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Labour Research Service & Gender at Work
"
The Gender at Work Action Learning Process
with 4 South African Trade Unions”
Presentation
31 July 2013
Labour Research Service & Gender at Work
Women’s Empowerment, Gender Equality and Labour Rights:
Transforming the Terrain
Solidarity Centre Conference
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Labour Research Service & Gender at Work
 Women’s empowerment, gender equality
and labour rights: features of the South
African terrain
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• Very high levels of sexual violence in all spheres of life –
resulting in high levels of trauma
• Very few practical demonstrations of a commitment to
gender equality on the part of employers and
government in a context of relatively progressive
legislation
• Women in trade unions continue to struggle for gender
equality – even in the context of what appears to be a
backlash
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• Desperate search for work with official unemployment
rate 25.6% of those actively seeking employment and
an unofficial rate of anything between 36.5%– 40%
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 Organising women in
different sectors –
backdrop to our case
studies
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SACCAWU formed in 1975 the biggest union in the retail, hospitality
and catering sectors with a membership of 107 553
Agriculture – low wages, difficult working conditions, insecure
employment
• History of extreme levels of oppression and exploitation of farm
workers by farm owners
• High rates of domestic violence and alcoholism
• High numbers of women doing seasonal work
Sikhula Sonke formed in 2004 with a relatively small membership
of 3400 and organising in the Western Cape
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Retail – low paid, contract and short term work with on-going threat of
retrenchments.
• Long hours, shift work, lack of safe transport
• Majority of workers women with young women as casual and short
term contract employees
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HOSPERSA was formed as a nursing association in the 1950’s and
became a trade union in 1994 with a membership of 60 000.
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• Health Care – poor working conditions, low salaries, low morale and
high risk with on-going fears of exposure to HIV & Aids and multidrug resistant TB
• Devaluing of care giving work – equated with reproductive work
• Community frustration and anger at lack of service delivery –
directed at health care workers
• Face of the health care worker “female nurse”
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 Why the 4 unions were
interested in participating in
the Gender at Work Action
Learning Process
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“…searching out ways of working that will help the effects
of our work to resonate more deeply in the quality of
women and men’s everyday lives, relationships and work We attempt to support sustained activism and initiatives to
create new cultures of equality”
Our starting point is to build the power of individuals to
engage in sustained collective actions which have the
potential to shift existing behaviours and institutional
norms.
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The Gender at Work facilitators in South Africa describe their mission as:
Personal change is a key to organisational processes
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BCAWU formed in 1975 with a fluctuating membership of 32 000.
One of 2 key unions organising in the sector the other is the National
Union of Mineworkers
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Construction – controlled by large companies with a myriad of
subcontractors
• Small number of permanent workers with increasing numbers of
workers on limited duration contracts
• Regarded as a male dominated sector with employers and fellow
male workers -entrenched patriarchal and sexist attitudes to women
workers
• Women employed on limited duration contracts doing low paid,
unskilled work
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Relationship cultures – that encourages deep and honest reflection on
experience towards developing creative strategies
Learning spaces to overcome historical silencing – learn skills of
reflection, deep listening to many voices, dialogue and skill to
challenge in appreciative ways
Examining practices of power – one’s own relation to power – Power
within at an individual level, Power with at a collective level and Power
to at individual and collective level
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Whole being – situated learning that goes beyond rational or
intellectual capacities and works with the body, heart, mind -as a
challenge to patriarchal binaries of a separation between mind/body
and public and private
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• Each of the 4 unions were searching out new ways of working with
gender equality making them more interested and open to
collaboration4
• In all the unions some process of broader organisation development
taking place
• Members of each of the unions had developed some kind of
relationship of trust with Gender at Work and/or with the LRS
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 Reasons for engaging with
the GALP
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• Forerunner in working for gender equality and women’s rights
• Landmark parental rights collective bargaining agreements
• Male dominated and women continually struggling for voice
• Priority to get more women into the union leadership
• Committed and passionate worker gender activists working with
national gender coordinator
• Concerned that old established ways of working for gender equality
had become entrenched and they sought to renew their energy
• Process of organisational renewal and offered an opportunity to
bring gender equality to the union’s core
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SACCAWU
• Saw GALP as an opportunity to try out new approaches
• Gender coordinator and gender structures led the change team
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• Saw the potential for realising their goals through GALP
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• Key members of the national executive committee led the change
team
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Sikhula Sonke
• Newly formed trade union setting up organisational infrastructure
and procedures
• Saw Gender Action Learning process as an opportunity to help build
union in line with their commitment to advance women’s
empowerment and worker control
• Sought to build members self-esteem, deepen their capacity for selfmanagement and challenge the institutionalised perception that
farm workers particularly female farmworkers incapable of doing
anything for them selves
• Interested in challenging men’s sexual attitudes and behaviours
• Concerned with increasing the number of women and women union
members – women make up 6 % of members
• Group of BCAWU leaders who were open and willing to look at their
own practices, critically analyse strategies for challenging men’s
attitudes and behaviours and interested in finding innovative
strategies for increasing the number of women in the union.
