Women Among Union Members: International Comparisons Are Women or Men More Likely to Belong to Trade Unions? We are going to examine this question for three countries... Sweden United States Canada Let's first look at how much of the female and male labour force is organized into trade unions. First, Sweden... In 1987, 92% of the male labour force was unionzed, but only 85% of the female labour force was unionized So, in Sweden, men are slightly more unionized than women Even so, women have a very high rate of unionization in Sweden (over 80% are organized), and are just slightly behind the men Now let's see how this has changed over time Let's look at what happened between 1975 and 1987 in the following chart... Female & Male Union Members as % of Labour Force, Sweden, 1975-87 If welook closely at this chart we see that the red and blue lines were further apart in 1975 than 1987 The blue line represents women, and the red line represents the men This represents a gap of 15% The arrow on the right is for 1987 when 92% of the male labour force was unionized compared to 85% of the female labour force This represents a gap of 7% So the gap of 15% in 1975 narrowed to 7% in 1987 This means that the unionization of women in Sweden is catching up to the men Now, let's look at Canada, and compare it to Sweden Wow !!! The unionization of the Labour Force is a lot lower in Canada than in Sweden This is true for both women and men. Other than that, Canda appears similar to Sweden Men are more unionized than women in Canada, as in Sweden Between 1975 and 1987, the gap between women and men in Canada narrowed from 13% to 8% This can be seen if we look a little more closely at the Canadian part of the chart... Now, let's look at the United States, and compare it to Sweden The United States looks even worse than Canada did when compared to Sweden Women and men are far less unionized in the United States than in Sweden For example: in 1987... 85% of women In Sweden, but only 12% of women in the United States were unionized This is a difference of 73% In 1987, 92% of men in Sweden, but only 18% of men in the United States, were unionized This is about the same difference -- 74%! Let's look a little more closely at the American part of the chart... In an ironic way, the United States is similar to Sweden and Canada... The gap between women and men narrowed between 1975 and 1987... But why? Are the reasons the same in the United States? NO!!! Look at the orange line for U.S. men... It drops from 32% in 1975 to 19% in 1987 This means that there has been a dramatic decline in the unionization of American men This kind of decline did not occur in Sweden and Canada Even American women declined...from 18% in 1975 to 12% in 1987 So now we have the answer The unionization of women in the United States appears to be catching up to the men because... the unionization of men fell faster than the unionization of women This causes the gap between American men and women to narrow greatly. Let's take another look at the American chart to see this... Now let's compare the United States with Canada in the following chart... Canada seems to be just a bit above the United States Now let's take a closer look... Again, we see that the gender gap in Canada and the U.S. narrows But for entirely different reasons... In Canada it is because of the increase in women's unionization In the United States it is because of the dramatic decrease in men's unionization Now let's do a cross-border comparison among women and among men The gap between American and Canadian men widens This is because of the decrease in the unionization of American men So Canadian men are better off than American men The gap between Canadian women and American women also widens... But for different reasons It is because the unionization of Canadian women improves Let's take one more look Now let's look at all three countries at the same time The largest contrast is between Sweden and North America The unionization of Swedish women and men is far higher than the unionization of North American women and men But the gender gap in all three countries has narrowed This has happened because of the improvement in the unionization of women in Sweden and Canada, and the dramatic drop in the unionization of men in the United States Now let's look at the actual percentages for all three countries in a table... Female & Male Union Members as % of Labour Force, Sweden, Canada, US, 1975-87 Now let's look at the percentage difference between women and men in each country First of all,we will picture this as a chart... % Difference Between Union Women and Men as Proportion of Labour Force, Sweden, US, Canada, 1975-87 Notice how the lines were further apart in 1975, and begin to converge in 1987 This means that the gender differences in unionization in all three countries begin to look very similar We can see this more accurately by looking at the percentages in a table... Difference Between Union Women and Men as a % of Labour Force, Sweden, US, Canada, 1975-87 So far we have been looking at the unionization of the labour force Now let's forget about the labour force and compare women and men internally in unions Are there more union men than women? And how has this changed over time? We will look at the % that women make up of all union members, like this... Union Members Only; Women as % of All Union MembersSweden, Canada, US, 1975-87 This tells us that women are a greater part of unions in Sweden than in North America And women seem to account for more union members in Canada than the United States The Chart also tells us that, in all three countries, women are increasing their membership in unions relative to men Let's look at the chart again to see these things Now let's look at the numbers for this chart Women as % of All Union Members, Sweden, Canada, US, 1975-87 Now let's just concentrate on North America We are going to look at some different sources of data And we are going to stretch out the time period... 1962 to1988 Again we will look at women as a % of all union members,... Like this..... Women as % of all Union Members;Canada, United States; 1962-88 Even for this longer period, women made up a slightly larger part of unions in Canada than the U.S. But look at the lower left-hand part of the chart The red Canadian line is below the black American line This means that in the early years (1962 to 1966), Women made up a larger part of unions in the U.S. than Canada This never happened again! But the lines do get close in 1983 and 1984 To Make sure we know what is going on here... Let's look at this in a different way in the following chart... Difference Between Canada & US in Women as % of Union Members, 1962-87 (Canada - US) Now let's look at the numbers Since these figures are hard to see, let's look at the top half of the table, then the bottom half... In Conclusion, you should remember the following about gender differences in union membership... First, women are less unionized than men Second, women everywhere are catching up to men Third, despite this, men still hold an advantage over women in union membership Fourth, women and men are far less unionized in North America than Sweden Fifth, women and men in Canada are more unionized than in the U.S. Sixth & finally, the gender gap in unionization in all three countries is getting smaller, but for different reasons... In Sweden and Canada: it is because of women's increase in unionization; In the U.S.: it is because of the sharp drop in men's unionization This concludes our brief look at some stats on internationalgender differences in union membership Sorry, we are not done yet Next, we will concentrate on Canada