Rethinking the industrial relations tradition from a gender perspective

Abstract

The industrial relations tradition values empirical analysis and research usable for policy making. Considerations about epistemology and ontology and their consequences for the research are not integrated in the tradition. Just as daily research only very seldom relates to higher‐level theorising, a case in point being the development of a common theoretical framework, theoretical discussions are mostly separated from daily research into special rooms where discussion and development takes places among a few specialists. The industrial relations tradition also keeps women and research in gender in the periphery. This has consequences not only for the visibility of women’s labour market participation and for the status of the research in gender, but also for the industrial relations tradition, as it will become less able to see new tendencies and developments at the labour market and in industrial relations. The first part of the article discusses how the tradition – in spite of a growing acceptance of gender research – is still influenced by a male norm. In the second part the article endeavours to relate the under‐theorising of the IR tradition and the marginalisation of a gender perspective. The last part of the article introduces an integrated gender perspective as one – although incomplete – way to overcome these problems.

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