Introduction
If democracy is fundamentally a system of governance based on the participation of citizens in the public realm, it follows that democratisation involves more than the institution of competitive elections.Footnote 1 Democratisation also requires the transformation of the institutions of the state, economy and civil society into public spaces that reflect a culture of citizenship, in which there is a recognition, encouragement and protection of the rights of citizens and their ability to participate in all spheres of public life.Footnote 2
Although Vicente Fox's victory in Mexico's 2000 presidential election was crucial in ending 71 consecutive years of one-party rule by the Partido Revolucionario Institutional (Institutional Revolutionary Party, PRI), democratic consolidation in Mexico will be contingent upon transforming many of the country's authoritarian institutions into spheres that recognise and promote a culture of citizenship. As Graciela Bensusán and Maria Lorena Cook argue, the labour sphere is an area in need of institutional reform. They characterise Mexican labour institutions as an ‘authoritarian-corporatist’ system that emerged during Mexico's authoritarian regime and gave unions affiliated with the PRI access to power and resources in return for electoral and policy support from union members and restrictions on union autonomy. According to Bensusán and Cook, the necessary development of transparent and democratic labour institutions that foster balanced representation of labour, state and employer interests in the current neoliberal economic context can only be achieved through significant reforms of Mexico's labour laws and a ‘shift away from an authoritarian-corporatist system … towards a democratic model of labour governance’.Footnote 3
If transformation of the labour sphere so that workers' interests are better represented is a crucial aspect of democratisation in Mexico, it is important to examine the specific ways in which labour unions are transformed from such authoritarian-corporatist organisations into ones that are representative of workers' interests and supportive of their rights in political and economic dialogue. More specifically, this study explores the factors that are necessary for the transformation of unions into organisations that recognise and support gender equity and the rights of women workers. Because access to the workforce is crucial to the effective exercise of full citizenship, this gender-oriented transformation of labour unions is important in creating spaces within civil society in which women unionists can articulate their interests and subsequently make demands on union leaders, and is a crucial part of the broader public dialogue about the gender equity rights that foster women's equal access to the workforce, the quality of working conditions, and the ability of women and men to effectively balance work and family responsibilities.Footnote 4
Although little work has been done to examine the reform of labour unions from a gender perspective, it has been argued that a move towards union democracy in Mexico will facilitate the recognition of women's rights in unions to the extent that it will eliminate the legal mechanisms of corporatism that restrict effective representation of the interests of the rank and file.Footnote 5 The analysis presented here is a first effort to assess the validity of this argument. I find that unions' commitment both to democratic procedures and to the recognition and representation of the interests of all members in union policy, or what I call a ‘democratic ethos’, contributes to systematic attention to gender equity rights in union statutes, collective contracts and informal union policies. I also demonstrate that a democratic ethos is not sufficient to ensure the promotion of gender equity rights, as these are recognised in the policies of some unions that continue to follow a corporatist model of interest representation. I argue that two additional factors are necessary for gender equity rights to be addressed within unions: firstly, attention to gender equity requires the presence of feminist activists within the unions; and secondly, these feminist activists must be supported to some degree by union leadership. Ultimately, these findings support theoretical arguments that the transformation of institutions into ones that reflect a culture of citizenship will depend largely on the agency of those groups that have a stake in such a culture.
This article proceeds in three sections. First, I examine how transforming unions into institutions that recognise, encourage and protect gender equity is an important part of developing a culture of citizenship. Second, after discussing the methodological approach to this study, I analyse the activism of women in five Mexican unions. I conclude by arguing that women's engagement in a gender-oriented transformation of labour unions is an important factor in defending women's citizenship rights as Mexico democratises.
The Culture of Citizenship, Union Transformation, and Gender Equity Rights
In a democracy, formal rights of citizenship articulate the relationship between the state and individuals, and specify who can participate in society, and in what ways. But it is often the case in developing democracies that citizenship rights formally granted by the state exclude certain groups, or that they are not effectively applied (i.e., recognised, promoted and enforced). In the latter case, this can be because the state lacks the capacity to enforce laws and policies; it can also be because authoritarian practices and unequal distributions of power resources prevent some citizens from participating as political, economic or social agents.Footnote 6 In such cases, democratisation must involve the transformation of institutions so that they represent a culture of citizenship, meaning that existing rights of citizenship are recognised, encouraged and enforced within those institutions and that citizens can effectively participate in them, sometimes with the purpose of joining a broader public dialogue.
