gender, diversity and trade unions: international perspectives

Book Reviews

Womens Resources in Business Start-Up. A Study of Black and WhiteWomen Entrepreneurs, by Katherine Inman. Garland Publishing, 2000, 321pp.; hbk £40.

The study presented in this book originates from the author’s dissertationfor a Ph.D in sociology at the University of Georgia in 1997. It explores theexperiences of African American and European American women businessowners, comparing and contrasting the process of small business start-up forboth groups and the differences in opportunities in three types of commu-nities: rural, small city and large urban areas. The study is carried out in thesouth-east of the United States of America and is based on research inter-views with 65 women in traditional and non-traditional businesses. It seeksto determine women’s motives and goals in business ownership and inter-rogates the circumstances surrounding, and their effect upon, resource mobi-lization. The study is not concerned solely with economic action but alsoconsiders the social affiliations of women business owners, showing thesmall business start-up not merely as a mechanical process but as a marriageof motivation, the economic and the personal.

The book focuses predominantly on two central questions: what motivateswomen to start businesses and how they garner the resources to carry outtheir goals?

The author uses rational choice theory (Becker, 1964, 1975, 1993) to focuson why women are motivated to become entrepreneurs, rather than seekother forms of work but accepts the limitations of this theory, acknowledg-ing that women’s preferences may simply reflect the best choice under a set of difficult circumstances. Inman builds upon rational choice theory toinclude non-economic motives, contingent decision-making, opportunitiesand constraints based on group membership, external and internal pushesand pulls from multiple group membership and influences from relation-ships. Social embeddedness/social capital theory (Coleman, 1988, 1990; Granovetter, 1973, 1982, 1992) are used to draw attention to the ways inwhich individuals use social ties to access other forms of capital, for example,information, skill and credentials and shows how women with few social tiesconvert them into assets. The author also uses feminist theories of women’slabour market involvement (Folbre, 1994; Gerson, 1985) in order to rational-ize non-economic motives for small business start-ups and to show the struc-tural constraints and situational contingencies that women face when theytake the decision to start their own business.

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The women are divided into two categories: those who were internallymotivated to start up and had planned to start a business and those who hadbeen externally motivated to start up as a response to circumstances such asredundancy. In Chapter 2, Society and the economic actor, the author reviewsthe theoretical and empirical literature on entrepreneurship and applies theseperspectives to gender and race. Chapters 3 to 5 examine data collectedthrough interviews with black and white women business owners withinvarious types of businesses in different geographical locations. Chapters 5 to 9group the women according to business and occupational motivation and thecircumstance under which they start up, examining differences and similari-ties in the processes of resource mobilization. The author looks at methodsused in raising finance and analyses the social and business relationships thatwomen use and how this affects decision-making. Chapter 10, Making choiceswith limited options, concludes by revisiting the theoretical frames and apply-ing them to women’s practical experiences of small business start-ups.

Katherine Inman has many interesting insights into what motivateswomen to start up and how they garner resources. She finds that:

1. Women follow both planned and unplanned paths to business ownership.

2. The structure of a profession and attitudes to race and gender can affecta woman’s decision to start up.

3. Women approach start-up with differing skill sets and financialresources.

4. Rural African American women tend to focus on trades and are morelikely to found personal service or retail businesses while EuropeanAmerican women found a wider range of businesses.

5. Only in large metropolitan areas do African American women enter arange of businesses similar to those occupied by European Americanwomen.

6. Human capital is acquired differently by each group: business plannerssought formal training whereas those who had not expected to own abusiness relied upon skills gained in employment.

7. Educational opportunities were most limited for rural African Americanwomen.

8. Black women tended to have a mix of occupational and business skillswhilst European American women usually had one or the other.

9. All women used widely varied resources to finance their business, oftencombining these sources to start up.

10. All the women convert their social resources into human and economicresources and blur the boundaries between public and private sources ofcapital but African American women draw more heavily upon social tiesfor finance and use relatives to provide free premises and labour as costsaving strategies.

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Whilst these insights were interesting and serve to emphasize the need for arethink on public policy in order to address additional barriers faced by ruralAfrican American women the book would have benefited from a less com-plicated structure.

