Focus: Equality - `It was like the Fifties'

When I worked for Usdaw, the shop and distributive workers' union, its membership was three-quarters female. It covered a workforce that is difficult to organise but desperately easy to exploit: mothers and older women looking for part-time work on the shop floor or conveyor belt. I joined as a graduate with little work experience and a strong belief in trade unionism, but my initial short contract stretched to six disillusioning years working in the union's national headquarters in suburban Manchester.

It was like stepping into the 1950s. There was a typing pool where women tapped all day in silence; the accounts were still entered in columns in leather-bound ledgers. The air was stagnant with unfulfilled talent and suppressed rebellion. I watched as my manager and mentor in the press office - a gifted and committed woman journalist - lost a promotion in favour of a middle-aged hack who called women "love".

The corridors rocked with these "beer and sandwiches" trade unionists, stuffed into shiny suits and preoccupied with early retirement. The union was burdened with a whole forest of dead wood - at a time when we were pledged to winning progressive working agreements for maternity cover and better conditions for part-timers. And the richest irony? Staff were contractually obliged to join Usdaw, but forbidden to join any other union.