Ethnicity and Gender at Work

Citation

(2009), "Ethnicity and Gender at Work", Human Resource Management International Digest, Vol. 17 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/hrmid.2009.04417dae.002

Ethnicity and Gender at Work

Article Type: Suggested reading From: Human Resource Management International Digest, Volume 17, Issue 4

H. Bradley and , G. Healey,Palgrave Macmillan, 2008

Ethnicity and Gender at Work explores the careers and experiences of black and minority-ethnic working women by drawing on research that the authors carried out as part of the Economic and Social Research Council’s “Future of Work” program. The book focuses on the inequalities these women encounter in the workplace, and shows how their active trade-union involvement affects their careers.

By starting with a review of current knowledge and moving on to an explanation of their research design, followed by an analysis and discussion of their findings, the authors adopt a structure familiar to academics and students.

The first half of the book considers the main topics to emerge from the literature associated with ethnic and gender-based inequalities. The topics include the role the state, employers and trade unions in addressing discrimination and inequality, migration, flexibility and the “feminization” of the labor market. Although these chapters present nothing radically new, they provide a useful overview of the key themes.

The second half of the book draws on the accounts of 56 black and minority-ethnic female trade-union activists in four UK unions (the Communication Workers’ Union, the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education, Unison and the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers), interviews with trade-union officers, trade-union documentation and insights gained from attending union conferences. The extended quotes taken from respondents such as “Bella”, “Gita” and “Ginette” help to bring the research to life. They offer thought-provoking illustrations of these women’s careers and the inequalities they have faced.

The themes to emerge from this fieldwork are explored over four chapters and include the women’s experiences of inclusion and exclusion in the workplace, their careers, their trade-union careers and how their involvement in their trade union affects their role in their community and family.

Among the interesting ideas to emerge from this part of the book are the belief that being a trade-union activist benefits the organizational careers of black and minority ethnic women and the developmental benefits these women can gain from taking an active role in their local community working as, for example, school governors and magistrates.

The authors argue that, in order to understand workplace inequalities, gender discrimination and discrimination based on ethnicity, race and class are issues that should be analysed simultaneously. They suggest that a key objective of this is to “understand the intersection between these various dimensions of social difference and to understand how this process offers new insights”. This idea could be usefully extended to other dimensions of discrimination, such as gender and disability, sexual orientation and age and ethnicity and age. The conclusion also offers suggestions as to how workplace inequalities could be tackled more effectively through, for example, trade unions promoting more radical forms of the equality agenda in their activities.

Business people responsible for developing policies concerned with equality, diversity and career management would benefit from reading this book, as would those with an interest in trade unions.

Reviewed by Carley Foster, Nottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK.

A version of this review was originally published in Personnel Review, Vol. 38 No. 2, 2009.