Conference on Female Breadwinning, London

On 12-13 December 2018, I attended the Female-Breadwinner Families in Europe workshop organised by Dr Agnese Vitali. The day brought together researchers and policy influencers interested in the rise in female breadwinning. A key lesson from the presentations is that we need to distinguish between ‘pure’ female breadwinner families, in which the woman is the only earner while the man is unemployed, and women-as-main-earner families, in which the woman out-earns the man, but both are employed. These two family-types typically differ in terms of education, income, and wellbeing – while the former is associated with male unemployment and higher poverty risks, the latter is associated with choice and higher earnings. Click here to find out more about the paper on female breadwinning that I’m co-authoring with Dr Vitali, which I’ll also be presenting at the 2019 British Sociological Association Conference in Glasgow.