Advancing gender equality as a potential union revitalization strategy: women's voices from Polish workplaces Open Access

Trade unions have always fought for the rights of those who deserve but do not get adequate rewards for their work. Looking back, mobilising workers suffering from deprivation in the labour market made trade unions into one of the key social actors in the industrialized world (Hyman, 2001). Although they no longer hold such a position to the same extent, they still remain important social actors, who still seek to protect marginalised minorities in the labour market. In sociological terms, being a minority is not always an arithmetical matter. Women are often called “the largest minority”, at least from the mid-20th century (Hacker, 1951). In the 2020s, women are increasingly more represented in the labour market (Goldin, 2006), and they are better educated and qualified (Olivetti and Petrongolo, 2016). Should women, therefore, be a key target for trade unions, whose future is increasingly uncertain? There seem to be matching interests: women still face serious gender-related disadvantages in the labour market, while unions are keen on rebuilding their membership base. There were attempts to attract women to unions in the past, yet they would often be hampered by the dominance of occupational unionism, reflecting strongly the gendered division of labour. As a result, the concept of “all-encompassing unionism” would frequently fail to materialise as a practise.

In this article, we pose the question of whether the relatively disadvantaged position of women in the labour market, coupled with their growing presence therein, and their increasing human capital may – in line with aspirational deprivation logic (cf. Korpi, 1974) – be utilised by trade unions in their attempts to expand their membership, thus rebuilding their associational power. This is worthy of further research as past experiences with “union feminisation”, while not necessarily a panacea, were not entirely a disappointment either. Moreover, the circumstances have changed. Women's standing in the labour market is stronger than it used to be back in the late 20th century. Female union membership has been growing steadily. For example, women's share in the union ranks well exceeds the level of 40% internationally and is expected to increase further (ETUC, 2019; ITUC, 2025).

Empirically, we draw on findings from the research undertaken in Poland focusing on female employees' perceptions of gender equality issues in work and employment relations. The point of departure is the perspective of women, and what they specifically need and expect in terms of their collective interest representation. The analysis that follows may offer unions a frame of reference in their internal debates regarding development and revitalization strategies.

We begin with a review of literature on trade unions' renewal drawn from a perspective of women's involvement therein. Next, we provide a brief characterisation of Poland's industrial relations as the context for women-centred organising activities. Subsequently, we move on to the empirical part based on in-depth interviews and focus groups (with female employees working in a mattress sewing plant, a steelworks and a hotel), which opens with a methodological section, describing the design of the research and methods employed, organization of the research process and its aims. The presentation and analysis of results is structured along the expectations (formulated expressis verbis) and needs (addressed implicitly and contextually reconstructed) of research participants and placed in the collective interest representation setting. In the discussion, we juxtapose the findings with ongoing experiences of unions engaging in revitalisation involving women and ponder potential solutions that could attract female employees to unions. The article closes with conclusions, including recommendations for the union movement and proposed directions for future research.

Trade unions worldwide have been struggling with multi-layered crises since Fordism broke down in the 1970s. Unions in developed countries experienced – albeit unevenly – setbacks in all dimensions of power, with associational power suffering arguably most severely (see: Visser, 2019; Waddington et al., 2023). On the one hand, this has led to increasingly pessimistic diagnoses and forecasts, to the point that trade unions may vanish and other forms of collective interest representation for workers will replace them (e.g. Atzeni, 2022). On the other hand, the union movement has not given up its efforts to retain and even rebuild some of its power using various strategies (e.g. Ibsen, Tapia, 2017). Searching for new or underexplored power resources, trade unions started to increasingly focus on groups of workers other than their diminishing core constituency: blue-collar, predominantly male and concentrated in industrial manufacturing sectors of economy. This was coupled with a dramatic shift in the dominant mode of social reproduction in union movement, as membership would lose its appeal of a “privilege” and instead was turning into a source of risk with neoliberal anti-union narratives increasingly impacting public discourse and translating into anti-union political and business practice (e.g. Waddington et al., 2023). Unions would, thus, evolve from “exclusive” into “inclusive” type of social groups in order to prevent deterioration in density. As a result, new groups and categories of workers, identified along various socio-economic lines, were targeted. Women have been one of such categories, because of their continuous expansion in the labour market with female employment rates on the rise.

