What I am still learning, and why that matters

I want to be honest about something.

At a recent Women's Committee meeting, I said openly that there are concepts and ideas in the Committee debate I am not sure I fully understand. Intersectionality is one of them. Not the word, I know what it means in theory. But the practice is a different question. How does it change the way we organize? What should it look like in a collective agreement? How do we take a concept that makes sense in a meeting room in Geneva and make it real for a union in Zimbabwe, in Indonesia, in Norway?

I have not yet worked that out. And I think it is worth saying so publicly, because I suspect I am not alone.

From understanding to doing

When the concept of a transformative agenda was first explained to me, several years ago, I found the underlying logic obvious. If you want to solve a problem, you deal with the root causes. That is not a radical idea. It is just good unionism.

Intersectionality follows the same logic. Workers are not just workers. They are women, migrants, people of colour, older workers, young workers in precarious contracts. Their experience of the workplace is shaped by all of these things at once, not one at a time. A union that only sees one dimension of who its members are will miss the barriers that matter most to those members. It will bargain for things that look good on paper but leave the most exposed members behind.

When you put it that way, it is not complicated. The logic is there.

But logic and practice are not the same thing. And what I have come to understand, through the work of the Women's Committee over many years and through the Congress in Sydney last November, is that the distance between understanding something and actually doing it differently is where the real work lives. That is the step most of us have not yet taken.

Five steps, not one

When I think about where we are as an organization, I think about it in stages.

Getting this understood within our small secretariat in Geneva was one step. Getting it understood by our Executive Committee was another. Getting a Congress of over 1,000 delegates to vote for a feminist resolution, unanimously, was a third. Each of those steps required real work, real conversation and real time.

But the fifth step, getting our 530 affiliates around the world to understand not just what the resolution says but what it actually means for how they organize and bargain and represent their members, that is the biggest step of all. And we have not taken it yet.

I do not say that as a criticism. I say it as an honest assessment of where we are and what remains to be done. If you went to many of our affiliates today and asked two simple questions, what does this resolution mean in theory, and how are you going to implement it in practice, I think the answers would make clear that we have a long way to go. Some affiliates are not yet sure. Some are not yet willing. Most are somewhere in between, trying to understand what this requires of them in their specific context, with their specific membership, in their specific country.

That is the work ahead of us.

The hardest cases

It is easy to talk about gender equality and intersectionality in a well-resourced union in a country where women are already present in leadership, already heard and already strong. Those conversations are still necessary, but they are not the hardest ones.

The hardest cases are the unions that are still fighting for basic recognition. The mine workers union in a country where conditions are dangerous and pay is minimal, where the union is spending every unit of energy it has just trying to win one more small benefit for its members. How do you ask that union to also think about intersectionality? How do you make the case that this is not an additional burden but an asset?

The answer, I think, is the same one that applies everywhere: a united workforce is a stronger workforce. If women in your industry do not feel seen by your union, they will not join it. If they do not join it, your bargaining power is weaker. It is not complicated. But making that argument land, in a context where survival feels more immediate than inclusion, is genuinely difficult. That is a challenge I am still working through, and I do not have a complete answer.

What allyship actually requires

I hear the word allyship often. I use it myself. But I have been thinking about what it actually means, beyond voting yes at a congress.

The most important thing, I think, is time. A trade union leader's agenda is packed. There is always something more urgent, always another crisis, always another negotiation. If you want to be a genuine ally, you have to decide that understanding this is worth putting something else aside for. If you do not make that decision, you are not really an ally. You are just someone who votes the right way.

Allyship begins with wanting to understand. Not just accepting the resolution, but sitting down and asking: what does this mean for the specific union I lead, in the specific place I work, with the specific members I represent? What would change if I actually took this seriously?

I do not think enough of us have asked that question yet. I include myself in that.

What the Women's Committee has built

The feminist resolution did not come from the top. It came through the Women's Committee, through years of work by women who understand from their own experience what is at stake. These are women who have come up through struggle. Who have fought their way into structures that were not built for them. Who know, better than anyone, what is needed and why.

They put this on the agenda because they know the cost of leaving it off. And they have been patient with those of us who have been slower to understand.

That patience is not unlimited. Nor should it be.

A note on privilege

There is something I have to acknowledge. I come to this conversation from a position of considerable privilege. I am a white man from Norway, a country where workers' rights are strong, where women are present in leadership and where the conditions a man like me would work in are among the best in the world. That shapes what I find obvious and what I find difficult to see. It means I have to work harder to understand barriers that have never been mine. That is not an excuse. It is a reason to listen more carefully.

Where I am now

I understand intersectionality. I believe in the feminist resolution. I am committed to the work.

But I am also honest enough to say that I am still working out what that commitment requires of me in practice, day by day. I am still in conversation, with colleagues, with the Women's Committee, with myself, about how these concepts should actually change what we do.

I think that is the right place to be. Not satisfied. Not finished. Still asking the question.

What I know is this: the unions that will be strongest in ten years are the ones that understand their membership fully, in all its complexity, and organize from that knowledge. The resolution we adopted in Sydney is not a document. It is a direction. And the work of moving in that direction, seriously, practically, at every level of our organization, is just beginning.

I am committed to that work. And I am still learning how to do it.