Of course, authoritarian and exclusionary practices within institutions do not change of their own accord, and many scholars of Latin American politics have thus begun to focus on the development of a culture of citizenship as a process of social struggle that takes place ‘from below’. Elizabeth Jelin argues that to develop a culture of citizenship, citizens must learn about their rights and participate in the development of institutions that reflect them by monitoring practices within those institutions and advocating changes, through public dialogue and social struggle, when they are not recognised and enforced.Footnote 7
Corporatism and the Challenge of Union Transformation
Historically, unions have played a key role within Latin American civil society in supporting the expansion of democracy and citizenship rights. This has been exhibited in at least three ways. Firstly, unions have often been at the forefront of mobilisations for democratic transitions.Footnote 8 Secondly, unions have been supporters of social welfare rights.Footnote 9 Finally, unions have provided a left-leaning voice within the public sphere that represents the interests of marginalised sectors of the population, as well as the working class.Footnote 10
There are generally strong links between unions, citizenship and democracy in Latin America, but the Mexican case is substantially different. Mexican unions played an important role supporting the authoritarian rule of the PRI because of the dominant role of ‘official’ unions and the corporatist system of state–labour interest representation.Footnote 11 Corporatism refers to a form of interest representation in which the state structures non-competitive and compulsory interest associations, provides subsidies and resources to support those associations, and imposes certain constraints on their internal functioning.Footnote 12 According to Collier and Collier, state–labour corporatism in Latin America can be understood as an exchange between labour leaders and the state. Labour leaders benefit from the official recognition of their unions, the provision of material and political resources to unions, and legal provisions making union membership compulsory, which is particularly important given that unions' political influence ultimately relies on collective action. In exchange, labour leaders surrender aspects of their organisational autonomy and accept state intervention into leadership decisions.Footnote 13 In a system characterised by the relationship between unions and the state, the representation of workers is understood as the ability of union leaders to use their political status to deliver material benefits to the rank and file. Union elections may take place, but representation refers to the relationship between union leaders and the state, not the rank and file.Footnote 14
The development of corporatism and the emergence of official unions in Mexico was part of the process of state consolidation in the 1930s, when the Confederación de Trabajadores Mexicanos (Confederation of Mexican Workers, CTM) was established to unite myriad unions under an umbrella federation that would have a voice with the PRI. The CTM became the largest federation of workers officially linked to the PRI and consistently delivered electoral support to the party. State–labour corporatism in Mexico grew from this alliance between ‘official’ unions and the PRI, and was institutionalised in part through particular aspects of the Ley Federal del Trabajo (Federal Labour Law, LFT). Firstly, the LFT's ‘exclusion clauses’ require that anyone employed by a unionised company be a member of the union. If a union refuses to grant an individual membership, or revokes it, the individual cannot be hired, or loses her job. Secondly, the Juntas de Conciliación y Arbitraje (Labour Arbitration and Conciliation Boards, JCAs), which make decisions on industrial relations issues like union registration and strikes, require representation from unions, business and government.Footnote 15 Since labour is typically represented by official unions, JCAs rarely certify independent unions or find in their favour when collective contracts are challenged.Footnote 16
Conceptually, corporatism and authoritarianism cannot be conflated.Footnote 17 As Bensusán and Cook note, Mexican labour law formally supports procedures of union democracy and autonomy. In practice, within individual unions and in broader civil society, corporatist labour institutions and the dominance of official unions have had the effect of stifling the participation and representation of diverse interests that is crucial for democracy. Within unions, a model of representation based on leaders' relationship with the state can lead to neglect of rank-and-file concerns, and the possibility of state intervention into union decision making can lead to undemocratic elections, removal of elected leaders and suppression of dissent.Footnote 18 Exclusion clauses are a boon for unions because they guarantee compulsory membership, but they also free union leaders from having to court new members by appealing to those members' specific interests and ensure that leaders do not need to attend closely to the interests of the rank and file in order to maintain support.Footnote 19 Exclusion clauses also eliminate the possibility of the worker being able to associate with the organisation that will best represent her interests.Footnote 20 This limits the opportunity for the rank and file to advocate for their interests and have their interests represented by unions. At the level of civil society, Mexican corporatism allows for the suppression of dissident unions and limits the participation of non-official unions in policy discussions. In fact, the corporatist model has been characterized as an alternative to a democratic and autonomous civil society.Footnote 21 For these reasons, Bensusán and Cook refer to Mexico as an ‘authoritarian-corporatist’ system and argue that a process of labour revitalisation is necessary for unions to be effective advocates for workers' interests vis-à-vis employers and the state. ‘At a minimum’, they write, ‘labor reform should create legal and institutional guarantees for workers’ free choice of union affiliation and leadership and eliminate the current advantages and protections granted to unions that coerce or dupe workers into affiliation without representing their interests'.Footnote 22 In short, for workers' interests to be genuinely represented within and by their unions, a revitalisation of labour institutions requires changes to the corporatist structure of interest representation.
Throughout Latin America, neoliberal economic transition weakened unions' political power, including that of the CTM.Footnote 23 Following the 1982 debt crisis, the CTM continued to play a role with the PRI in establishing wage pacts, but it was unable to win material benefits for workers or guarantee workers' support for the PRI. Many Mexican workers began to re-evaluate the usefulness of traditional Mexican state–labour relations.Footnote 24
While there have always been independent unions in Mexico challenging the corporatist model and supporting union democracy,Footnote 25 the strength of this challenge grew considerably after 1997, when several unions left Mexico's official umbrella labour federation, the Congreso del Trabajo (Labour Congress), and formed the Unión Nacional de Trabajadores (National Union of Workers, UNT). The UNT became the second-largest labour federation in Mexico, at one time representing an estimated 1.5 million workers.Footnote 26 Among the founding members of the UNT was the Sindicato de Telefonistas de la República Mexicana (Mexican Telephone Workers' Union, STRM), whose secretary-general, Francisco Hernández Juárez, had been influential in challenging the traditional corporatist model and advocating for new workers' organisations.Footnote 27 The UNT has corporatist aspects, including a focus on elite-level negotiations rather than organisation at the factory-floor level; nevertheless, the UNT supports reforms of the LFT that would eliminate the exclusion clauses and implement secret balloting in union elections.Footnote 28 Beyond these specific democratic procedures, it is also important to emphasise the democratic discourse found within UNT documents. For example, leaders of the UNT argued that one of the federation's objectives was ‘to achieve a democratic restructuring of… unions as organisations that defend and promote the interests and rights of workers … and that promote change and justice … as conscious social critics’.Footnote 29 As part of its discursive focus on democracy, justice and workers' rights, the UNT has made gender equity an official element of its platform.Footnote 30 This explicit commitment to gender equity is important because, as described further on, democratic procedures are not guarantees that women's rights will be taken into account in decision making. It is this democratic ethos – a commitment to democratic processes, as well as an explicit commitment to the advocacy of all workers' interests, including women – that has made the UNT ‘the most important organisation in Mexico calling for democratic reform of labour institutions’.Footnote 31
As important as the UNT may be for democratic labour reform in Mexico, does its democratic ethos mean that UNT-affiliated unions will espouse gender equity policies? Jennifer Cooper has argued that for women in unions, state–labour corporatism is a major obstacle to the implementation and enforcement of policies that would recognise and enforce gender equity. Even if support for gender equity exists, corporatist representation, especially through the exclusion clauses, lessens the chance that union leaders will be held accountable to rank-and-file pressure for changes to policy that reflect women's gender equity demands.Footnote 32 The corollary of Cooper's argument is that in unions committed to democratic procedures and representation, leaders will be obliged to respond to women's interests in order to maintain and increase support. Accordingly, the UNT provides the opportunity to explore whether a democratic union ethos is a factor in the transformation of unions into institutions that advocate for gender equity rights. As I argue in the next section, however, the lessons from women's activism in Latin American democratic transitions suggest that a democratic ethos will be insufficient for the transformation of unions into institutions that advocate for gender equity rights.
