Abstract:
Participation in Trade Union Activities (TUAs) is expected to cut across males and females. However, reports have shown that women’s representation in TUAs is relatively low compared to their male counterparts. Previous studies focused largely on interventions with little emphasis on psycho-social and cultural factors influencing women participation in TUAs. Therefore, this study was designed to examine the psychological (mindset, attitude, self-esteem, perception); social (marital status, family background, level of education and social class) and cultural (norms, belief, religion and custom) factors predicting Women’s Participation (WP) in TUAs of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and Trade Union Congress (TUC) in Oyo State, Nigeria.
Neo-Classical Occupational Segregation and Feminist theories provided the framework, while the mixed method (survey design and qualitative approach) was adopted. The NLC and TUC in Oyo State were purposively selected being the two central labour movements in the State. Five unions each, from the NLC and TUC were randomly selected. The Cochran sampling formular was adopted to select 875 members of the 10 unions. Instruments used were WP Assessment Scale (α=0.89), mindset (α=0.73), attitude (α=0.71), self-esteem (α=0.69), perception (α=0.82), norms (α=0.63), belief (α=0.73) and custom (α=0.91) scales. A session of focus group discussion was held with six female representatives from each selected union, while one session of key informant interview was held with chairman/secretary of each union. Quantitative data were subjected to descriptive statistics, Pearson’s product moment correlation and Multiple regression at 0.05 level of significance, while the qualitative data were content analysed.
Majority of the respondents were females (53.1%) with a mean age of 39.12±3.17 years. They were mostly married (83.0%) with bachelor degree (42.3%), diploma certificate (24.0%), master degree (20.6%), doctorate degree (4.5%) and secondary school certificate (8.7%). Mindset (r=0.70), self-esteem (r=0.70), belief (r=0.34), perception (r=0.30), norms (r=0.27), marital status (r=0.27), attitude (r=0.23), family background (r=0.22), social class (r=0.22), religion (r=0.22), custom (r=0.22) and level of education (r=0.13) had significant correlations with WP in TUAs. Psycho-Social and Cultural factors significantly contributed to WP [(F(2;871)=510.05, R2 =0.54), accounting for 54.0% of its variance. Psychological: mindset (β=-0.51), attitude (β= 0.28), self-esteem (β=0.49) and perception (β=-0.29), social: marital status (β=0.23), family background (β=0.20), level of education (β=0.11) and social class (β= 0.20) and cultural: norms (β= 0.21), belief (β= 0.33), religion (β=0.21) and custom (β=0.23) factors had relative contribution to WP. The unions adopted two strategies in recruiting women into the unions: organising initiatives (targeted branch women recruitment and talent hunt) and gender mainstreaming. Respondents agreed that WP in TUAs had improved over time compared to what it used to be. This improvement had impacted on agitations for women’s rights, sexual harassment reduction, development of women – based social welfare programmes, increased women political representation and better conflict management.
Mindset, self-esteem, belief, perception, norms, marital status, attitude, family background, social class, religion, custom and level of education influenced women’s participation in trade union activities in Oyo State. These factors should be considered by government and trade union practitioners for improved women participation in trade union activities.