The possible path for effective union revitalisation may then lead to targeting women and those sectors of the labour market that are female-dominated. Following the business unionism logic, shaping the union agenda so that it addresses the needs and expectations of female workers may translate into effective recruitment and the enhancement of the associational power of trade unions. Within this context, it is briefly worth considering the role of women in trade unions. The first all-female unions were founded in the United States as early as the 1860s (Baxandall et al., 1995). Yet, women's position in the union constituencies long remained of lesser importance with male manual labourers and blue-collar workers forming the core, as “historically, women have shown lower unionization rates due mainly to weaker labor market attachment” (Prytz and Berglund, 2023, p. 473). In a more contemporary sense, women now make up approximately 45% of union members, which is more or less equivalent to their share in the volume of employees (ETUC, 2024). As Visser (2019, p. 29) observes: “Arguably, together with the decline of industrial membership, the biggest change in trade unions during the past decades has been the rise of female membership. This process occurred nearly everywhere and began around 1970”. There are, however, noticeable disparities among the developed countries as far as female membership is concerned, and their determinants are complex.

Thus, it is important to note that targeting women may produce positive tangible results for trade unions. First, feminization of employment has followed the demise of Fordist-type economy and gradual erosion of the “male-breadwinner” model. As a consequence, trade unions as organisations of male workers concentrated in manufacturing decomposed. De-industrialization was coupled with an ongoing move towards an economy dominated by services, which resulted not only in total and relative shares of service sectors in employment growing but also with the service work's transformation marked by the rising prominence of care and emotional work (Hochschild, 1979). The opportunity was, however, not fully seized as “In most countries […] unions failed to move from industrial to encompassing (catch-all) organizations” (Visser, 2024, p. 642). Second, discrimination against women in the labour market has not entirely disappeared. They earn less on average (16–20% in EU countries) (Leythienne and Ronkowski, 2018), have to cope with “glass-ceiling” in numerous internal labour markets and struggle to reconcile work and family life. This is the case even in countries where gender equality in the labour market is very advanced, such as Sweden (Jansson, 2022). Third, women have gained (arithmetical) dominance in those trade unions whose veto power, because of their sectoral profile, is relatively high. COVID-19 has raised the social awareness of the importance of “essential work” (hence, essential workers) for social reproduction. Essential work such as education, health and care, are sectors where women constitute the majority of the workforce.

It is surprising, though, that very few campaigns targeting women directly and explicitly have been undertaken. Women are either “subjectified” in the course of top-down activities as one of the “vulnerable” groups in the labour market or left to their own devices, which is exemplified by feminised unions engaging in self-development or coalition-building (Mrozowicki and Trawińska, 2013). In the context of organising, this translates into the debate about external versus internal union organising. In other words, you can either get “organized” or “organize yourselves”. Internal type of organising often goes unnoticed and as such it is de facto a “para-organising” through which unions – at societal rather than institutional level – enhance associational power by bringing new members as a side effect of other activities (e.g. Martınez Lucio, 2017).In the case of women, it seems that the latter path is more often apparent (Kubisa, 2014).

Numerous labels have been applied to Polish industrial relations, including “illusory corporatism” (Ost, 2011) or “pluralism” (Meardi, 2002). Bechter et al. (2012) point out that industrial relations differ between the public and private sectors. Industrial relations in the private sector in Poland are branded as “mixed” or “empty”, but in the public sector, they are characterised as “state-centred”. The heterogeneity of the national system of industrial relations appears to be a consequence of the nature of domestic capitalism, described as “patchwork” (Rapacki et al., 2019; Gardawski and Rapacki, 2021), in which a variety of institutional arrangements – with different backgrounds (legacies of feudalism, authoritarian socialism and socio-economic and political transformation from 1990s and beyond) – are more or less loosely knitted together and interacting with one another. By its very nature, patchwork capitalism weakens formal institutions, including those of industrial relations and social dialogue (Czarzasty and Mrozowicki, 2023). The institutional voids are compensated for by societal coping strategies aiming – in the dimension of work and employment – at overcoming challenges of work organization and management (Mrozowicki et al., 2025).

