GENDERED CONSTRAINTS AND OPPORTUNITIES - AN ANALYSIS OF WORKERS EXPERIENCE IN UK COOPERATIVE AND COLLECTIVE ORGANIZATIONS

This article is based upon empirical research with 45 cooperative and collective workers, 30 women and 15 men, undertaken in the United King dom between 1989 and 1993. It addresses both the constraints and the o pportunities that workers experience in such organizations, and how bo th of these are informed by the gender of workers and the gender compo sition of the organization. Two lines of argument around which to theo rize workers' experiences are presented; first, it is suggested that w orkers in cooperative and collective organizations have failed to over come some of the material and discursive constraints that locate women and men in different positions in workplace organizations and in the labour market generally. Second, it is argued that gender inequalities are resisted and challenged by workers in cooperative and collective organizations in ways which allow for a different reading of their exp eriences, albeit one that is still informed by gender. ?he article arg ues that these gender inequalities, and the strategies adopted by work ers to overcome them, operate at both the material and the discursive level. It concludes that there is support for both of the two apparent ly contrasting lines of argument, and that rather than viewing sociost ructural and agency-orientated approaches to gender and work in opposi tion, it is possible to elucidate the ways in which they can be seen a s elaborations or developments of one another.