L-earning: rethinking young women's working lives

L-收入：重新思考年轻女性的工作生活

• 批准号: ES/W009870/1
• 负责人: Kimberly Allen
• 金额: $ 72.87万
• 依托单位: University of Leeds
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2022 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FW009870%2F1
• 关键词: earning; rethinking; young; women; working

This study will investigate the ways that young women (aged between 14 and 29) participate in paid work alongside their studies - whether at school, college or university - and in the period after they have completed their education. It will look at how gendered inequalities emerge in young women's earliest experiences of work and how these get solidified or are remade as their working lives develop. We will look at the ways paid work fits and is reconciled within young women's wider lives and relationships, including friendships, family, connections to their community and their developing identities and sense of self. We ask how this varies by education, comparing graduates and non-graduates, but also by ethnicity, disability, geographic location and social class background. Most young people do paid work before they finish school or college. For those who continue their studies at university, paid work is increasingly common, due to rising student fees and the increasing cost of living. Female students are especially likely to undertake paid work alongside their studies. Common jobs include babysitter, retail cashier, waitress and steward. Some students are employed within family businesses. Others engage in income-generating activities involving digital platforms such as Etsy, Depop and Instagram. Previous studies have suggested that gender inequalities exist even in these early forms of work. Despite this we know little about the detail of young people's first experiences of work, nor how these may engender longer-term patterns and establish differences between men's and women's working lives that we know grow as workers get older. Indeed, even though young women now outperform men in education, and outnumber them in higher education, by the time they hit their 30s, working women experience a growing gender pay gap. A large part of this is due to occupational segregation, and the concentration of women in more insecure and lower status jobs. Moreover, many of the gains made in women's employment have been stalled by recent economic disruption, including the COVID-19 pandemic, with government ministers, women's charities and business representatives voicing concerns that we risk rolling back previous improvements in gender equality. To address these challenges, it is timely and urgent to look more closely at young women's working lives, and provide detailed analysis of how they enter, move around or get stuck in specific types of work. The study will involve different methods for capturing different phenomena; for example, analysis of existing national surveys for drawing out large-scale patterns, trends over time and over individual life-courses; focus groups and interviews with 180 young women to drill deeper into key issues, including views on good work, past experiences and hopes for the future; and interviews and roundtables with national stakeholder representatives to ensure the research meets a wide and diverse audience and has broad impact. It will generate new knowledge about young people, work and employment, education and gendered outcomes. This will impact academic disciplines across the Social Sciences. It will produce benefits for policymakers, industry, education, and third sector organisations working to challenge inequalities and promote positive change in the lives of young women. The study will be steered by a young women's advisory group, ensuring they have a central role in shaping the research. A website, news articles, a project report, policy briefings, and a final event will ensure findings are disseminated widely to a range of audiences. Findings will also be communicated in a short film, foregrounding the voices of young women. The film will be screened at a dissemination event and launched online, supported by a national social media campaign to engage broad sections of the public - and young women in particular - in a wider conversation about young women's working lives.

这项研究将调查年轻女性（年龄在14岁至29岁之间）在学习的同时——无论是在中学、学院还是大学——以及在完成学业后的一段时间里——参与带薪工作的方式。它将研究性别不平等是如何在年轻女性最初的工作经历中出现的，以及这些不平等是如何随着她们工作生活的发展而固化或重塑的。我们将研究有偿工作在年轻女性更广泛的生活和关系中是如何适应和协调的，包括友谊、家庭、与社区的联系，以及她们不断发展的身份和自我意识。我们的问题是，在比较大学毕业生和非大学毕业生，以及种族、残疾、地理位置和社会阶层背景等因素时，这种差异有何不同。大多数年轻人在中学或大学毕业前就开始从事有偿工作。对于那些继续在大学学习的人来说，由于学费的上涨和生活成本的增加，带薪工作越来越普遍。女学生尤其有可能在学习之余从事有偿工作。常见的工作包括保姆、零售收银员、女服务员和乘务员。一些学生受雇于家族企业。其他人则从事与Etsy、Depop和Instagram等数字平台有关的创收活动。以前的研究表明，即使在这些早期的工作形式中，性别不平等也存在。尽管如此，我们对年轻人第一次工作经历的细节知之甚少，也不知道这些经历会如何产生长期的模式，并在男性和女性的工作生活中建立起差异，我们知道，随着工人年龄的增长，这种差异会越来越大。事实上，尽管现在年轻女性在教育方面的表现超过了男性，在高等教育方面的人数也超过了男性，但到了30多岁时，职业女性的性别收入差距越来越大。这在很大程度上是由于职业隔离，以及女性集中在更不安全、地位更低的工作上。此外，最近的经济动荡（包括2019冠状病毒病大流行）使妇女就业方面取得的许多成果停滞不前，政府部长、妇女慈善机构和企业代表表示担心，我们可能会逆转之前在性别平等方面取得的进展。为应对这些挑战，我们迫切需要更密切地关注年轻女性的职业生活，并详细分析她们如何进入、流动或陷入特定类型的工作。这项研究将涉及捕捉不同现象的不同方法；例如，分析现有的国家调查，以得出长期和个人生命过程中的大规模模式和趋势；对180名年轻女性进行焦点小组和访谈，深入探讨关键问题，包括对好工作的看法、过去的经历和对未来的希望；与国家利益相关者代表进行访谈和圆桌会议，以确保研究满足广泛和多样化的受众，并产生广泛的影响。它将产生关于年轻人、工作和就业、教育和性别结果的新知识。这将影响整个社会科学学科。它将为政策制定者、行业、教育和第三部门组织带来好处，这些组织致力于挑战不平等，促进年轻女性生活的积极变化。这项研究将由一个年轻女性咨询小组指导，确保她们在形成研究的过程中发挥核心作用。网站、新闻文章、项目报告、政策简报和最后活动将确保调查结果广泛传播给各种受众。调查结果还将在一部短片中传播，突出年轻女性的声音。这部电影将在一个传播活动上放映，并在网上发布，并得到全国社交媒体活动的支持，以吸引广大公众——尤其是年轻女性——参与到有关年轻女性工作生活的更广泛讨论中。