Social movement unionism and feminism: the organization of women at CUT

Abstract

The central problem of this work is to demonstrate how the performance of women unionists in the Central Única dos Trabalhadores (CUT) enabled the development of strategies specific to the social movement unionism model (SMU), thanks to the partnership with feminism. SMS is a relatively new concept in Brazilian academic production, but it is often evoked by foreign authors as a way out of the crisis of existing union models. Women embrace new causes thanks to the theoretical and analytical contributions of feminism, which denaturalized differences through concepts such as gender, sexual division of labor, and the adoption of strategies such as transversality and intersectionality. Feminism also politicized the understanding of trade unionists about the need to incorporate the anti-systemic struggle. When reflecting on the unionism model and the role of women, this work asks: have women improved the SMU model?

Keywords:
unionism; CUT; social movement unionism; women trade unionists; feminism