The key features of the Polish industrial relations system are as follows: advanced union pluralism and fragmentation of the trade union movement, complemented by a similar degree of pluralism and fragmentation of employer organisations, low organisational density on both sides of the industrial relations scene, and decentralised collective bargaining with limited coverage. The union density is estimated at 13% (CBOS, 2021), while in the case of employers, it is estimated at 20%. Collective bargaining coverage is the lowest in the EU, at13% (ETUI, 2024). Moreover, multi-employer bargaining is virtually non-existent (Czarzasty, 2019).

In terms of gender relations within the trade union movement, around 48% of union members are women (GUS, 2019), which is above average in the international context. Among the largest trade unions, the Independent and Self-Governing Trade Union “Solidarność” (NSZZ Solidarność) reports that 40% of its members are female (ETUC, 2019). The most recent comparable figure for the All-Poland Alliance of Trade Unions (OPZZ) is from 2010, when women made up 48% of its membership (ETUC, 2019). However, it is important to note that some sectoral unions are statistically highly dominated by women, reflecting the feminisation of employment in specific sectors, notably public health, social services, education and retail trade. Furthermore, the Polish trade union movement is becoming more and more feminised: in 1991, 23% of men and 15% of women were union members, while in 2021, the figures were 9 and 13%, respectively (CBOS, 2021). Given these figures, it would seem then that there are already solid grounds for future actions aiming at increasing female recruitment.

Furthermore, there are special structures for women in the main unions. In OPZZ, there is a special commission for young people and women. In NSZZ Solidarność, there is the National Women's Section. Yet, women are still under-represented in trade union hierarchies. There are only six women among the National Commission members of NSZZ Solidarność in the 2023–2028 term (out of 104 members in total), 16 women in the OPZZ council in 2022–2027 term (63 seats in total), and 28 in the Board of the Trade Unions Forum (FZZ) in 2018–2022 term (out of 85 members). The President of FZZ (the third largest national-level organisation) for the 2023–2027 term is a woman, and this is only the second such case in the history of the Polish trade union movement.

In terms of the identity of Polish trade unionism, all the nationally representative confederations present a case of mixed market/society identities (Hyman, 2001). On the one hand, they aspire to play the role of social partner, influencing economic affairs and policymaking through social dialogue and tripartite institutions. On the other hand, because of their organisational and institutional weakness, they are limited to the role of representatives of workers' voice at the company level (market/business unionism) (Czarzasty and Mrozowicki, 2023). The mixed identity of Polish trade unions is reflected in their ambiguous gender politics, although in the case of the latter, the picture is even more complicated. What can be reconstructed from the existing body of research appears to be as a peculiar mixture of all three types of identity, as in Poland, unlike other CEE countries, some grass-roots unions – such as the All-Poland Trade Union Workers' Initiative (OZZ IP, Ogólnopolski Związek Zawodowy Inicjatywa Pracownicza) or the Confederation of Labour (KP, Konfederacja Pracy), affiliated to OPZZ – tend to engage in class-oriented unionism (Mrozowicki and Maciejewska, 2017). There are highly feminised unions, especially from the health sector, which have taken on the role of agents in gender-mainstreaming in industrial relations (Kubisa, 2014).

Nevertheless, there remains a lack of coordination within the union movement – with upper-level structures such as federations and confederations being relatively weak and the centre of gravity of union activity located at workplace level – making it difficult for any complex, nation-wide campaigns targeting women to be carried out. This situation therefore highlights the institutional incoherence emblematic of patchwork capitalism. For that reason, it is rather the bottom-up approach in organising that would arguably prove more effective in attracting women to unions at the shop floor, and with their presence at the basis of the organisational pyramid systematically increasing, the position of female leadership in the union power structures would subsequently become stronger.

The empirical part of the article is based on the results of the international project VIRAGE ^[1] aiming at deepening the understanding of how industrial relations can influence changes in gender equality in European labour markets. This article draws on the results of qualitative research conducted in Poland.

