Women's disconnection from local labour markets: Real lives and policy failure

Abstract

This paper is based on research amongst women living in England who are on the margins of the labour market. It analyses why current policy works so inadequately for this group of women, whose existence is often marked by poverty and social exclusion. It emphasizes the significance of the reality of women's lived experiences and the nature of local labour markets, and discusses how and why policy fails to respond to these. Women lack bespoke support and are channelled into `women's jobs', perpetuating gender inequalities in employment and reinforcing precarious relationships with the labour market. In addition, the effect of the key ideas underpinning policy, in particular `welfare dependency' and a `work first' orientation, is to distort the responses to women claimants and to ignore the needs of non-claimant women returners. In conclusion the paper argues that current policy both overlooks the specificity of women's labour market disconnection and contributes to its reproduction.