Democracy, Feminist Activism and Gender Equity Rights in Unions
Although women represent a growing percentage of the paid workforce in Latin America (see Table 1), they continue to face structural inequalities and discrimination.Footnote 33 According to the United Nations Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), women's inability to take part in the workforce on equal terms as men prevents them from fully exercising their citizenship.Footnote 34 This is because citizenship entails being able to enter public life under conditions of equal opportunity and participate in the various institutions that affect one's life.Footnote 35 Effective access to the workforce is crucial to women's citizenship because it gives them greater economic autonomy and access to social welfare rights. Moreover, participating in workers' organisations allows women to engage in public dialogues about workers' rights and labour policy. Iris Marion Young notes that much of the activism aimed at creating more inclusive workplaces has involved ‘associational activity within private businesses’.Footnote 36 Thus, transforming labour institutions so that women can participate within them and advocate their interests is important to creating a culture of citizenship.
Table 1. Women's Workforce Participation (% of Total Population Aged 15 and Over)
Source: ECLAC, Statistical Yearbook for Latin America and the Caribbean, 2009 (Santiago, 2010), p. 39.
Although labour unions have an important role to play in workers' advocacy, scholars have argued that they are not effective advocates for women workers because of their historically patriarchal nature and failure to respond to the specific needs of women.Footnote 37 Patriarchal union culture is often manifested in forms of sexism and discrimination that include sexual harassment, sexist language and attitudes, a failure to undertake gendered analyses of labour trends and to educate male workers about those trends, and a resistance to women's activism within unions.Footnote 38
Nonetheless, I argue that unions are important institutions for women workers. Firstly, unions can serve as important spaces where women can articulate their specific needs, such as day care and parental leave, as well as discussing traditional issues like wages.Footnote 39 Secondly, collective bargaining makes unionised women materially better off and provides benefits beyond those required by law. Marta Lamas argues that many women's less-than-desirable working conditions (in export factories, the informal sector or domestic service) are ‘exacerbated by the impossibility of organizing themselves into unions’.Footnote 40 Unionised women have an organisational capacity and material benefits that exceed those of many other working women despite unions' hostility and/or indifference to gender equity. Alternative workers' organisations are important because the majority of women are not unionised, but it remains crucial in the broader process of democratisation for unions to be transformed into institutions where women can articulate and advocate for the establishment and enforcement of gender equity rights that facilitate their workforce participation.Footnote 41
How, then, are unions transformed into institutions that advocate for gender equity? Cooper's hypothesis about union corporatism in Mexico suggests that union democracy may lead unions to advocate more explicitly for women workers. However, the struggle for women's rights during Latin America's democratic transitions suggests that democracy is not sufficient for the expansion of women's rights. Although women were at the forefront of social mobilisations calling for democratic transitions, the democracies that emerged in the 1980s were not accompanied by a more even distribution of power between men and women. As the contentious politics that preceded transition gave way to traditional party politics, women saw their political role shrink. In short, democratic politics do not necessarily lead to greater participation of women in public life.Footnote 42 Nor has democratic government necessarily led to the expansion of women's rights. Mala Htun's study of reforms in the Southern Cone shows that depending on the issue, democratic governments can remain resistant to expanding women's rights, whereas military governments sometimes have an interest in promoting them.Footnote 43 Despite the uneasy relationship of women's citizenship with democracy, women have secured legal and policy changes on issues such as domestic violence, quotas, parental rights and marital property. Recent research has emphasised that the expansion of gender equity policies has been most successful when activism from civil society has been met by receptive actors within government institutions who will usher policy changes through the requisite channels.Footnote 44 In addition to democratic processes, strong women's movements and advocates in government have been necessary for change.
Susan Franceschet and Laura Macdonald argue that the advance of gender equity rights in Mexico has been hampered by the absence of a strong women's movement. This was a likely result of corporatism, which prevented the separation between state and civil society necessary for an autonomous women's movement to flourish. In this context, women's rights ‘came more as “a gift from above” than as a result of active contestation by women's organizations’.Footnote 45 This was certainly the case for working women's rights. Mexico's 1917 Constitution established provisions for equal pay, protection against sex-based discrimination and provisions for mothers like maternity leave and leave for breastfeeding. As Teresa Healy argues, however, the Constitution assumed a traditional, gendered division of labour, with the family as the basic unit of society. Where protections for women were addressed, women were equated with children or discussed in terms of motherhood. The minimum wage provision was intended to provide a family wage for an explicitly male head of household, and although pay equity and non-discrimination were specified, it was never intended that men and women should hold the same jobs. In short, the ‘progressive’ rights granted to women were intended not to open up the economic sphere to women as citizens, but to protect those women who were not playing their rightful role.Footnote 46 Today many of those rights are rarely enforced, and maternity leave rights have led to the pervasive use of pregnancy testing in order to avoid hiring pregnant women. The need for activism to establish meaningful gender equity rights for women workers is strong.