The intention was to reconstruct the perspective of women on gender equality issues in work and employment relations by asking about good and bad practices in this area, as well as about the role of different actors in addressing the situation of women in the labour market, and about their needs and expectations. Two focus group interviews were conducted within a production sector (five respondents per focus group) and three in-depth interviews within the service sector. All respondents were female, and the sample was diverse by age and education. The characteristics of respondents are presented in Table 2. None of the respondents was a member of a trade union, as we wanted to grasp the factors that would attract more women to union structures. The selection of participants was purposive. Three distinct sectors were chosen –a mattress sewing unit (production plant with a predominantly female workforce), steelworks (production plant with a predominantly male workforce) and a hotel (gender diverse workforce) – which are traditionally gendered and structurally different in terms of working conditions, organizational cultures and union presence. These sectors were also chosen because they present specific and contrasting challenges for implementing gender equality measures. In the textile sector, the feminized nature of work is often accompanied by relatively low wages, and limited opportunities for promotion. In the steelworks, by contrast, women remain significantly underrepresented and may face implicit exclusion from male-dominated workplace cultures, with limited access to certain positions due to entrenched stereotypes about physical strength or “suitability”. Hotel staff, while more gender-diverse, face a high degree of occupational stratification (e.g. housekeeping vs. front desk and management), and irregular, antisocial working hours. The data obtained allowed for the identification of sector-specific as well as cross-cutting themes, supporting the methodological decision to prioritize depth and context.

Saunders and Townsend (2016, p. 849) emphasize in their discussion on reporting and justifying interview sample sizes in organizational research that the adequacy of qualitative sampling should not be judged by its numerical size but by whether or not it yields rich or relevant data. They argue that the key criterion for sample sufficiency is not statistical representativeness but rather a concept they call “informational redundancy”. In our context, in-depth interviews and focus groups provided evidence of recurring themes and systematic patterns across the spectrum of women's experiences and expectations about gender equality and collective representation in the workplace.

The design of the scenarios and the subsequent analysis, drew on a constructivist approach based on grounded theory (Charmaz, 2014), which originated from the work of Glaser and Strauss (1967). The researchers were interested in “what happens” (Charmaz, 2014; Berthelsen et al., 2017), and the approach adopted allowed for simultaneous data collection and analysis to answer empirical questions that emerged during the research/field phase. The researchers did not adopt theoretical approaches in advance but tried to analyse the material collected in an unbiased way and relate it to the real context indicated by the respondents. In line with this orientation, the study used semi-structured individual interviews and focus group discussions as data collection methods. Each interview was recorded and transcribed verbatim. All interviews were face-to-face. Transcripts were then subjected to the reflexive thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2019). The questions focused on participants' understanding of gender equality, and their awareness of the issue in the workplace. They also covered facilitators and barriers to gender equality, as well as gender norms and stereotypes in the workplace. Particular attention was given to thematic areas such as equal and transparent pay and reconciling work and family life. Respondents were asked to reflect on concrete examples of good and bad practices observed in their workplaces, and on persistence of gender occupational segregation, and the gender employment gap and the representation of women in decision-making roles. The interviews also explored perceptions of existing support structures, the extent of institutional trust and the role of different actors – employers, supervisors, trade unions and public institutions – in addressing gender equality issues and improving the situation of women in the labour market. These qualitative methods enabled participants not only to share detailed personal narratives but also to engage in collective reflection and group dialogue about their everyday experiences, perceived barriers and potential solutions.

Our analysis is embedded in the theoretical assumption that women's underrepresentation and inequalities in employment structures create both deficits in workplace justice and opportunities for union revitalization. Needs or expectations expressed by respondents may communicate deficiencies in gender equality; however, they also signal opportunities for proactive union activity that is more inclusive of women. It suggests pathways for trade unions' renewal of legitimacy and associational power by addressing gender-specific issues.

Sometimes the female perspective in the qualitative material is formulated expressis verbis and sometimes it is addressed implicitly and analytically reconstructed in the context of collective interest representation. We extracted recurring themes, which provided a basis for distinguishing the different categories of needs that we describe below. These findings provide justification for re-thinking union engagement with women's work.

The conflict between family and work appears as a crucial factor determining women's position in the workplace. Our informants recurrently pointed to issues concerning support for work-life balance. In their view, this is a key element in improving the situation of women in the workplace, appeasing the conflict between work and professional responsibilities. Lack of action in this area often results in withdrawal or reduction of occupational activity.

