ABSTRACT
The first decades of the new century witnessed deep turmoil resulting from the financial crisis and austerity, the Covid-19 pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis. The chapter discusses how relentless turbulence raised fundamental questions in the UK about the deepening of gendered inequalities and classed ramifications for women's and men's working lives and livelihoods.
The chapter draws on analysis of data gathered over time in the Labour Force Survey. We focus on employees and explore the distribution of precarious work conditions in their worktime, earnings and job contracts. Our findings show that, amid the turbulence, inequalities in work remained the same in some cases and widened in others. Some workers were better protected from disruptions to their working lives and livelihoods, but women and working-class workers were adversely affected. Working-class women, at the intersections of gender and class inequalities, maintained their double disadvantage over time, working fewer hours a week and earning far less than other workers, and facing heightened risks of precarious employment.
It is essential to move beyond purely gendered analyses of working lives because class shapes workers’ achievements and opportunities in both the short and longer terms, with its unequal effects intensifying amid turmoil.