References

Becker, Gary (1964, 1975, 1993 editions) Human Capital. Chicago: University ofChicago Press.

Coleman, James S. (1988) Social capital in the creation of human capital. AmericanJournal of Sociology, 94 Supplement: S95–S120.

Coleman, James S. (1990) Foundations of Social Theory. Cambridge MA: Harvard Uni-versity Press.

Folbre, Nancy (1994) Who Pays for the Kids? Gender and the Structures of Constraint.London and New York: Routledge.

Gerson, Kathleen (1985) Hard Choices: How Women Decide about Work, Career and Motherhood. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Granovetter, Mark (1973) The strength of weak ties. American Journal of Sociology, 78(May), 1360–80.

Granovetter, Mark (1982) The strength of weak ties: a network theory revisited. InMarsden, P.V. and Lin, N. (eds) Social Structure and Network Analysis, pp. 104–130.Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

Granovetter, Mark (1992) Economic action and social structure. the problem ofembeddedness. In Granovetter, M. and Swedberg, R. (eds) The Sociology of Eco-nomic Life, Ch. 3. Boulder: Westview Press.

CAROLINE MILLERKeele University, UK

The Conduct of Care by Joanna Latimer. Blackwell Science Ltd, 2000, i–xiv,192 pp., pbk £19.99.

The questions regarding ‘what is nursing’ and ‘what do modern nurses do’has been an intriguing area for researchers for a number of years and hasstimulated many discussions amongst the profession as a whole. JoannaLatimer goes some way in answering these thought-provoking issues, as wellas highlighting some other interesting areas in an ethnographic study basedupon her own empirical work.

The book begins by examining the complexities of modern nursing prac-tice and introduces the reader to the important issues of visibility of nursingwork, professionalization and accountability. This visibility is returned tothroughout the book and is seen as being a justification for what nurses do.

The ‘clinical domain’ is introduced to the reader as being an area wherefirst-class medicine can take place. However, it is recognized early in thebook that for first-class medicine to be practiced there needs to be a supply

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of appropriate patients. The reader learns how patients are stripped of their identities and then categorized into appropriate/inappropriate oracute/social. Subsequent observation and exposure of patients is seen as ameans of ‘putting patients in their place’ in the hierarchy. Patients are alsoseen as not being able to express their needs so that care is administered froma nurse’s perspective, with social care being seen as being of little value.

Latimer further examines the transition of individuals from person topatient and back to person again. However, it is seen that for patients to beboth appropriate and acute they need to be amenable to rehabilitation. If theyare not, they are in danger of becoming a social problem and seen as unableto make the transition back to being individuals. Patients are seen as beingin categories and where they are placed in the ward and the type of caredelivered to them is directly linked to what category they belong to. Patientsare constantly being categorized and re-categorized by both the medical andnursing staff during the medical round and the so-called ‘social’ round,where the patients’ family circumstances are discussed. The categories towhich patients belong are crucial in determining their place in the wardsetting and the type of nursing care that they receive.

Patients are socialized into the clinical domain by being stripped of theiridentity and labelled with a loss of control over their own lives. Jewelleryand belongings are put into bags and taken by relatives for safekeeping. Inthis way patients are ‘put in their place’ and are controlled by the care-givers,thus allowing them to be moved through the beds more efficiently, which isviewed as being another crucial issue within the health care agenda.

Patients who are seen as being acute and appropriate are not only able totransfer back to being a person when well but are also viewed as being morein need as opposed to social care which is viewed as being a ‘poor relation’and of limited value. Social cases were viewed by the nursing staff as being‘bed blockers’ who were both inappropriate and needed little of the first-class medicine of acute care delivery. Because these patients are classified as‘bed blockers’ they are unable to be moved through the system, therebyreducing the efficiency of the service.

The bedside of patients is viewed as being made up of three social spaces.The medical gaze is concerned with treatment and medical diagnosis. Thisincludes medical technology, intravenous infusions, drug charts and otherobservable material which shows which category the patient belongs to andtherefore, what care they can expect to receive. These signs show the worldthat this individual, in this bed, is indeed a patient.