The major problem identified was the issue of limited availability and absenteeism of employees due to care responsibilities. This means increased costs for employers in training and recruiting new staff, and the training is mainly on-the-job. This, in turn, according to respondents, leads to discriminatory practices against women, both in employment and in career progression.

This situation creates expectations for the flexibilization of work by making it easier for women to combine family and work responsibilities, reducing absenteeism at work, while maintaining workers' rights.

The case of pregnant women points to the need for flexible working arrangements in production facilities that require workers to be present at specific times. It illustrates the challenge employers face in offering pregnant women suitable workplace and employment conditions. Flexible working arrangements require reformulation of business processes. Sometimes pregnant women are even encouraged to go on sick leave due to the fact that it is not possible to provide them with a workplace suitable for their condition in the short term.

The need for support of their interests and advocacy was expressed by many respondents. They often feel left on their own, without support or Allies. At the same time, there is a clear distrust of new institutions or positions that could look after the interests of discriminated groups in the workplace. It is noteworthy that respondents cannot name entities/institutions that would represent their interests at the workplace. In general, institutions are not to be trusted. It is a broader and resilient phenomenon long observed in Poland (Nowak, 2011). For that reason, the respondents suggest that it is the employer's awareness of gender equality, which is crucial for improving the situation of women in the workplace. Moreover, respondents tend to believe that it depends on supervisor's personality. In other words, it is simply a matter of luck or lack, as opposed to expectations of institutional responses.

In this sense, the employer is often equated with a specific person rather than an institution. The lack of trust in institutional representation also results in doubting their effectiveness.

Informants attribute the power to improve the situation of women in the workplace to employers, who they see as the only ones with the power to do so. This indicates an institutional weakness in the support of women's rights as far as industrial relations are concerned.

There was only one voice that pointed directly to the need for institutional representation of women's interests in the area of gender equality in industrial relations.

However, the need for institutional representation was often indicated by the respondents implicitly. On the one hand, informants do not trust institutions, but from the other, they express the need for some identify – still referred to in a rather anthropomorphic manner – to be put in place to represent them.

The respondents voiced the need to take action for promoting gender equality in work and employment relations. These are often personal motivations to engage in activities to improve the situation of women in the workplace.

Informants see changes taking place in work environments in the area of gender equality, but wish to see them advance further. Some respondents talk about the issue in terms of fighting for their rights, with a clear imperative to act. Growing awareness of women regarding their rights gave them more confidence for further actions for the empowerment of women in the various dimensions of their situation on the labour market.

The high level of emotional engagement is evidenced by respondents calling for change, often taking the form of a manifesto for equal treatment.

The statements of the respondents indicate dissatisfaction with the status quo as far as gender equality in a workplace is concerned. This suggests that a need for collective action exists, propelled by a perceived sense of injustice affecting a vulnerable social category, women.

While respondents see room for solutions that would equalize their chances in the labour market and improve their situation in the workplace, there are no opportunities to discuss them or to reflect on their feasibility and possible implementation. To illustrate this need, one respondent suggested concessions for employers hiring women returning to the labour market after maternity leave.

In contrast, there is a lack of space for such ideas to be channelled in a structured way into relevant bodies, so they are to be heard as a strong labour voice. Moreover, respondents were taking into account the rationale of various parties. This is evident in respondents' statements regarding support for pregnant women and those with young children, which could be beneficial for employers (interested in reducing the time of female workers' absence, hence the need to hire and train replacements) and female employees (interested in reducing gaps in employment and the consequential loss of skills).

One respondent also supported pay transparency at the company level.

Job grading emphasizes internal job prioritization and an open pay scale, which can improve women's situation at work. The respondents point to various solutions that could improve women's situation. However, there are no signs of adequate agency on their part to advance it. In other words, some institutional leverage seems necessary.

Table 1 summarizes the main identified needs and expectations of women, highlighting the deficits in gender equality that hinder their fulfilment. The right column of the table contains potential actions trade unions could take as response to the needs and expectations of women. This framework can serve as a diagnostic and strategic tool for union revitalization through gender-responsive approaches.

