There is now an abundant and rich literature on gender and leadership in the corporate context, where concepts of masculine and feminine leadership are widely debated. This article provides a bridge between this literature and the women and unions literature, where women’s leadership is under-researched but where feminist strategies are widely discussed. The article uses the relatively novel lens of masculine, feminine and feminist leadership for interpreting the leadership talk of an ethnically diverse group of American and British union women. We argue that when women lead in heavily masculinized settings, their leadership discourses and orientations are almost bound to reflect the dominant culture. The study reveals that while there is a discursive space within unions for alternative (feminine and feminist) visions of leadership, in practice women union leaders also engage in different combinations (often simultaneously) of (masculine) status quo and (feminine and feminist) transformative leadership talk.