Duration: Four weekly sessions

Course tutors: Mary Davis & Kellie O’Dowd

The course is rooted in an understanding of women’s role in trade union history and the impact on women workers of the enduring conflict between capital and labour.

The course will look at:

• How do we explain inequality?

• What is capitalism and why do Marxists say it’s important in order to understand women’s oppression?

• What can we learn from history? Women in the labour market and labour movement in the 19th & 20th centuries.

• The issues for women at work and in our unions today - what we can do about them.

By the end of the course students will:

• Have gained an understanding of the role of the labour movement as a key site in the struggle for women’s liberation.

• Have understood the position of women in capitalist society and assessed the historical gains and enduring problems facing women today.

• Have examined and assessed contemporary ideas about the persistence of inequality.

• Have been introduced to how a Marxist analysis of class exploitation can assist in understanding the oppression of women.

• Have been introduced to the history of women at work and in the trade union movement.

• Have examined how unions’ capacity for collective struggle and collective bargaining can be used to address women’s discrimination and its manifestation in the trade union movement and in the workplace.