The nurses’ extended gaze is used to denote if patients can be moved onthrough the beds, if they are recovering or becoming in need of ‘social’ care.Latimer finally views the bedside as being a place where the individualmakes the transition to patient through the removal of identity and au-tonomy and where patients are either included or excluded from first-classmedicine.

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The visibility of nursing work is viewed as being crucial to the profession.Delivering technical care is seen as being of far more value than merelytalking to a patient, which is categorized as ‘social’ care. Latimer suggeststhat this visibility, which is seen as being the central focus of nursing, is beingeroded by the use of health-care support workers who are increasingly takingon more traditional nursing roles. To help overcome this nurses are becom-ing more be involved in technical or medical tasks which junior doctorswould have performed in order to regain their visibility. This fact is used byLatimer to explain why there are increasing numbers of people who join theprofession as a job and not as a vocation and the exclusion of mundane taskssuch as washing and feeding patients: tasks that generally fall on health-caresupport workers or student nurses who have yet to be socialized into theprofession.

This text is a fascinating encounter with the nurses’ world and seeks toexplain a number of issues which would be significant to anyone who hasworked in the ward situation in recent years. The strength of the text lies,not only in the detailed ethnography, but in the ways in which the rou-tinization and socialization of nursing is examined within the ward setting,including the ways in which patients are dealt with. This fluently writtenbook would be useful for both pre-registration and post-registration nursesas well as sociology students. It goes some way into explaining why nursesdo what they do and may help to enlighten people to the problems faced incontemporary nursing practice.

JULIE DOUGLASKeele University, UK

Gender, Diversity and Trade Unions: International Perspectives, edited byFiona Colgan and Sue Ledwith. Routledge, 2002 Research in EmploymentRelations series, i–xv, 320 pp., hbk £65.

The internal democracy of trade unions and the extent to which identifiablegroups of union members are encouraged and predisposed to participatewithin unions is a well-travelled path in the industrial relations literature.The importance of issues related to democracy and membership participa-tion was spelt out in the 1960s by Hughes (1968), who argued that to be effec-tive trade unions need the active support of their members. This has becomeincreasingly important as union membership diversified, encompassinggrowing numbers of women, but also of black and ethnic minority workersand those who are disabled, or who wish to identify themselves as of a different sexual orientation.

Debates about union participation and exclusion relating to gender andrace are not new, of course; Rowbotham (1973) and Davis (1993) are among



many who have commented on the marginalization or exclusion of suchgroups in post-industrial revolution decades, along with many (such asCockburn, 1983; Westwood, 1984; inter alia) who brought the debates into thelate 20th century. The role of trade unions is, first and foremost, to representtheir members and negotiate their terms and conditions of employment.However, as union membership diversifies, the needs and priorities ofmembers become more diverse and unions may have to adapt their struc-tures and democratic processes to reflect and accommodate members.Colgan and Ledwith’s edited collection is therefore as much about the inter-nal organization of trade unions as it is about the advances unions have madefor their female and minority-group members. The book’s aim is not to offera comparative approach, which would be an impossible task, given the vastdifferences in economic and social conditions in the countries studied but,instead, as the editors put it, to bring together debates about women, genderand diversity in trade unions in order to develop an international perspec-tive on reshaping trade union democracy. They do so by using a series ofempirical studies from a range of cultures and continents to identify andevaluate the manner in which unions and union structures respond to labourmarket conditions, changing demographic conditions and the challenges toa traditional trade union agenda from the diverse priorities of their chang-ing memberships.

This is an interesting, though challenging, objective, particularly given thestark contrasts between some of the countries studied: can common themesgenuinely be identified between union structures and achievements inmature democracies such as the UK and Canada and those in developingeconomies, such as India, where the ability of women to participate in paidemployment is still severely restricted and where, as Hensman points out inthe chapter on India, for women of some castes, rape is still not considereda crime.

