Collective bargaining and workplace gender equality

Employment relations scholarship highlights the importance of collective bargaining as a mode of regulation which has the potential to influence gender equality outcomes. However, it can also entrench gender inequality. This chapter shows that traditional pay bargaining reproduces gender inequality where male-dominated sectors are taken as the norm; female-dominated sectors are also likely to be less unionised and to have less formally regulated wage-setting. Equalising policies have become more frequently deployed in recent years as, particularly in wage-constrained contexts, union efforts focus on increases for lower-paid workers. Formal mechanisms such as equalising funds are much less common. The chapter also examines equality bargaining, a relatively new approach which introduces non-wage issues such as working time and work–family measures into the sphere of social regulation. This approach relies upon opportunities provided by legislative change or the bargaining dynamic to press for programmatic demands. Further attention to lower-paid and the most vulnerable workers forms part of this agenda. The chapter also identifies ways in which the state can support equalising aims of collective bargaining through proactive work–family policies, minimum wage policy, and measures aimed at increasing transparency on wages and working conditions.