Trade Union Mobilization and Female-Dominated Care Work in Ireland: Feminised and/or Feminist?

This article adopts a feminist policy and politics perspective to examine gendered shifts in mobilization of Trade Unions in Ireland. While Unions enjoyed access to policy-setting contexts in a form of social partnership from the late 1980s to 2008, this process was abolished in the economic crisis and was replaced by austerity-era public pay stability agreements. Adopting a case study approach, this research scrutinizes Trade Union campaigns for feminised occupations to examine how gender is used to do political and ideational work in feminised campaigns. This analysis raises larger questions about what happens when national corporatist models decline and Unions in response look to ‘gender’ campaigns and mobilise feminised occupational sectors.