Our point of departure stems from the empirical and theoretical foundation allowing us to claim that women have been a very important source of membership for trade unions. This reasoning is based both on historical experience and the recent transformations of the economy, labour market and society at large. Women's position in all those dimensions has strengthened, albeit unevenly. With the aspirations growing and not being adequately satisfied, relative deprivation is clearly a powerful – yet underused – engine for organizing and mobilizing the underprivileged in the perspective of Korpi (1974), in this case, women. Trade unions can address that challenge, but if they hesitate, someone else will likely try (Atzeni, 2022; Saward, 2006). The needs and expectations we have identified indicate that the scale of deprivation is substantial. The research highlighted a number of needs (implicitly addressed, and analytically reconstructed) and expectations (explicitly stated) that could become new points of reference for trade unions in their quest for revitalization by expanding their female membership. These include primarily addressing the gender pay gap, improving work-life balance, and increasing the representation of women in management boards. Our respondents also emphasized the need to encompass more platforms for discussions and social dialogue that raise the awareness of women's needs and expectations and lead to changes in stereotypes, helping advance gender equality in the workplace. The actions that need to be taken are multi-layered and interdependent, and taking many of them will be a challenge for the unions, which, to date, have not progressed significantly on the way to becoming all-encompassing unions (Visser, 2019).

There is a wide range of needs that could be looked at by unions with a view to devising and delivering relevant services. The needs have not been addressed straightforwardly. As a result, they vary in terms of generality/specificity. On the one hand, there is a very general postulate to advance gender mainstreaming by awareness-building. It can be done, for instance, by educational activities in workplaces on equal rights in men and women (i.e. from a legal perspective), enhancing legal and rights literacy among women workers to increase self-advocacy and participation in union activities. Drawing attention to the needs of women in the workplace as a way of covering labour shortages or reducing staff turnover is an important argument trade unions could use in raising the awareness of employers, including building long-term strategies and dynamic capabilities for the development of enterprises in conditions of shrinking labour supply. Depending on circumstances, trade unions may adopt cooperative or confrontational strategies, such as naming and shaming. There are, however, also some less ambiguous traits, such as de facto safeguarding equal treatment and opportunities at the workplace level. The empirical results strongly confirm there is a need for developing a representation of women's interests in relations with employers in the field of gender equality based on trust and effectiveness, supported by additional services, such as advisory (legal) services. This role requires prior establishment of trust in the union as a credible actor acting for the benefit of the women it represents. Attention needs to be paid also to the way in which unions themselves operate and are based on gender equality. In other words, trade unions need to prove that they are for women. An important argument in this process is to point to the growing representation of women in unions. This requires a further increase in women's union membership and even more so in the leadership positions, perhaps by starting with a quota system. Specific actions implemented by trade unions can take the form of promotion of this new role and image of trade unions by means of social campaigns on various channels, microtargeted messages that proved to be effective in the past. Given the general weakness of Polish trade unions in terms of their associational and structural power, the optimal way of translating such expectations and needs into institutional arrangements would arguably be combining lobbying on legislation and promoting the issues within tripartite bodies with attempts to mobilize popular support via social campaigns. The experiences of 2010s campaigns targeting precarious work (e.g. Sisyphus campaign by NSZZ “Solidarność”) or contesting the retirement age reform show the potential for enhancing trade unions' status and societal power (Butkovic et al., 2023). To increase efficiency, this would require coalition-building with political parties and social movements. Transmission of the union agenda into public policy, while sometimes being efficient, is relatively obscure, due to being done via state institutions, which may result in the government, and not unions, receiving credit in the eyes of the public. This poses the risk of the union agenda being hijacked by political parties, who may push forward the “representativity claim” (Saward, 2006; Czarzasty and Mrozowicki, 2023). It seems that bottom-up (organizing themselves) and top-down (get organized) efforts in trade union building (Mrozowicki and Trawińska, 2013, Martínez Lucio, 2017) need to be critically re-examined and ultimately should merge with a view of synergy. It would definitely pose a problem not just of an organizational but also a political nature, considering the mixed identity of Polish unions (Czarzasty and Mrozowicki, 2023), but still seems a necessary step.

