FROM campaigning for better working conditions and an eight-hour day to demanding equal pay, women have played a vitally important role in Britain’s labour movement — rallying, organising and inspiring millions of us to fight for employment justice. 

On International Women’s Day 2022, it is worth highlighting some of the achievements and continuing challenges of women’s long struggle for workplace equality.  

Women’s involvement in the labour movement dates back to the early days of the industrial revolution when new jobs were created for women in the mills and factories. 

There were attempts to recruit women to the new trade unions as early as the 1830s and women formed their own Chartist Associations. 

The 1870s saw a rise in trade union activity among all workers. In 1874 Emma Paterson formed the Women’s Protective and Provident League to encourage trade unionism among women. 

That same year, a strike of unorganised woollen workers took place in Dewsbury against wage cuts and when the league took up their cause, the women won. 

Another important milestone was reached in 1883 with the formation of the Women’s Co-operative Guild as a campaigning organisation for working-class women which also provided educational opportunities.  

By the end of the century women were participating in and often initiating industrial action, the most well-known example being the female matchworkers at the Bryant & May factory in Bow. 

Throughout the 1870s and ’80s the matchworkers carried out a series of political actions to protest against their appalling working conditions, which included 14-hour workdays, poverty wages, excessive fines and severe health problems caused by working with white phosphorus. 

These actions came to a head in the strike of 1888, when 1,400 “matchgirls” — mainly teenage girls of Irish descent — walked out after the dismissal of one of the workers. 

As well as demanding her reinstatement, the matchgirls called for an end to the punitive system of fines and deductions. 

Following the intervention of the social reformer Annie Besant and the ensuing publicity, the managers acceded to the women’s demands in what became a landmark in women’s labour activism. 

Earlier this year, English Heritage announced that a blue plaque commemorating the strike is to be unveiled on the site of the former factory.  

More recently, in the post-war period, when women’s militancy was given a boost by second-wave feminism, women workers and trade unionists made significant advances for equality: in 1968 the women machinists at Ford’s Dagenham went on strike over the downgrading of their jobs from skilled to unskilled, which meant they would earn 15 per cent less than their male co-workers. 

Their action spread to the Halewood plant on Merseyside and completely stopped car production while the dispute lasted. 

In the end, although they didn’t win full parity with the men, their action forced management to improve its pay offer and led directly to the Equal Pay Act (1970) introduced by the Labour MP Barbara Castle who we also have to thank for the Sex Discrimination Act of 1975. 

Forty five years later, the gender pay gap still stands at just over 17 per cent growing to 40 per cent for part-time women workers. 

One of the reasons for this is that women are still overwhelmingly concentrated in low-paid, low-status jobs — so-called horizontal segregation. 

This inequality was highlighted in a landmark strike in Glasgow in 2018 when 8,500 women school staff, nursery workers, care workers, caterers and cleaners — from Unison and the GMB — walked out in the largest equal pay strike since the Equal Pay Act was passed. 

The strike, which followed years of legal disputes over disparities between men’s and women’s pay, led to a historic victory forcing payouts of up to £500 million from Glasgow City Council, giving women workers across the country cause for celebration and the confidence to fight back against inequality. 

While women now make up over 50 per cent of trade union members, they are still, as TUC figures attest, at a disadvantage as workers and under-represented in the labour movement’s structures. 

It is all too easy for the leadership to take women for granted as rank-and-file members and not prioritise the issues that matter to women. 

With the election of Sharon Graham to Unite general secretary on a promise to fight for women’s equality, there are hopeful signs of change, which we need to build on.

The Charter for Women was launched in the labour movement in 2004 to remedy the historic injustices faced by women and provide a campaigning programme for women trade unionists and labour movement activists. 

It has since been adopted by 27 trade unions and trades councils. Among its aims it lists the following: 

• Equalise opportunities and improve conditions for women workers
• Tackle the under-representation of women in the labour and trade union movement structures by proportionality and other measures 
• Campaign to reduce the gender pay gap and highlight its causes 
• End job segregation by improving training and opportunities for women 
• Ensure that unions fight more equal value claims 
• Campaign to raise the profile of the TUC, STUC and Welsh TUC’s women’s conferences as the “parliaments of working women.”

The Charter should be promoted widely within the labour movement as a means of advancing women’s interests. 

While it cannot of itself solve the contradictions for women workers under capitalism, it can ensure that our collective demands are heard and acted upon. 

Above all as trade unionists, we must never forget that women workers’ struggle is class struggle.

Sonya Andermahr works in higher education and is active in UCU.