This article explores why equality bargaining appears to remain underdeveloped despite its widely acknowledged potential for tackling workplace inequalities. The concept from social movement theory of ‘framing’ is utilised to assess the prospects of moving from ‘where we are’. Findings from a study of UK-based union equality actors discuss unceasing efforts on their part to shift equality from the margins to the centre of union bargaining activity. As regards ‘where to next’, Equality Officers’ strategic deployment of the longstanding union equality frames of ‘women’s issues’ and ‘gender mainstreaming’ challenges taken-for-granted social practices within unions, offering some optimism that creative strategies can help to inject equality frames into traditional union frames, thus producing an expanded and inclusive notion of union solidarity. However, this framing activity occurs within existing opportunity structures with all their facilitative and inhibitive factors, including resistant union officers and reps, which previous research has highlighted. Therefore, a less optimistic vision is that the weight of union tradition that has long privileged male interests, combined with contemporary hostile bargaining conditions, are just too great for equality bargaining to reach its full potential.

本文探讨了为何尽管在解决工作场所不平等问题上广为人知的潜力，但平等谈判似乎仍未得到充分发展。来自社会运动理论的“框架”概念被用来评估从“我们在哪里”运动的前景。来自英国的工会平等参与者的一项研究发现，他们为将平等从边缘转移到工会讨价还价活动的中心而不断努力。关于“下一个目标”，平等官员对工会中长期存在的“妇女问题”和“性别主流化”挑战的战略部署进行了战略考量，这为工会内部理所当然的社会习俗提供了挑战，这使人们乐观地认为创造性战略可以帮助注入平等框架转变为传统的工会框架，从而产生了广泛而包容的工会团结概念。但是，这种框架活动是在现有机会结构及其所有促进和抑制因素中发生的，包括先前有研究强调的抵抗工会官员和代表。因此，不那么乐观的看法是，长期以来享有男性特权的工会传统的重要性，再加上当代敌对的谈判条件，对于平等谈判无法发挥其全部潜力来说实在太大了。