Women workers have organised throughout Mexican history, but their organisational efforts increased in the 1970s along with their participation in the workforce. In the 1980s they began organising women's committees within unions. While some committees focused primarily on social activities, others focused on gender equity demands, such as access to day care, rights for pregnant women and opportunities to become involved in union politics.Footnote 47 For a time the middle-class feminist movement collaborated with union women, but by the 1990s union women in Mexico were working more independently to advance gender equity.Footnote 48 Not surprisingly, their own unions were a primary focus of their activism. As I show in the subsequent analysis, women's activism within their unions, along with support from union leaders, has been critical to the transformation of unions into institutions that advocate for gender equity policies.
Methodology
Given the paucity of attention paid to the activism of unionised women outside of the maquiladora sector, this analysis is an initial effort to explore the factors necessary for Mexican unions to adopt gender equity policies. To ensure sufficient diversity of the three variables that may play a role in unions' adoption of gender equity policies – feminist activism, support of union leadership, and a democratic union ethos – I used a purposive sample of five unions, three belonging to the UNT and two belonging to federations with a corporatist model of interest representation. With one exception, these are public and service sector unions, which traditionally represent larger numbers of women.
For the purposes of this analysis, feminist activism refers to a range of activities that challenge gendered (power) dynamics that discriminate against women.Footnote 49 These include coordinating gender awareness programmes, promoting gender equity policies within the union or running for a leadership position with the intention of advocating gender equity within the union. The analysis looked at levels of support from union leadership, which is understood as a gauge of leaders' encouragement of or resistance to feminist activism. Supportive leadership refers to leadership that provides explicit encouragement and support for gender equity policies. Accommodating leadership refers to situations where union leaders give feminist activists autonomy in their work – the ability to pursue objectives without interference – and are responsive to suggestions for policy changes. Unsupportive leaders explicitly resist or block feminist activism.
Given the complexity of union corporatism in Mexico and the difficulty of union democratisation without reform of the LFT, it is difficult to label unions as purely democratic, authoritarian or corporatist. For the purposes of this analysis, I understand unions with a democratic ethos to be those whose internal union procedures and culture allow for and explicitly recognise and encourage the representation of diverse interests of rank-and-file workers within union leadership structures. The explicit recognition of interests is particularly important in understanding advances in gender equity because, as noted previously, democratic procedures like elections have never been sufficient to guarantee women's participation and rights. Despite its corporatist characteristics, there is a consensus that the UNT is at the forefront of the democratic union movement in Mexico, and it has been explicit in calling for gender equity. Therefore, UNT-affiliated unions are considered here to have a democratic ethos. This is contrasted against corporatist unions, whose culture and procedures reflect the dominant position of union leaders and the exclusion of rank-and-file voices in labour politics. Although it is not the antithesis of ‘democratic’, I opt for the label ‘corporatist’ instead of ‘authoritarian’ to be consistent with the literature's focus on state–labour corporatism, with the understanding that corporatism can have the effect of suppressing participation and restricting the ability of workers to advocate for their interests.
The dependent variable, as it were – transformation of unions into organisations that advocate and support gender equity rights – can be measured by the adoption of policies in union statutes, collective contracts and informal union directives that promote women's ability to take part in the workforce and in their unions, and that go beyond the requirements of Mexican law. A distinction is made between ‘official’ union policies found in governing statutes or collective contracts and ‘unofficial’ policies, which are merely ad-hoc agreements between various parties. I argue that official union policies are more reflective of a union transformation because they require a greater degree of consensus between feminist activists, union leadership and/or the employer and because, as institutionalised policies, they legitimate subsequent demands for enforcement, should the policies not be followed.
Gender equity rights emphasise women's ability to participate in the workforce free from discrimination. They include equal remuneration, access to training/employment opportunities, freedom from harassment and discrimination, and affirmative action. Gender equity rights also include provisions like parental leave and child care that help women and men balance work and family. While some of these rights may exist under the law, lack of access to or enforcement of them may render them ineffective for many women. Moreover, age-old practices of gender discrimination require that specific gender equity policies be articulated and enforced (e.g., stipulations against sexual harassment).Footnote 50 Although all Latin American countries have instituted formal guarantees of women's equality, if discrimination limits their access to the workforce, women's formal citizenship rights will not be effective.
The primary source of data for this analysis was a series of ten semi-structured interviews with representatives of five unions.Footnote 51 In the four cases where consent was given, the activists' real names are used. In the one case where consent was not granted, a pseudonym is used, and given the activist's position in the union it was also necessary to withhold the name of her union.
All the activists interviewed had experience in union leadership positions, ranging from two years as a departmental delegate to 14 years on the national executive committee. Their years of union membership ranged from 17 to 33. Interviewees were identified based on their participation in gender awareness and leadership programmes for union women conducted by various Mexican NGOs that focus on gender and/or labour rights. In the cases of all five unions, efforts were made, using a snowball sampling method, to secure interviews with a number of feminist activists and/or union leaders. As it turned out, this was a difficult endeavour. Because of the patriarchal character of unions, feminist activism can be rare and difficult to sustain. It is primarily practiced among women with many years of union and leadership experience. Not all women in leadership positions are conscious of women's rights or active in promoting them, however, and even those that are can have difficulty promoting issues that may be viewed as unimportant or threatening to male leaders. As such, in some cases there was only one identifiable feminist activist within the union who was available and/or willing to be interviewed, even when many women held leadership positions (see Table 2). Interestingly, the gender equity policies discussed here were often the result of the work of a single person, so the small sample is actually reflective of the small population of feminist activists within a given union.
Table 2. Women on National Executive Committees
Sources: ATM, Estatutos, p. 11; STRM, ‘Orginazacion’, available at www.strm.org.mx/indexa.htm; STUNAM, ‘Comité Ejecutivo, 2005–2008’, available at www.stunam.org; interviews with Inés González Nicolás, Mexico City, 8 May 2007, and Maria S., Mexico City, 24 March 2003.
