Title: Balancing Precarious Work and Care: How Well does Labour Law Respond to Women's Changing Work Patterns?
Funder: Economic and Social Research Council

Abstract: At a time when women are predicted to take on considerably higher care burdens as a result of public sector 'austerity' cuts (Women's Budget Group, 2011), the pressures on many women balancing work and care are set to increase. This is even more of a problem for women in precarious work because employment equality rights allowing employees to negotiate flexible work are based on a 'standard employment relationship' model and therefore exclude a wide range of (predominantly female) precarious workers, including agency workers. It is known that women choose (Williams, 2010) or, if they are on low income, are forced into, precarious work (Alakeson, 2012) precisely because of unpaid care obligations. With the increased effects of public sector cuts on women, and with government currently in the process of formulating new flexibility rights in the workplace through the recent 'Modernising Workplaces' consultation, it is extremely important that any new policies and laws take account of these social and legal problems This socio-legal project will use new qualitative research on women's working lives to propose a radical re-evaluation of UK labour law and policy. Most UK labour law is based on the 'standard employment relationship' (SER), an outmoded concept of work, which is a relic of the post World War Two industrial era. Apart from other problems, the SER assumes that most workers are in permanent, full time work with a single employer, and that workers do not have any obligations to care for children or dependents. A key problem for UK policy-makers is that the SER is modelled on, and contributes to, embedded inequalities between women and men in the workplace, and that it continues to place the burden of unpaid care on women. This project will undertake the first in-depth research into the experiences of those people who are most likely to be disadvantaged by the gender assumptions in the SER: precarious female workers with care commitments. It will investigate how the legal frameworks stemming from the SER affect the day to day lives of women balancing precarious work and care, women's reasons for doing this work, and their strategies for managing the tensions caused by care dilemmas. This rich, empirical data will then be used to feed into a new gender-sensitive vision for UK labour law and policy. As such, 'Balancing Precarious Work and Care' will be the first project in the UK to use qualitative research on women's working lives to reformulate key concepts in labour law. This research will be important to a number of non-academic groups, including trade unions; advice organisations for precarious workers, working families, and single parents; legal policy groups; and equality lawyers. Research findings will be disseminated in the form of a substantial policy report; an information summary on current UK and EU law aimed at precarious workers; an international conference bringing together researchers, lawyers, policy-makers, trade unionists, and grassroots activists on how to tackle the precarious work/care dilemma; and a project website. Findings will also be published in academic form through peer-reviewed journal articles and will form the basis for a monograph proposal to be completed after the end of the grant.


Research activity codes: 1.2 PSYCHOLOGICAL AND SOCIOECONOMIC PROCESSES
Health categories: GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE