Women, employment and trade unions.

This thesis discusses the position of women in paid employment and trade unions in New Zealand within the context of the theory of classes in modern capitalist societies, and the feminist theory on the family. Thus showing that the sexual division of the work-force not only divides the type of occupations in which men and women are engaged, but restricts women to working class positions within the production process, and that the 61ass structure in the paid work-force is resultant of the sexual division· of labour in the family in which the work of child-rearing in assigned to women. The discussion on women in trade unions focuses on the study by Greare, Herd and Howells, which is widely regarded as one of the most thorough analysis of women in New Zealand trade unions • In discussing . this study in the context of the arguments of class divisions and ·the family the inadequacies of this study become apparent, as does the importance of the theory of class and gender and the family to understanding the position of women in employment and trade unions