Interview data were supplemented by a variety of official and unofficial documents, including, when possible, copies of collective contracts and union statutes. It is worth noting that Mexican unions are not transparent institutions; few provide online access to contracts and statutes. The interview data were therefore crucial in cases where it was not possible to obtain union documents. Along with providing factual information about union policies and practices, the interview data were essential in acquiring detailed accounts of women's efforts to transform their unions into spaces that reflect a culture of citizenship for women workers.
Gendered Transformation of Unions in Mexico with a Democratic Ethos
An examination of three Mexican unions belonging to the UNT – namely, the Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (Workers' Union of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, STUNAM), the Sindicato de Telefonistas de la República Mexicana (Telephone Workers' Union of Mexico, STRM), and the Alianza de Tranviarios de México (Alliance of Mexican Streetcar Workers, ATM) – reveals that attention to women's rights in union policies, statutes and collective contracts is quite explicit. While the democratic ethos provides an important context for advancing gender equity within the unions, feminist activism and support from union leaders has been critical to the transformation of these unions into institutions that recognise and support gender equity rights.
STUNAM represents about 30,000 administrative staff of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (National Autonomous University of Mexico, UNAM). STUNAM has a democratic union structure that uses secret ballots and holds competitive elections.Footnote 52 Women constitute approximately 40 per cent of union members. Despite the significant presence of women in the union, only three of the 19 members of the union's national executive committee (NEC) are women. STUNAM has been involved in efforts to end women's workplace discrimination since the 1970s.Footnote 53 Over the years it has confronted discrimination based on pregnancy status and taking of maternity leave, as well as sexual harassment and occupational segregation.Footnote 54
Most of the union's advances in promoting gender equity have resulted from the efforts of the union's official women's officer, the secretaría de acción femenil (secretary for women's action, SAF). The post of SAF was established in 1976 after a group of women lobbied for an executive position through which they could organise in support of social benefits for women.Footnote 55 Through the SAF, women were successful in securing changes to the collective contract that included eliminating pregnancy testing for job applicants and providing financial assistance to cover day care costs.Footnote 56 Over the years, other gender equity clauses have been added to the contract. As of the 2000–02 collective contract, an employee can be fired for committing sexual assault at a university campus or worksite, and equal pay for equal work is guaranteed.Footnote 57 The union's statutes also emphasise gender equity, stating that the union must promote activities that increase women's participation in the union and in the labour movement, promote activities in defence of women's rights, raise gender awareness in the union, and represent the union in local, national and international organisations that defend women's rights.Footnote 58
The importance of feminist activism in achieving such changes is illustrated by the work of Columba Quintero Martínez, who served as SAF from 1998 to 2003 and used her tenure to focus on two policies for women workers. The first was the explicit prohibition of sexual harassment in the union's statutes. Building support for this statute clause required Quintero Martínez to overcome two challenges: raising awareness about the nature of sexual harassment, which, she noted, was poorly understood by men and women; and showing that harassment was a problem, which was difficult because of many women's reluctance to discuss their experiences. A third challenge was securing the support of male leaders in the union, who held the ultimate decision-making power. Eventually the union approved language in its statutes denouncing harassment and sexual violence, making STUNAM one of the first unions in Mexico to do so.Footnote 59
The second issue on which Quintero Martínez focused was securing UNAM support for the establishment of the Casa de la Mujer Universitaria (University Women's House), a centre that would provide legal, educational and health services to the university's women, provide gender-related programming, and collect and disseminate data on the university's women workers.Footnote 60 Initial support for the University Women's House was established in the 2000–02 collective contract.Footnote 61 Although Quintero Martínez did not experience the same obstacles in promoting the House as in promoting the sexual harassment clause, securing support for the required resources and space still took a great deal of effort.Footnote 62 Quintero Martínez noted that she was able to pursue these two projects because, far from being micro-managed by the secretary-general, the SAF had autonomy within the NEC:
[As SAF] you can move autonomously; you have your project, you can direct the themes that you want, and nothing depends on anybody else. Clearly … the secretary-general must sign on … but you can really move in the directions you want and do what you want.Footnote 63
Union leadership thus permits feminist activists within the union to advocate for women workers' rights within union policies and collective contracts.
Quintero Martínez's work on the sexual harassment clause and the University Women's House highlights the relationship between the three variables of democracy, union leadership and activism. It was only as a result of STUNAM's democratic practices that a feminist activist such as Quintero Martínez could be elected in the first place, considering that she ran on a different slate of candidates than the majority of the NEC.Footnote 64 However, the autonomy of the SAF within the national executive was crucial in allowing Quintero Martínez to pursue projects that recognised women workers' rights. Ultimately, it was feminist activism that was primarily responsible for changes in STUNAM's policies. The degree to which this is the case is illustrated by more recent developments within the University Women's House. When Quintero Martínez's SAF term ended in 2003, the House lacked the personnel to make it fully operational, but the space was being used for workshops and other activities for women. In the intervening years, the focus of Quintero Martínez's successors shifted away from the activities originally envisioned for the House, and the physical space for the House was reduced. Without someone explicitly fighting for the House, ‘it exists but doesn't function’, according to Quintero Martínez.Footnote 65 The STUNAM case shows that a democratic structure and relatively supportive union leaders cannot guarantee policy implementation. The impetus is on feminist activists themselves.
The second example, the STRM, primarily represents the workers of Telmex, Mexico's major telecommunications corporation. Between 1976 and 1982, the union's corporatist leadership was confronted with a series of strikes.Footnote 66 The STRM has held regular leadership elections since the strikes, although Francisco Hernández Juárez has served as secretary-general of the union since first being elected in 1977. While the 30-year tenure of Hernández Juárez may call into question the democratic nature of the union, the STRM has a strong ideological commitment to union democracy in Mexico.