• Interest in engaging with a diverse group of peers in the GALP
• Education committee led the change team
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BCAWU
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• Process of rebuilding with the union extending its campaigns beyond
the normal union concerns of wages
• A focus on ‘taking into account the workers as a whole person’ and a
process of ‘regaining the dignity of the nursing profession’.
• Placing the issue of equality on the union’s agenda
• Using dialogues ‘Lekgotlas’ to get voices from below
• A willingness to confront organisational challenges openly and
reflectively
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HOSPERSA
• Education department led the change team
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GALP Process
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 GALP Process
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• Gender Action Learning processes made up of diverse groups of
organisations
• GALP up till now has between 4 and 6 participating organisations
• Each organisation selects a change team or 3 or 4 people i.e. the
change agents to lead the organisation in a change project towards
achieving greater gender equality
• Organisations encouraged to select change team members to
represent the diversity of their own organisational system
• Gender at Work facilitators work directly with change team
members at in some cases work with the broader sections or the
organisation
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• 18 month to 2 year process with 3 (3 or 4 day) peer learning
residential workshops and in-between mentoring
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• “Hearing our stories meeting” – held separately with each
organisation at the organisations office. Through storytelling and
collages facilitators encourage reflection on the history, culture and
programmes of the organisation and on the conditions and contexts
of women’s and men’s lives. Ideas for the change project are
generated.
• Tai chi movement to release tension and free up energy for new
understanding and action, increase a sense of playfulness
introduced in “hearing the stories” meeting.
• First Action learning workshop – organisations introduce their
organisation to their peers drawing on what they have learnt from
the “hearing the stories” meeting.
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• Orientation meeting – where the change teams learn about each
other
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Individual
Women’s and men’s consciousness Access to resources
Mindset, consciousness, commitment
and feelings
Competencies, skills and benefits
Formal
Informal
Internal culture and deep structure Formal rules, policies
Worldviews, shared values, traditions
and beliefs
Policies, laws, processes and
governance
Systemic
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Analytical framework for gender equality
organisational level
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• Second Action learning – change teams share what they have done,
reflect on lessons learnt, get feedback, work with concepts and
processes in working with personal and organisational power, revise
change projects
• Third Action Learning Workshop – tell stories of their change
process and identify factors responsible for changes and how
changes came about
• Mentoring – support in between the action learning workshops
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• Work with honest communication, supportive space, appreciative
enquiry - focussing on what is being done well, feedback from peers
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• Change projects were developed as an experiment – “a slice of the
broader action”
• Smaller and more manageable pieces of action allowing for on-going
reflection
• An opportunity to test out assumptions and actions and to reflect on
the outcomes of these actions and to make changes
• Felt conflict between deeper and longer term analysis and quick
fixes to problems
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 Organisational change
projects
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Sikhula Sonke
• Strengthen second layer of leadership capacity of Branch Executive
Committee members to deepen democracy within the organisation and
ensure it is member controlled
BCAWU
• Develop a strategy of recruiting women to join the union, encourage
them to take leadership positions, improve employment conditions for
women and challenge mind-sets of men and women regarding women’s
place in construction and in the union
HOSPERSA
• Develop a worker-driven union where workers voices are amplified,
empower the gender forum to help create a gender-sensitive trade
union where care work is valued and where the union in turn can
influence the broader society’s attitude toward reproductive work
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SACCAWU
• Develop women leaders in a mall committee
• Develop a new union structure that enables an alternative form of
building women’s grassroots leadership
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 Key outcomes of the GALP
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• SACCAWU – Strengthened mall committees – which provided a
space to try out new approaches of working for gender equality.
• Sikhule Sonke - Significant strides in building a second layer of
mostly women leaders and was more able to grapple with the
everyday practices of power in relation to accountability, attitudes,
access to resources and sharing responsibilities.
