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The meaning of unemployment: a gendered analysis
This paper explores the ways in which 'unemployment' is conceptualised in the current period in the UK, in both academic research and analysis and in government policy. It discusses the gendered aspects of these conceptualisations and the implications of this for working class women and the politics of inequality. In particular, it examines how current perspectives on unemployment, and the meaning attached to it, shape policy and political responses to women's unemployment and influence women's experience and status as unemployed workers and/or claimants. The paper is based on an examination and analysis of a range of literature.
Studies of unemployment and unemployed people have a long history in the UK. While many historical studies explored the meaning and experience of unemployment most were focused on male unemployment. In the recent period the focus of research and discussion has tended to be on the impact of welfare policy. Moreover, the very term unemployment has tended to recede as the concept of 'worklessness' has come to the fore, with implications for how 'being out of work' is regarded.
The discussion in this paper is located in the current UK context, a period which, since 1998, has witnessed major changes to the benefit system, in particular, the growing emphasis on engaging 'economically inactive' claimants with the labour market, the development of a rigorous and personalised conditionality regime within the benefit system, and the privatisation of service delivery. These policy developments are now taking place alongside rising unemployment, when working age women outside the labour market have become a specific focus of policy. The paper builds on two recent empirical studies examining the absence of considerations of gender in the design and delivery of employment services and in the encounters between employment advisors and women, and which argue that this absence tends to accentuate gender divisions in the labour market (Grant 2009; Grant forthcoming). The paper seeks to contribute to our understanding of the significance of the 'unemployment discourse' in a range of aspects, including individual experience, political activity, and policy design and implementation.
Grant, L. (2009), 'Women's disconnection from local labour markets: real lives and policy failure', Critical Social Policy, 29 (3): 330 - 350
Grant, L. (forthcoming), 'Welfare reform: the absence of gender and the accentutation of gender divisions'.