Women make up about 50 per cent of the union's membership. Women interviewees from the STRM suggested that although the union's contracts and statutes have been gender-neutral, women have more difficulty getting access to job training and taking the exams that are necessary for promotion and advancement up the salary scale, thus reinforcing occupational segregation. Sexual harassment of women workers has been a problem, although it may be in decline as women begin to report it more often. Finally, with only two women on the 19-member NEC (and eight of 46 other national union positions), the union's leadership is overwhelmingly male.Footnote 67
The first women's office in the STRM was established informally in 1997 by Rosario Ortiz and Gloria Olvera, who were then serving on the NEC. Under their leadership, an informal commission began to lobby for an official women's office in the union and organise workshops and conferences on women's issues, including gender awareness training for other members of the NEC. Although they had support from some women within the union, there was also resistance to their efforts, including from other women who were not convinced of the importance of gender issues.Footnote 68
One of the specific objectives of this informal women's commission was to lobby for a collective contract clause that would prohibit and penalise sexual harassment. Olvera, who was part of the union's negotiating committee, noted that the informal women's group had worked hard to get the issue of harassment onto the bargaining agenda. During the negotiations, she noted, negotiators from Telmex and the union denied that sexual harassment was a problem. As she recalled, ‘there were compañeros who said, “What's happening is that the women want to be harassed!”’.Footnote 69 Ortiz echoed this sentiment, suggesting that ‘none of the compañeros … wanted to negotiate this clause’.Footnote 70 Ultimately, resistance from both negotiating teams meant the sexual harassment clause never made it into the contract.
Attention to gender equity in the STRM has not abated, however. The informal women's committee continued, although its leadership changed, and pressure to formally address gender equity that had been building since 1997 yielded results in the 2004 union statutes. These statutes identify sexual harassment as a form of discrimination, which represents a major reversal from the 1997 contract talks. Moreover, the statutes have created the post of SEG within the NEC. The SEG's responsibilities include taking steps to eradicate sexual harassment and workplace violence in the union, establishing mechanisms to handle complaints of harassment and violence, evaluating the application of anti-discrimination policies, promoting women's participation at all levels of the union, and executing leadership training and gender awareness programmes for union members.Footnote 71 Explaining the creation of the post of SEG, Martha Heredia, a telefonista and vice-president for equity and gender in the UNT, stated that it was an initiative from within the union intended to ‘bring ourselves in line with what women in developed countries are doing’ and to empower women to participate at all levels of the union.Footnote 72 The degree to which the responsibilities of the SEG recognise key factors in promoting equality of women in the union make these among the most progressive union statutes in Mexico.
Electoral structures of union democracy did not have the same role to play in the STRM's gradual embrace of women workers' rights as they did in STUNAM's. The attention to women workers' rights in the STRM's 2004 statutes, which represents such a remarkable change from the resistance to the informal women's commission in 1997, owed more to a change in the level of support from union leadership. It would be a mistake to discount the role that a democratic ethos played in the STRM, however. On the one hand, the 2004 statutes represent a clear response to demands from women in the union that had existed since the creation of the informal commission in 1997 – a democratic, rather than corporatist, form of representation. Moreover, the STRM's commitment to gender equity in the 2004 statutes is clearly influenced by the gender equity mandate of the UNT. Nonetheless, we can trace the source of the demands for attention to women's labour rights to feminist activists themselves, especially to Olvera and Ortiz, who founded the informal commission, and to Heredia, who has helped keep it active within the union.
The third union, the ATM, represents workers of Servicios de Transporte Eléctricos del Distrito Federal (Federal District Electric Transport Services), a public transportation company operating Mexico City's light trains and streetcars. It is the oldest of the unions discussed here, with a history of progressive labour activism dating back to the Mexican Revolution.Footnote 73 With only about 84 women out of 2,600 total members, it has the fewest female members of the unions featured in this study. As such, women are disproportionately represented on the union's NEC, holding two of nine positions. Despite this, Rosa Maria Hernández, a member of the NEC, noted that until 1994 women did not participate much in the union, and there had not been a single female delegate or officer. Not surprisingly, Hernández noted, ‘because we never came to participate, there was nothing [for women in the collective contract]. The contract was made by men for men’.Footnote 74 According to Hernández, women's participation in the ATM began in the 1994 union election when some women decided, in response to harassment from a male colleague, to organise candidates in order to improve female representation within the union leadership. Their effort was a success: the first female union delegate was elected in 1994, and Hernández took up a leadership position in 1995.
As a result of their activism, Hernández said, women have been successful in securing several policy changes supporting the rights of women of the ATM. Prior to women's involvement with the union, no women were conductors of public transit vehicles. In one round of collective contract negotiations, female ATM members overcame some resistance and secured a clause allowing women to become conductors.Footnote 75 Feminist activists also secured a contract clause protecting pregnant women from immediate disqualification as applicants for jobs or promotion.Footnote 76 The union statutes also subtly take up the issue of sexual harassment by obligating members to respect all workers in an effort to prevent all forms of harassment, denigration, ridicule or similar situations.Footnote 77 Beyond the actual policies, there have also been educational efforts directed at women in the union and the spouses of male members, including courses on topics such as labour rights, human rights and domestic violence.Footnote 78 Policies resulting from women's activism culminated with the establishment in the 2003 statutes of a new position of secretary for union relations and gender. The secretary's responsibilities include promoting the representation of women in the union and raising women's awareness of their rights.Footnote 79
Support from the union's leadership has played an important role in helping feminist activists promote women's labour rights in the ATM. Benito Bahena was elected as secretary-general in 1994, the same year that the first woman was elected as a union delegate. In an interview, Bahena noted that one of his goals as secretary-general was to support women in the ATM so that they could achieve a more equitable situation. Commenting on the advancement of women in the ATM, he noted the historic inclusion of women as conductors and the growth of female representation in the union, and when asked about the then-absence of an official post of women's officer, he noted that it was an issue under consideration.Footnote 80 Hernández herself cited Bahena's leadership as important in helping the feminist activists achieve their goals, saying: ‘We have a secretary-general who struggles for [social] justice, so he has really supported the work of women. And with this secretary-general, we've been able to bring women into the structure of the union.’Footnote 81
In the case of the ATM, a democratic ethos was critical in allowing women to promote gender equity within the union. Specifically, it allowed women to respond to experiences of sexism by organising candidates in a union election. The secretary-general of the ATM has explicitly supported the inclusion of women in the union structure, which is all the more remarkable given the small number of women in the union. In this sense Bahena represents quite the opposite of a corporatist union leader in that he has used his position to respond to a small and marginalised sector of the rank and file. But the primary catalyst of the advance of women's rights in the ATM has been the activism of women themselves, first through their electoral efforts and subsequently through their demands for changes to the contracts and statutes.
