Experience

 
 
 
 
 

Lecturer (Assistant Professor)

Department of Social and Policy Sciences

Jul 2022 – Present University of Bath
 
 
 
 
 

Postdoctoral Research Officer

Oxford Martin Programme on Inequality and Prosperity

Aug 2019 – Jul 2022 University of Oxford
 
 
 
 
 

Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)

Oct 2018 – Aug 2019 University of Southampton
 
 
 
 
 

Research Fellow

ESRC-funded project ‘Female-Breadwinner Families in Europe’

Apr 2018 – Sep 2018 University of Southampton
 
 
 
 
 

Researcher

Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government

Oct 2017 – Mar 2018

Grants & Prizes

BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grant

University of Bath Jan 2025
Principal Investigator on the project, ‘Too Old to Hire, Too Young to Retire? Women’s Job-Seeking Experiences After Age 50.'

ESRC New Investigator Grant

University of Oxford Jan 2020
Principal Investigator on the project, ‘Welfare State Interventions and Occupational Gender Segregation: Paradise or Paradox?’

ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship

University of Southampton Oct 2018
Principal Investigator on the project, ‘Social Policies to Support Women’s Employment and Achieve Gender-Friendly Workplaces.’

The Doctoral College Research Award Nomination

University of Southampton Mar 2018
Nominated for The Doctoral College Research Award by the University of Southampton for ‘exceptional contribution to research group, disciplinary, Faculty and University research strategy/environment.’

Doctoral Researcher Prize Essay

University of Southampton Mar 2017
Awarded by The European Network for Social Policy Analysis (ESPAnet) and Journal of European Social Policy for ‘exciting, innovative and scholarly’ work and featured as a university highlight in the Vice Chancellor’s presentation of his Ten-Year Plan.

Social Policy Association Grant and Centre for Population Change Grant

University of Southampton Mar 2017
Social Policy Association Grant (£350) and Centre for Population Change Grant (£350). Covered travel expenses for speakers and catering costs for the ‘Lone Parents in the UK Today’ conference held at the offices of Gingerbread (UK charity), London, which I co-organised with Dr Tina Haux.

Sociology and Social Policy MSc Dissertation Prize and MSc Performance Prize.

University of Southampton Mar 2013
Awarded by the University of Southampton for best overall performance and highest dissertation mark.

ESRC 1+3 Studentship Award

University of Southampton Sep 2012
Awarded to support completion of the MSc in Social Policy and Social Research and a PhD in Social Policy that looked at the relationship between welfare states and women’s employment outcomes in comparative perspective.

Peter G Richards Bursary, Liam O’Sullivan Prize, Heather Packwood Prize, and Politics and International Relations Year 1 Performance Prize.

University of Southampton Jun 2010 – Jul 2012
Awarded by the University of Southampton for best overall performance in each year of the BSc and for highest dissertation mark.

Projects

Too old to hire, too young to retire? Women’s job-seeking experiences after age 50

Women’s experiences of re-entering employment in later life remain largely invisible in academic research and society. This project will spotlight these experiences through in-depth, qualitative interviews with unemployed/inactive women aged 50-65 who are seeking re-employment across England.

‘Women-Friendly’ State Interventions and Occupational Gender Segregation: Paradise or Paradox?

ESRC New Investigator Grant - grant no. ES/S016058/1

Welfare states enable women’s employment through the family policies they provide and the jobs they create. Hence, comparative social-science researchers, the press, and politicians hail Scandinavian societies as a gender equality ‘paradise’ and a role model for the UK because of their generous public sectors (e.g. Esping-Andersen, 2016). Yet, prior research has suggested a welfare state ‘paradox’: while ‘women-friendly’ welfare states achieve high female employment rates, they also frustrate women’s access to male-dominated jobs by increasing discrimination against women and funnelling women into female-typed public-sector positions (Mandel and Semyonov, 2006).

Oxford Martin Programme on Inequality and Prosperity.

Postdoctoral Research Officer

Technological change, globalization, the increasing role of finance, changes in the labour market and weakening redistribution of wealth and the income arising from it, are all factors that contribute to rising inequality.

A team led by Professor Brian Nolan is focussing on four central themes in order to respond to the various drivers of economic inequality and the ways inequality impacts on growth and prosperity.

Female Breadwinner Families in Europe

ESRC Research Fellow - grant no. ES/N00082X/1, PI: Dr Agnese Vitali.

Despite the increase of female-breadwinner families in developed countries, little is known about who these couples are, how and why they emerge, and what trends in female breadwinning mean for women, men and children.

This project aims to answer such questions and in so doing will contribute to the debate on gender, money and the distribution of power between men and women in couples.

