Covid-19 and working life projects
Carrying the work burden of the Covid-19 pandemic: working class women in the UK
Project team: Professor Tracey Warren (PI), Professor Clare Lyonette (Co-I), Warwick University, the UK Women’s Budget Group (partner organisation)
Funder: Economic and Social Research Council as part of UK Research and Innovation's rapid response to COVID-19
Duration: 2020 to 2021
Project summary
Working class women are carrying the burden of the extra physical and emotional labour being generated by the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a new research project led by Professor Tracey Warren. These women care for children, sick and frail elderly, clean buildings, cook and serve food, administer institutions and staff shops, while retaining major responsibility for domestic work and caring at home.
The Women's Budget Group (WBG) highlighted that 2.5 million of the 3.2 million workers employed in the highest risk roles during the pandemic are women, many in low-paid roles. There is little detailed attention to their experiences and needs and how to urgently support them in their essential work.
This project is focusing on identifying and responding to the difficulties experienced by working class women across the UK during the Covid-19 pandemic. IT does so by analysing data from the ESRC's flagship 'UK Household Longitudinal Study', including vital new information being gathered on the impact of Covid-19. This is a large nationally-representative study as the pandemic effects roll out during 2020 and into 2021.
Final report
How is Covid-19 impacting women and men’s working lives in the UK
Project team: Professor Tracey Warren (PI), Dr Luis Terres (Co-I), the UK Women’s Budget Group (partner organisation)
Funder: Health Data Research UK, as part of the rapid funding call to use and enrich the data within the Data & Connectivity National Core Study capability
Duration: 2021
Project summary
Expanding on project one, our second project examines the social impacts of Covid-19 on the UK’s labour force through a gendered lens to better understand gender inequalities in working lives in the UK.
The new project analyses three data ONS sets: Coronavirus and the social impacts on GB; Business Impact of Covid-19 Survey; and Labour Force Survey (Person).In addition to the existing project’s policy aims, this project examines how the workplaces of women and men, and their types of work, are impacted as the pandemic effects roll out.