Table 3. Union Democracy, Leadership Support and Feminist Activism
Sources: Interviews with Inés González Nicolás, 8 Jan. 2003; Rosa Maria Hernandez, 7 Feb. 2003; Maria Rodriguez, 24 March 2003; Gloria Olvera, 2 Feb. 2003; Rosario Ortiz, 5 Dec. 2002; and Columba Quintero Martínez, 20 Feb. 2003, all in Mexico City.
Efforts at Gender-Oriented Transformation in Corporatist Unions
In the previous three cases, a democratic ethos created a context within which women promoted gender equity rights, but in all three cases feminist activism, with support from union leaders, was the catalyst for the changes. The next two cases, the Sindicato Unico de Trabajadores de Serfin (Serfin Workers' Union, SUTS) and one union within the government of the Distrito Federal (Federal District, DF), underscore the idea that feminist activism is the primary variable explaining the promotion of gender equity in unions. However, these cases also show that when activism is beholden to the approval of corporatist union leaders, the achievements of activists may be vulnerable to reversal. This suggests that democracy is all the more important for unions' transformation into institutions that reflect a culture of citizenship.
SUTS represented workers of the Mexican bank Serfin until 2002, when Serfin merged with the Spanish bank Santander and the union was dissolved. SUTS was affiliated with the Federación Nacional de Sindicatos Bancarios (National Federation of Banking Unions), which has corporatist ties to the Mexican government. Women represented about 50 per cent of Serfin workers, holding the majority of bank teller and customer service positions.Footnote 82 Like STUNAM, SUTS had a post of women's officer from an early date: the post of SAF was first established in 1988 and was renamed secretaría de equidad de género (secretary for gender equity, SEG) in 1997. Inés González Nicolás, a self-described feminist unionist, served as SEG for most of the 1988–2002 period, and in 2002 was one of two women on a 19-member NEC.
González Nicolás noted that her activism was a response to the gendered effects of changes in the banking sector in the 1990s, when work demands intensified while salaries and benefits shrank. According to González Nicolás, this context affected women differently than men because as primary caregivers, women's domestic labour often had to take priority over their paid labour in the bank and involvement in the union. She noted that women ran greater risks of getting fired or passed over for promotion if caretaking responsibilities prevented them from taking part in training activities or meeting productivity goals. Additionally, some women were fired when they became pregnant, which was often attributed to the need to adjust the workforce in response to company restructuring. In addition to patterns of discrimination rooted in the particular labour climate of the banking sector, González Nicolás said that women faced day care shortages and sexual harassment at work.Footnote 83
As SEG, González Nicolás was able to secure a number of policy changes that addressed many of these issues. For example, she was able to work with the state-run day care system to make day care more accessible for women. She also worked with the union to create a manifesto condemning sexual harassment.Footnote 84 Most notably, she intervened in cases where women were fired while they were pregnant so that the women received their pre- and post-natal care benefits, noting that there are guaranteed rights for pregnant women and that ‘it is easy to prove that the pregnancy occurred while the woman was active within the institution’.Footnote 85 González Nicolás also conducted surveys about the experiences of union women and advocated for women workers at government forums.Footnote 86 She was adamant, however, that real changes in support of women workers' rights would not occur without broad support for those rights among the rank and file. This is why she also stressed arranged educational workshops, wrote articles and distributed information within the union ‘so women begin to understand that they have rights like every person in this society, that they have a right to maternity, that they have the right to have their work at the bank recognised, that they have the right, like every worker, to earn an equal salary for equal work’.Footnote 87
Despite the existence of a post of official women's officer, González Nicolás noted that she only gained decision-making authority over time as she earned the support of the secretary-general and other male colleagues. While support from leadership is important, González Nicolás cautioned that where unions lack a democratic ethos, women promoting greater gender equity run a real risk of getting used by union leadership. She commented that ‘having a democratic perspective allowed me to use my position within the union to make progressive proposals’, but cautioned that this can create a situation where other union leaders point to the activism and say, ‘“Look, we're democratic. She's making progressive proposals, and if we weren't democratic we wouldn't be allowing this.”’Footnote 88 In other words, one person's activism can be used to prevent further progressive change.
That said, feminist activism in SUTS did yield policy changes that addressed the rights of women workers. Moreover, the personal support González Nicolás earned from male union leaders allowed her to pursue these efforts. Even so, from González Nicolás’ perspective there is a crucial difference in the context provided through a democratic ethos. With a single individual serving as the ‘progressive’ voice in a union with no ideological commitment to union democracy or gender equity, there is little need to support concrete changes such as collective contract clauses or union statutes that would address the rights of women workers. And it is worth underscoring that none of the policies González Nicolás secured were written into the statutes or the contract. Her activism thus allowed her to operate on behalf of women in the union, but from her perspective the absence of democracy meant that her work would not transform the fundamental nature or structure of the union.