Social Policies to Support Women’s Employment and Achieve Gender-Friendly Workplaces

ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship - grant no. ES/S010793/1.

This project investigates the relationship between welfare state policies and gender inequalities in employment. Using data from the Luxembourg Income Study, Eurostat, and the OECD Family Database, the research examines women’s share of management positions across advanced economies and the role of social policies in improving women’s access to such jobs through a multilevel analysis.

Featured Publications

Journal of European Social Policy

An accepted framework for ‘gendering’ the analysis of welfare regimes compares countries by degrees of ‘defamilialization’ or how far their family policies support or undermine women’s employment participation. This article develops an alternative framework that explicitly spotlights women’s labour market outcomes rather than policies. Using hierarchical clustering on principal components, it groups 24 industrialized countries by their simultaneous performance across multiple gendered employment outcomes spanning segregation and inequalities in employment participation, intensity, and pay, with further differences by class. The three core ‘worlds’ of welfare (social-democratic, corporatist, liberal) each displays a distinctive pattern of gendered employment outcomes. Only France diverges from expectations, as large gender pay gaps across the educational divide – likely due to fragmented wage-bargaining – place it with Anglophone countries. Nevertheless, the outcome-based clustering fails to support the idea of a homogeneous Mediterranean grouping or a singular Eastern European cluster. Furthermore, results underscore the complexity and idiosyncrasy of gender inequality: while certain groups of countries are ‘better’ overall performers, all have their flaws. Even the Nordics fall behind on some measures of segregation, despite narrow participatory and pay gaps for lower- and high-skilled groups. Accordingly, separately monitoring multiple measures of gender inequality, rather than relying on ‘headline’ indicators or gender equality indices, matters.
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Publications

This article examines the relationship between female breadwinning and life satisfaction in heterosexual couples. We extend previous …
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An accepted framework for ‘gendering’ the analysis of welfare regimes compares countries by degrees of ‘defamilialization’ or how far …
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An influential body of work has identified a ‘welfare-state paradox’: work–family policies that bring women into the workforce also …
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In analysing heterosexual couples’ work–family arrangements over time and space, the comparative social policy literature has settled …
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This paper argues that analyses of the gendered character of welfare states should be broadened to include women’s share of board and …
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See all publications

Outreach

financialaccountant.co.uk, July 2023: Interviewed for: Closing accounting’s gender pay gap.
Source Document

theconversation.com, July 2023: Author of: Couples in which the woman is the only earner report lower life satisfaction – new research.
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independent.co.uk, June 2023: Interviewed for: Unemployed men prefer their partner to be out of work, study finds.
Source Document

thetab.com, February 2023: 30 per cent of staff earning over £63k-a-year at Russell Group unis are women.
Source Document

theconversation.com, February 2023: Author of: Gender pay gap is bigger for some women than others – here’s how to work it out.
Source Document
See all

Recent Talks & Conferences

Jul 8, 2022 Swansea University, UK
Slides

Feb 18, 2021 University of Oxford, UK
Slides

Aug 21, 2019 University of Manchester, UK
Slides

Apr 25, 2019 Glasgow Caledonian University, UK
Slides

Teaching

Lecturer for ‘Sociology of the Family and Family Policy’

University of Bath 2022
Second/third-year module for BSc degrees.

Lecturer for ‘Population Processes in the Developed World’

University of Southampton 2019
Second-year module for BSc degrees in geography and population studies. Designed and delivered four lectures and one seminar on gender, fertility, and employment.

Sample lecture

Lecturer for ‘Human Rights, Wellbeing and Politics’

University of Southampton 2019
First-year module for various BSc degrees in sociology, social policy, and criminology. Designed and delivered three lectures on new social risks and gender and welfare states.

Sample lecture

Teaching Assistant for the ‘Project/Dissertation’ module

University of Southampton 2019
Marked and gave feedback on two final-year undergraduate dissertations in Population and Geography.

Teaching Assistant for ‘Research Communication Skills’

University of Southampton 2018
Module for various MSc degrees in social sciences. Marked and gave feedback on student essays.

Teaching Assistant for ‘Introduction to Quantitative Methods’

University of Southampton 2017
First-year module for various BSc degrees in social sciences. Delivered computer workshops and tutorials on statistical methods.

Guest Lecturer for ‘Comparing Welfare States’

University of Southampton 2016 – 2017
Third-year module for BSc Sociology and Social Policy. Designed and delivered a lecture on gender and the welfare state.

Demonstrator for ‘Social Problems and Social Policy’

University of Southampton 2014 – 2015
First-year module for various BSc degrees in sociology, social policy, and criminology. Designed and delivered seminars and gave feedback on presentations, essays, and exam scripts.