Using EU-legislation opens another avenue for advancing institutional solutions that may potentially enhance trade unions' position in the labour market and industrial relations. One instance is the need for implementation of the Minimum Wage Directive, in particular, the Article 4, which sets the requirement for the Member States to ensure conditions for increasing collective bargaining coverage. Possible revival of collective bargaining could offer a chance to facilitate the interest of unions' constituency in collective agreements, including enclosing women-oriented clauses therein. Another such opportunity could stem from the implementation of the Pay Transparency Directive, which aims to combat pay discrimination and help close the gender pay gap in the EU. Women have an interest in being involved in the design of the system for calculating and communicating the adjusted pay gap, and in the design of the measures that will be required if the pay gap exceeds 5%. Incentivizing job grading systems and open pay scales seems the right direction to follow. Social partners will need to be consulted and involved in the development of specific tools to assess what constitutes equal pay for equal work.

Targeting women and female-dominated sectors could be a step onto a promising path for union revitalization in Poland, with other countries in CEE where patchwork capitalism also exists, in particular (Rapacki, 2019), following the example. Shaping the union agenda so that it addresses the needs and expectations of female workers may translate into effective recruitment of new members and enhancing the associational power of trade unions. However, those needs and expectations must be properly identified and subsequently addressed.

In the first place, both governments (macro level) and unions should take actions leading to closing (or at least narrowing) the gender pay gap and to effective enforcement of equal pay regulations in daily work and employment relations. Second, there is an explicit need to help both women and men improve work-life balance. Governments are currently implementing the EU work-life balance directive, offering among other policy instruments, those that encourage men to take up parental leaves (in particular those that are part of “daddy quota”), but these need awareness campaigns and workplace support for men wishing to take care of their children. Public policy could also offer employers incentives (also financial) to hire parents returning to the labour market after maternity and/or parental leave and unions could negotiate family support in the workplace and unions should also press for it. Another potential solution that unions could encourage is greater involvement of parents on maternity or sick leaves in everyday firm's actions. For instance, parents on leave could be offered to participate in online on-the-job training to catch up with firms' developments while away. Companies can be supportive by remodelling the working environment, for instance, developing and implementing flexible work organization, also pertaining to working time. Companies may also contribute to building more gender-equal workplaces by encouraging men to take leaves (e.g. by increasing their income replacement rates associated with the parental leaves so that gender gaps in incomes of mothers and fathers are not an obstacle to fathers providing care). All these actions should involve trade unions, for instance, through awareness-raising campaigns and supporting workplace transformations. An important element of trade union activity in this area could also be to initiate and support activities to develop a more flexible organization of working time, enabling the combination of care and professional responsibilities. This is particularly important for production units working in a continuous motion system, where this requires, in many cases, a reorganization of business processes, but which in the long term, in the face of staff shortages, will be beneficial to both employees and employers. Another potential new role for trade unions in supporting work-life balance is creating tailor-made solutions, such as easily accessible, good-quality childcare facilities (kindergartens). Efficiency in that field requires networking of local stakeholders, such as local authorities, non-governmental organizations and other local employers around particular actions, such as the establishment of a childcare facility or any other alternative solution tailored to local needs and capabilities. Such partnerships could have the potential to create a sustainable support/action structure that will uphold future initiatives emerging from joint cooperation. Such new roles of trade unions require engaging in cooperation outside of union structures at various levels. In particular, it is a matter of building coalitions for the implementation of solutions favourable to women in the workplace at different levels.

The article touches on areas that have been relatively little explored by research so far, but given the fairly small and sector-specific sample, the findings should be seen as exploratory. That is why this study could and should serve as an inspiration and trigger for future research. It could build on these qualitative insights by extending the scope of inquiry to a broader range of sectors and organizational contexts, and by including a more diverse pool of respondents in terms of age, occupation, and employment status. Future research could also shed light on gender equality challenges and opportunities of educational and training systems for a resilient and inclusive workforce in the selected sectors and occupations subject to technological change. Comparative studies done across regions or countries could further deepen the context of trade unions' revitalisation. In addition, combining qualitative methods with large-scale quantitative surveys – preferably representative – would allow for a more robust assessment of the prevalence of identified themes and their implications for workplace practices and collective representation. Further research could also strive to identify more needs and expectations – should we stick to the analytical categories used in this article – of women towards unions.