Our Unions, Our Selves: The Rise of Feminist Labor Unions in Japan

• In Event: 501 - Regular Session. Labor/Labor Movements

Abstract

In the early 1990s, as part of a larger wave of union reform efforts in Japan, women began creating their own “women-only” labor unions, based on the “individual membership” model, to confront longstanding gender-inequality in the workplace and in traditional enterprise unions. Within just a few years, women-only unions were proving to be both the most effective option women had for addressing problems on the job and in serious danger of dying out because of their inability to grow their organizational capacity fast enough to meet demand. In other words, they were in danger of being crushed by the weight of their own success.

My paper outlines the development of Japanese women’s unions and analyzes how they developed new organizational theories and practices to overcome institutional inadequacies within existing unions and to address longstanding workplace issues such as sexual harassment, pay inequality, and involuntary temporary and part-time status. The paper reflects field research conducted between 2000 and 2011, including three years as a co-principal investigator on a successful international exchange project aimed at helping emerging women’s unions overcome practical challenges, in particular the organizational weaknesses inherent in the individual membership structure. In promoting intense problem-solving around the issues Japanese women’s unions considered primary obstacles to their success, the exchange provided a strategic site for studying the intersection of feminist/collectivist organization theory, labor studies, and feminism in practice as the Japanese women analyzed their successes and failures in enacting the theories of grassroots democracy they developed though their own experiences.

Author

• Anne Zacharias-Walsh