A professional network for women workers of trade unions.
Founded in 2018, our network and events are open to all Sisters who are directly employed by a trade union, including non-binary and transgender workers of our trade union family. In September 2024 we merged with Union Workers' Union.
Sisters to the Front provides support and a safe space for us to discuss and address issues impacting on us as workers within the movement. Women workers in trade unions have a unique and powerful voice, where if we became more organised, more connected, had training to meet our needs as women workers and as trade unionists ourselves, would be better placed to make more transformatory approaches to the advancement of women workers, whether as members or as employees in the trade union movement
What Are We Aiming For?
Our network is aiming to:
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Provide tailored professional development
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Facilitate mutual support and the building of solidarities within and across trade unions.
These building blocks will be crucial to enable and empower women officials to push through the next set of structural changes necessary to challenge the traditional ‘masculinised’ model of trade unionism. These changes will be of benefit to all women especially if we are to achieve our aim of:
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Proportionality
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Addressing intersectional issues not adequately tackled thus far in the movement and to
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Challenge the scandal that are the gender and race pay gaps.
Women who are employed as workers in trade unions face the same structural challenges to progression, equal pay and harassment that is faced by many of the women workers they represent. We have a unique and powerful voice, where, if we became more organised, more connected, had training to meet our needs as women workers and as trade unionists ourselves, would be better placed to make more transformational approaches to the advancement of women workers, whether as members or as employees in the trade union movement
The network is a safe space whereby we can discuss and address those challenges and design the interventions we will need to put in place, if we are to successfully achieve our aims.
Sisters to the Front: Sheffield Network Conference, February 2020