrong, interview by Shaun Ryan, November 1999, ATL. See also Christine, Dann, 'Clerical Workers, the Quiet Union', Broadsheet, no. 45, December 1976, pp. 12–15. 91. Lawrence, Gender and Trade Unions, pp. 4–5. 92. cited by Norbert C. Solden (ed.), The World of Women's Trade Unionism: Comparative Historical Essays, Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut, 1985, p. 4. 93. The Dominion, 17 July 1999 p. 18; Sunday Star-Times, 18 July 1999, C7. 94. See Human Rights Commission, Women in Banking: a Report on Complaints of Sex Discrimination in the Employment of Women in the New Zealand Banking System, Human Rights Commission, Wellington, 1984. Human Rights Commission, Progress Report on the Implementation of Equal Opportunities Programme in New Zealand Trade Banks, Wellington June 1986. See also Jenny Neale, Women and Men in Banking: a Survey of Career Patterns, New Zealand Bank Officers' Union, Wellington 1983. Patricia Sarr, Unbalanced Banking. The Campaign for Equality for Women Bankers, New Zealand Bank Officers' Union, Wellington, 1988. Julie O'Brien et. al, Shortchanged: a Survey of Part-Time Workers in the Banking Industry, FinSec, The Finance Sector Union, Wellington, 1991. 95. Angela Foulkes, interview by Shaun Ryan, September/October 1999. 96. See Viv Walker, 'A Working-Class Woman Meets Feminism', in Cahill and Dann (eds), Changing Our Lives, pp. 106–7. 97. Judy Attenberger, Lois Hampstead, Maryan Street, interviews by Shaun Ryan, November 1999. 98. Maxine Gay interviewed by Shaun Ryan, October/December 1999; Lois Hampstead and Maryan Street interviewed by Shaun Ryan, November 1999. 99. See for example, Cook, et al, The Most Difficult Revolution: Women and Trade Unions, p. 8. 100. Hilary Brown, interviewed by Shaun Ryan, March 1999. 101. Judy Attenberger, interviewed by Shaun Ryan, November 1999. 102. Hazel Armstrong, interviewed by Shaun Ryan, November 1999; Reatha McInnes, interviewed by Shaun Ryan, December 1998; Angela Foulkes interviewed by Shaun Ryan, September/October 1999; Judy Attenberger interviewed by Shaun Ryan, November 1999; Joyce Hawe, September 1999; Sue Piper, November 1999; Maryan Street interviewed by Shaun Ryan, November 1999; Maxine Gay interviewed by Shaun Ryan, October/December 1999. Maxine Harris interviewed by Kerry Taylor September 1995. Margaret Long interviewed by Melanie Nolan, February 1992. 103. See also the male unionists' accounts, Don Aimer, (New Zealand Bank Officers' Union) interviewed by Shaun Ryan September 1998 and Graeme Oglivie, (Insurance Workers' Union) interviewed by Shaun Ryan October 1998, ATL. 104. Mary Boyd, Grace du Faur, Maureen Evans (Dench), Margaret Long (Brand), Joyce McBeath, Margot Jenkins (Rodden), Beverley Hurrelle, and Cath Kelly (Eichelbaum), Rona Bailey, Maire Dwyer, interviewed by Margaret Corner 1987, Dan Long Library, PSA. 105. Pleasance Hansen, Women's Employment Issues, New Zealand 1967–1987: An Account of the Activities and Issues Addressed by the National Advisory Council on the Employment of Women, Labour Department, Wellington, 1987. 106. P.J. Hyman and A. Clark, 'Equal Pay Study Phase One Report', Department of Labour, Wellington, 1987, pp 7–8. Margaret Wilson convened a Working Group on Equal Employment Opportunity which urged government to legislate against the undervaluation of women's work. 107. Lisa Sabbage, 'The Employment Equity Act: the Best Thing Since Sliced Bread', Broadsheet, October 1988, pp. 6–7. 108. Hansen, Women's Employment Issues, New Zealand 1967–1987, p. 21. It was led by Dana Glendinning, Martha Coleman, Alison Lash, Joanna Beresford, Ros Noonan, Susan Iverson, Rachel Brown. 109. Sue Iverson, 'Why Women get Paid Less', Broadsheet, January/February, 1987, p. 39. 110. Margaret Long, interviewed by Melanie Nolan, February 1992. 111. Angela Foulkes interviewed by Shaun Ryan, September/October 1999; Hilary Brown, March 1999; Lois Hampstead, November 1999. 112. Compare New Zealand Labour Party, Women's Policy, 1984 Policy Documents, NZLP, Wellington, 1984 with CTU, The Women's Agenda, CTU, Wellington, 1997. 113. See Helen Dee, 'Why Unions Must adopt Working Women's Charter', Socialist Action, 19 October 1979, p. 11 114. Angela Foulkes, interviewed by Shaun Ryan September/October 1999. 115. Maxine Gay, interviewed by Shaun Ryan interviewed by Shaun Ryan, October/December 1999 116. Franks, 'Hurrah, Hurrah, for F.P. Walsh? The Clerical Workers' Union 1938–1960'. 117. Maryan Street, interviewed by Shaun Ryan, November 1999; Hilary Brown, March 1999; Judy Attenberger, November 1999; Angela Foulkes, September/October 1999. 118. Jo Stanley, 'Including the Feelings: Personal Political Testimony and Self-disclosure', Oral History, vol. 24, no. 1, Spring, 1996, p. 86. 119. Dominion, 21 February 1998. 120. Hazel Armstrong, interview by Shaun Ryan, November 1999. See also Viv Walker, 'A Working-Class Woman Meets Feminism', in Cahill and Dann (eds), Changing Our Lives, p. 103. 121. Maxine Gay, interviewed by Shaun Ryan, October/December 1999 122. Nightingale, Facing the Challenge, pp. 10–20. 123. Curtin, 'Women in Trade Unions', pp. 91–92.

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