Trade union campaigns for early childcare and school secretarial work in Ireland

Drawing on case studies of trade union organising for female-dominated care work occupations in Ireland, in early childcare and school secretarial work, this chapter asks what ideas about gender and care work are produced in trade union campaigns and with what consequence? Trade union campaigns are understood as epistemological sites where competing ideas about gender and care are used to elicit worker and public support and make claims on the state. Feminised and feminist framing both feature in campaigns, alongside anti-austerity, and anti-marketisation messaging that defines care as a public good. The balance struck between feminised and feminist framing is indicative of how union campaigns may reinforce gender stereotypes and maintain undervaluation and or act to politicise and socialise care work as indispensable and valuable. This assessment includes reflection on how the Covid-19 pandemic, which has simultaneously exalted and exhausted female frontline care workers, may shift or intensify existing trends.