Tracey Warren (Nottingham University Business School), Clare Lyonette (IER, University of Warwick) and the UK Women’s Budget Group.
Working class women are carrying the burden of the extra physical and emotional labour being generated by the Covid-19 pandemic. 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 12-month project was conducted in collaboration with the UK Women’s Budget Group, the leading independent organisation that deals with the impact of policy on women's lives.
The project research questions included: What pressures are faced by different class groupings of working women during the pandemic and over time? In addition to the usual ‘double burden’ of paid and unpaid work, what additional difficulties are being faced by working class women during the pandemic? What government and employer policy solutions are required urgently to support working class women during the pandemic?
We analysed data from ‘Understanding Society’ (the UK Household Longitudinal Study), including vital new information gathered monthly from April 2020 on the impact of Covid-19. From April 2020 participants from the main sample were asked to complete a short survey. The dataset’s persistent identifier (DOI) is 10.5255/UKDA-SN-8644-9.
The project was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, as part of UK Research and Innovation’s rapid response to Covid-19 (Project ES/V009400/1).
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
