part of the mix during a seminar at the Bermuda Industrial Union headquarters yesterday.

Twenty three people gathered for a discussion of the concept of gender within an industrial relations context.

Marva Phillips, who is responsible for the Trade Union Education Institute at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica and Constance Thomas, a lawyer from the International Labour office based in Trinidad, chaired the discussion.

Ms Phillips said the Trade Union movement throughout the Caribbean has been male-dominated for much of its history, but there have been some changes in recent years.

"The trade union movement was not designed for women,'' she said. "We could get into certain positions like secretaries, do fund raising and cake baking, but whenever a woman tried to go into other areas they found a way to keep you in your place.'' Much of this she said, was due to the socialisation process which placed men and women in specific roles.

A large part of this, she added, was the perception that women are "kept'' so they do not need to be paid a just wage because their "keepers'' (husbands and boyfriends) were the ones who needed to be well paid so that he could indulge her frivolous wants.

But she said socialisation also explained the words, images and perceptions Bermudians have about men and women.

Ms Phillips elaborated on examples that came from the participants. In one example it emerged that descriptions such as "hysterical,'' "emotional,'' and "vain'' were used to depict women in Bermuda and the connotation was always less than flattering.

Conversely, the seminar agreed, a man whose behaviour fit the dictionary definition of hysterical, would never be referred to in that way. Instead he would be described as "angry'' or "vexed'' but never "hysterical.'' Similarly, she said the image of a woman as sketched by the group, connoted a human being dressed in a skirt, high heels and lipstick while a male image was of a person attired in a business suit, a mode of dress that conjured up authority and was diametrically opposed to the perception of a woman's style of dress which is seen as "vain or frivolous''.

Ms Phillips said socialisation worked to buttress these beliefs so that they were accepted almost without question.

She said no-one would think to call a man who walked into a room wearing a perfectly tailored $1,000 suit and matching spectacles vain because such attention to detail in a man is not perceived in the same negative light.

TRAILBLAZING WOMEN -- Constance Thomas, of the International Labour Office in Trinidad, and Marva Phillips, of the Trade Union Education Institute at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica, conduct a workshop on the concept of gender with in the trade union movement at the Bermuda Industrial Union's headquarters.

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