To emphasise the importance of feminist activism in advancing women's rights in unions, and of union leaders enabling such activism, it is important to discuss a case in which both variables were lacking. Because of confidentiality requirements this union cannot be identified by name, and a pseudonym is used. The union represents certain workers of Mexico's Federal District and belongs to the Federación de Sindicatos de Trabajadores al Servicio del Estado (Federation of Public Service Workers' Unions, FSTSE), a federation that has been associated with the Mexican government since the beginnings of the corporatist state–labour system in Mexico in the 1940s.
Maria Rodriguez, who held a position on the NEC and participated in NGO-sponsored gender awareness workshops, suggested that for women to be able to participate more fully in the workplace and union, there was a need for policies to help them balance paid work and domestic caregiving responsibilities. More accessible day care centres were especially important. Additionally, she said, women faced the burden of sexual harassment and were not well represented in union leadership positions. A total of 12 out of 49 NEC and other committee positions in the union were held by women, but only three carried any real decision-making power. The SAF was not among these.Footnote 89
Changing the situation, according to Rodriguez, required ‘a serious effort’ among women to organise, and she attended NGO-run workshops on union and gender issues in order to empower herself to organise in support of women's interests. Nevertheless, her personal efforts did not translate to feminist activism within the union. Moreover, the activities of the SAF mainly revolved around planning family-centred activities (e.g., Mother's Day events) and health care, not advancing any gender equity rights. Rodriguez felt that the union could have benefited from an executive position explicitly committed to promoting gender equity that would serve as a centre of feminist activism and pressure the union to address women's difficulties in balancing work and family roles, but there was little demand for such an office.Footnote 90
A major obstacle to any feminist activism in the union, according to Rodriguez, was the secretary-general, who she described as ‘a person who expresses fear and resistance to [the idea] that women could develop their capabilities’. In her view, the secretary-general allowed her to attend gender workshops because she went on her own, but if there was a collective desire on the part of women to attend such workshops, he would create obstacles.Footnote 91 Not surprisingly, given the absence of feminist activism combined with a resistant leader, issues of gender equity were not taken up by the union. Indeed, a review of the collective contract showed attention to women workers only as required to by the LFT.
As in the previous cases, the DF union had a member with an interest in feminist activism, to the point where she participated in workshops to improve her own understanding of gender issues. In the other cases, however, the women had relative autonomy and some degree of support from union leadership in order to do the work they felt responded to the needs of women in the union. In the DF union, the secretary-general's lack of support made it impossible for women to promote the recognition of women workers' rights. Moreover, the lack of a democratic ethos meant that it would be difficult to hold him accountable for his lack of support.
Table 4. Gender Equity Policies Beyond Legal Requirements
Sources: ATM, Contrato colectivo; ATM, Estatutos; STRM, Contrato colectivo; STRM, Estatutos; STUNAM, Contrato colectivo; STUNAM, Estatutos; Inés González Nicolás, ‘De la Secretaría de Acción Feminil a Secretaría de Equidad y Género de la Federación Nacional de Sindicatos Bancarios’ (report for SUTS, Mexico City, undated); González Nicolás, ‘No se despide’; interviews with Inés González Nicolás, 8 Jan. 2003; Rosa Maria Hernandez, 7 Feb. 2003; Maria S., 24 March 2003; and Columba Quintero Martínez, 20 Feb. 2003, all in Mexico City.
Conclusion
Bensusán and Cook have argued that the democratisation of labour institutions is a critical part of the overall process of democratic transition in Mexico. Only through a transformation of the authoritarian roots of labour laws and the corporatist state–labour framework will unions gain the ability to negotiate effectively with employers and the state in the interest of the workers they represent. While Bensusán and Cook focus on the institutional and legal reforms necessary for this to happen, this analysis examines the factors that are important in transforming unions internally so that they become spaces reflecting a culture of citizenship, which refers to the recognition, encouragement and enforcement of citizenship rights, including the right to participate in broader public dialogues. More specifically, considering that women are a growing part of the workforce but continue to face various forms of discrimination and unequal access to employment opportunities, this analysis represents an initial effort to examine the factors that lead unions to adopt policies that recognise gender equity beyond what is specified by the LFT.
In a recent essay, Martha Heredia of the UNT noted that unions are indispensable in the defence of workers' rights as well as in achieving democracy and social justice in Mexico. But taking steps toward democracy and social justice, Heredia argued, requires unions to recognise the socio-cultural factors that have led to discrimination against and inequality of opportunity among women, and to take action to develop gender equity policies. Moreover, it requires that women themselves be active in support of gender equity.Footnote 92 In other words, a progressive and democratic union movement cannot exist without the active presence of women who take action in conjunction with their union leaders to rectify the inequality women face in the workforce.
Heredia's claim that change cannot happen without women's active participation is largely borne out by this analysis. Using as a point of departure the hypothesis that corporatist unions block women's representation, my examination of five Mexican unions reveals that unions with a democratic ethos provide a positive context within which feminist activists can advocate for the rights of women workers. Although the role of democratic processes and culture differed in each case, all three UNT-affiliated unions showed the development of contract clauses and/or statutes that recognised rights that would facilitate women's participation in the workplace and union. Because contract clauses and union statues represent a binding recognition of gender equity, they allow women to hold leaders accountable should those policies not be respected. However, the analysis showed that a democratic ethos is insufficient to explain gender-oriented union transformation. Informal gender equity policies were also developed in the case of corporatist SUTS. In SUTS, as well as in the UNT-affiliated unions, gender-oriented policy changes occurred as a result of feminist activism and only when there was at least an implicit level of support from other union leaders. Absent feminist activism and leadership support, gender-oriented transformation did not occur.