• BCAWU –Strategically using opportunities for organisational
culture and personal change
• HOSPERSA – team members challenged to reflect deeply on their
organisational culture, their day-to-day challenges and role of
structure in limiting “sisterhood”.
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New ways of understanding and working for
gender equality
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• Sharing stories, challenges and dreams about the
intertwined nature of work and home life with a
supportive group seems to have helped to renew
flagging energy and inspired creative action.
Renewed passion and energy
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Reinvigorating/re-inspiring commitment
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 Challenging trade union
silence and complicity in
gender oppression
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• Gender Action Learning process brought in tai chi, drawing and
storytelling to subvert the male dominated environment. Tapping
into the whole person enabled a relaxed and more introspective
environment.
• As a group they began to feel that could remain individuals with
their specific needs, ideas and challenges but also with a collective
strength that enhances their analytical and strategic thinking.
• Sharing across organisations enabled participants to challenge some
of their own prejudices and beliefs
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• All change teams saw the need to experiment with alternative
models of power and alternative structures to break the silence
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• Sikhule Sonke – process of strengthening the BEC helped to create
new layers of women leadership very directly in touch with the day
to day challenges of farm workers
• BCAWU – through the education committee started bringing women
workers together in “safe spaces” where the focus shifted from
“educating them” to facilitating sharing of experiences and
strategies
• HOSPERSA – is building on the Lekgotla “dialogue” process to open
similar dialogue spaces in for e.g. constitutional meetings e.g. 2013
provincial congresses
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• SACCAWU – Working with mall committees that bring together
workers and particularly women across companies together in
spaces where they are able to speak more freely about their day to
day lived experiences.
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 The process makes clear
links between personal
and organisational change
– “Being the change you
want to see”.
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• Sikhule Sonke – examples of dealing with issues like
alcoholism, HIV, domestic violence
• BCAWU – openly discussing patriarchal and sexist
behaviour of union leadership
• HOSPERSA – change team members questioning and
challenging their own leadership styles and consciously
attempting to change the nature of their relationships in
the private and public lives
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• SACCAWU – examples of feeling empowered to leave
abusive husbands – no longer victims
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 Practical concerns of
women continue to be
improved
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Sikhula Sonke
• Access to toilets in the vineyards improved
• Access to electricity indicated an improvement in the living
conditions of workers.
• On one farm, workers won the right for a stoep – so that a wheel
chair could go up into the house.
• Women trade union leaders have protected workers’ rights to public
holidays and in some cases secured increases in pay for overtime
work.
• Organisational rights and access to subscription fees
• Farm owners are less able to evict workers
• Increase in paid up membership.
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SACCAWU
• Even with large scale retrenchments - in 2012 a far reaching parental
rights agreement has been signed between SACCAWU and the
wholesale company MAKRO
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HOSPERSA
• The process of “getting the voices from below” has created a sense
of activism where individual workers and shop stewards quickly
recognise cases of discrimination and feel prepared to challenge
this.
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BCAWU
• Increase in the visibility of women on construction sites
• BCAWU change team is reporting an increase in the placement of
women in local companies and the skills training and upgrading of
the jobs that women hold.
• More visibility of health and safety issues that are particularly
related to the needs of women for e.g. access to toilets
• Intervention to ensure the granting of performance bonuses for tile
cleaners at a company that promised workers bonuses if they
completed the job before the allocated time but did not include the
tile cleaners in the agreement. The tile cleaners are almost all
women and are often “invisible” on the site.
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 Creating new norms take a
long time
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• For e.g. Sikhule Sonke had to proactively work against and unlearn
the consequences of organisational hierarchy and associated
exclusions – had to pay attention to the how of everyday activities
• Tensions between the paid staff and elected members continue to
test them
• HOSPERSA – for health workers to value themselves and the work
that they do – there is a need to continue to broaden the work of
the union to in-still a sense of value, pride and dignity and this
means challenging the patriarchal system where care work is seen as
women’s work and is devalued.
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• GALP and the reflective spaces it offers has great potential to
strengthen cultures of equality but what can be sustained is
dependent on what else is going on in the union at the time.
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Ensuring systemic change requires on going and sustained
reflection and action. It remains a methodological and
cultural challenge for unions to sustain the creation of
learning and reflection spaces as part of on-going union
organisational culture when the GALP ends.
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