Issues of gender, race and ethnicity, diversity and class are pursuedthrough the various chapters. Strategies are identified for challenging andresisting traditional trade unionism, which is characterized as patriarchaland working-class and may exclude diverse groups or channel them intosome areas and away from others, or may even include them, but only incertain, well defined ways. Responses by these excluded or marginalizedgroups may include separate self-organization — as was the case in the 19th

century as women, excluded from ‘malestream’ trade unions, establishedtheir own unions — or they may include engaging with their unions to createmore representative structures and policies. Taking the view that the strengthof trade unions lies in their ability to adapt to their environment, Colgan andLedwith argue that the book’s case studies support Hyman’s (1996) argu-ment that the future of trade unions will depend on the unions’ capacity tobuild alliances and make apparently competing interests converge. Thesealliances may need to be global, rather than narrowly country-based. In this

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context, Briskin discusses Canadian unions’ transnational alliances withunions in less developed countries, such as El Salvador, to combat exploita-tion. In addition, as Kelly (1988) argues, while traditional industrial relationstakes for granted the fact that workers will be conscious of having commoninterests around which they may organize to challenge employers, it isimportant to recognize that workers need to be mobilized. In an environmentcontaining a diversity of interests and priorities among members and poten-tial members, trade unions must work to build a common identity and acommon sense of injustice. This cannot be done unless unions come to termswith the diversity in their memberships.

Chapters in the book cover North America (the USA and Canada) Europe(the UK, Italy, Sweden, Germany), India, the Far East (Malaysia), SouthAfrica and Australia. Its strengths, therefore, lie in the breadth of coverage,although one could question the justification for two chapters on the UK(Colgan and Ledwith, Healy and Kirton) and two on Canada (Briskin andHunt) while there is none on South America or China. Most chapters raiseissues of class and ethnicity as well as gender, illustrating the complex inter-relation of these factors. Todd and Bhopal reveal the dominance of ethnicityin Malaysia, a patriarchal society in which all women are marginalized, butthe labour market experience of women of Malay ethnicity is significantlyworse than that of Chinese women. Similarly, Hensman argues that in Indiagender is regarded as subordinate to issues of ethnicity, race, caste, languageand religion in a society in which, for the most part, women are marginal-ized and union organization is weak and fragmented. These themes ofgender and its relationship with class and ethnicity are similarly central toTshoaedi’s chapter on South Africa and gender democracy.

The chapters on the more prosperous economies reveal more sophisticatedforms of organizing, but raise many of the same issues. Italy, for instance,has the lowest female activity rate in Europe and what Beccalli and Meardidescribe as ‘union indifference’ (p. 116) to women, as shown by the lack ofdata on membership composition. Franzway argues that in Australia thelabour movement remains a ‘men’s movement’ (p. 287) and the incursion ofwomen into this environment is strongly resisted. The USA is interesting forthe contrast between low union density (14% of the workforce is in a tradeunion) and the very hostile environment which the trade union movementfaces and the strong activism of trade unions. The gendered dimension ofAmerican unions identified by Cobble and Michal is little different from thatin European countries or, indeed, Australia and Canada.

In a book encompassing such diverse national contexts, there is always arisk that the result could be simply a series of unconnected chapters withlittle in the way of common themes. The editors’ introduction is a strengthof the volume in this respect, although even in their own right the variouschapters are interesting and useful. As a whole, the collection is a valuable



addition to the international trade union literature, although some differentdecisions in relation to coverage may have been preferable.

References

Cockburn, C. (1983) Brothers: Male Dominance and Technological Change. London: PlutoPress.

Davis, M. (1993) Comrade or Brother? The History of the British Labour Movement1789–1951. London: Pluto Press.

Hughes, J. (1968) Trade Union Structure and Government Research Paper 5(2), Royal Commission on Trade Unions and Employers’ Associations. HMSO, London.

Hyman, R. (1996) Changing union identities in Europe. In Leisink, P., van Leemput,J. and Vilrokx, J. (eds) The Challenges to Trade Unions in Europe: Innovation or Adap-tion. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

Rowbotham, S. (1973) Hidden from History. London: Pluto Press.Kelly, J. (1998) Rethinking Industrial Relations: Mobilization, Collectivism and Long Waves.

London: Routledge.Westwood, S. (1984) All Day Every Day: Factory and Family in the Making of Women’s

Lives London: Pluto Press.

WENDY RICHARDSKeele University, UK

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gender, diversity and trade unions: international perspectives

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