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Our Unions, Our Selves: The Rise of Feminist Labor Unions in Japan

Online ISBN:
9781501706363
Print ISBN:
9781501703041
Publisher:
Cornell University Press
Book

Our Unions, Our Selves: The Rise of Feminist Labor Unions in Japan

Anne Zacharias-Walsh
Anne Zacharias-Walsh
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Published:
5 July 2016
Online ISBN:
9781501706363
Print ISBN:
9781501703041
Publisher:
Cornell University Press

Abstract

This book provides an in-depth look at the rise of women-only unions in Japan, an organizational analysis of the challenges these new unions face in practice, and a first-hand account of the ambitious, occasionally contentious, and ultimately successful international solidarity project that helped to spark a new feminist labor movement. In the early 1990s, as part of a larger wave of union reform efforts in Japan, women began creating their own women-only labor unions to confront long-standing gender inequality in the workplace and in traditional enterprise unions. These new unions soon discovered that the demand for individual assistance and help at the bargaining table dramatically exceeded the rate at which the unions could recruit and train members to meet that demand. Within just a few years, women-only unions were proving to be both the most effective option women had for addressing problems on the job and in serious danger of dying out because of their inability to grow their organizational capacity. The author met up with Japanese women's unions at a critical moment in their struggle to survive. They teamed up to host a multiyear international exchange project that brought together American and Japanese activists and scholars to investigate the links between organizational structure and the day-to-day problems non-traditional unions face, and to develop Japan-specific participatory labor education. They also gained valuable insights into the art of building and maintaining the kinds of collaborative, cross-border relationships that are essential to today's social justice movements.

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