Welfare That Works for Women?

Abstract

The introduction of Universal Credit, a means-tested benefit for working-age people in the UK, constitutes radical welfare reform and entails a significant intensification and expansion of welfare conditionality. Numerically, women are disproportionately affected by the conditionality regime for main carers of children within Universal Credit. Under this new benefit, couples have to nominate as ‘lead carer’ the person in the household primarily responsible for the care of the dependent children. Lone parents are automatically designated as lead carer. The lead carer is subject to different levels of work-related requirements, depending on the age of the youngest child, and faces sanctions for noncompliance. To investigate how the conditionality within Universal Credit affects the valuing of unpaid care, women’s employment trajectories, women’s agency and ultimately women’s citizenship status, mothers subject to the conditionality within Universal Credit were interviewed.The findings demonstrate that the conditionality within Universal Credit further devalues unpaid care yet is of limited efficacy in improving sustained moves into adequately paid work. The conditionality also further constrains mothers’ agency regarding engagement in paid work and unpaid care. More broadly, the analysis demonstrates that the conditionality constitutes a significant shift in the UK’s social security system that exacerbates women’s marginalised position in the dominant gendered citizenship framework. This book ultimately calls for social security benefits to be designed and delivered in ways that enhance, rather than undermine, women’s citizenship status and practice.