Union Maids: Unions and the Female Workforce

Richard Freeman and Jonathan Leonard ()

No 1652, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: How have women fared in unions in recent years? The major findings of this paper are that unions have been more beneficial for women in the public sector than in the private sector, and that unionism for women is primarily a public sector wriite collar phenomenon distinguished from that of males. According to our analysis:(1) Women have come to be an increasingly large proportion of the unionized work force, and are critical in the one area in which unions have recently succeeded --the public sector.(2) In the public sector and in white collar occupations where women unionists are concentrated, unions raise women's wages more than they raise the wages of men.(3) In the private sector unions have essentially the same effect on women in wages, turnover, employment and so forth, and do not deter affirmative action programs to raise female employment. (4) Comparable worth presents a rare confluence of interests of unions in search of members, particularly in the public sector,and women in search of higher wages, and will likely continue to be used by both especially within the confines of collective bargaining.

Date: 1985-06
Note: LS
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published as Freeman, Richard B. and Jonathan S. Leonard. "Union Maids: Unions and the Female Workforce," Gender in the Workplace, C. Brown and J. Peckman (eds), Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1987, pp. 189-212.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w1652.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:1652

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w1652

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().