Class, gender and the work of working-class women amid turbulent times

Warren, Tracey; Torres, Luis; Lyonette, Clare; Tarlo, Ruth

Abstract

The article focuses on the work of working-class women (WCW) amid turbulent times. Its timespan is just prior to and during the Covid-19 pandemic in the UK. The women's work, and the key skills involved, are fundamental to everyday lives, but both have been under-valued and under-rewarded. The pandemic shone a fresh light on the societal importance of this work and highlighted how its under-valuation and the women's systemic low pay and inferior working conditions have serious ramifications not only for individual workers and their families but for the provision of key services. The article centres WCW, at the intersection of classed and gendered disadvantage, to ask about inequalities in work experiences. Analysing nationally representative samples of thousands of workers in the UK prior to and as Covid-19 rolled out, we compare WCW with other workers. We show that the women faced both persistent and new inequalities at work: enduring low earnings, pandemic-led risks to jobs and paid hours, little opportunity to work from home or flexibly, and stressful key working roles. We reveal the heavily classed nature of some of these findings, show that others were more strongly gendered, while still others were classed and gendered outcomes that require intersectional analyses of the women's working lives.

Citation

Warren, T., Torres, L., Lyonette, C., & Tarlo, R. (2024). Class, gender and the work of working-class women amid turbulent times. British Journal of Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.13147

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Sep 3, 2024
• Online Publication Date: Sep 19, 2024
• Publication Date: Sep 19, 2024
• Deposit Date: Sep 6, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 23, 2024
• Journal: The British Journal of Sociology
• Print ISSN: 0007-1315
• Electronic ISSN: 1468-4446
• Publisher: Wiley
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.13147
• Keywords: working‐class women, employment, Covid‐19, pandemic, wages, risks
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/39174621