Researching Gender(ed) Work: Concepts and Methods

Tuesday, 2 May 2019, University of Warwick, R 1.04 Ramphal Building

DTP Day School/ Not Credit Bearing

 Ramiro Gomez, ‘Beverly Hills Housekeeper’, 2014.

This one day PhD Training Module seeks to explore interdisciplinary perspectives (theoretical and methodological) on the topic of Gender and Work, drawing on the research and teaching expertise across different disciplines, and delivered by members of the Connecting Research on Employment and Work (CREW) network at the University of Warwick. It is open to all research students at the Midlands Training Partnership institutions, including all years of the MPhil/ PhD programme. It is not credit bearing, but provides an opportunity for students researching topics on work, gender and family to meet each other. It is also open to MA students to audit, subject to space.

9:30 Arrival/registration

10.00-10.30 Introductions

10.30 – 13:00 Session 1: What is Work?

(11.30-11.45 Coffee)

Taking the gender division of labour seriously means thinking about how work is defined and how it should be measured. Studying unpaid work, including familial and non-familial care, raises both legal issues in regulating work (which straddles familial relations), analytical issues in characterising work relations and practical issues in measuring work.

a) Legal constructions of work and care (conveners: Ania Zbyszewska, Law; Ann Stewart, Law)

b) Methods for capturing the household division of unpaid labour (convener: Emily Christopher, Sociology)

13:00 - 14:00 Lunch Break

14:00-16:45 Session 2: Studying Work and Labour Markets: Identities and Intersectionality

(15:00-15:15 Coffee)

In this session we will first look at what it means for scholars of work, employment and gender to practise intersectionality as a theoretical and methodological approach to inequality. We then consider how the production and assembling of visual images can be used to study assumptions about workplace identities and the meaning of work.

a) Capturing intersecting inequalities in work through quantitative and qualitative methods (conveners: Erika Kispeter, IER)

b) Visualising work identities- the role of visual imagery in workplace studies (conveners: Carol Wolkowitz Sociology; Deborah Dean, WBS/IRRU)

16:45-17:00 Reflections and Wrap-up

Reading list will be circulated ahead of time.

Lunch and refreshments will be provided.