Estimating the Probability of Trade Union Membership: A Study of Men and Women in Britain

The paper examines the determinants of the individual decision to unionize for British employees and uses micro data from the 1975 National Training Survey. The unionization probability is estimated separately for manual and non-manual men, and full-time and part-time women. An interesting finding is that personal characteristics of both men and women generally do not affect the unionization probability. This result run, counter to the common perception that family responsibilities explain low female trade union density.