Gender, Employment and Dependency
Dr Patrizia Kokot-Blamey, Senior Lecturer in Organisation Studies, School of Business and Management
Please outline the work you lead and how it relates to progressing gender equality
My key research interest is in mothers, families and employment, and making visible the challenges families face particularly in dual earner households. We’ve seen a phenomenal change in women’s labour force participation rates over the past 75 years which has immense implications for households, children, civic society and employers, that, I think, we don’t always fully appreciate. Employers do not yet organise themselves with women’s bodies in mind and, as a result women are shortchanged when trying to conceive, during pregnancy, maternity, and upon return to work, with profound gendered effects and which are further stratified when we take into account class, race and/or disability for example. At the same time, the radical change in women’s labour force participation means that women’s absence is keenly felt outside of employment too and men have not so far felt sufficiently compelled to move into these roles in caregiving and in civic society.
What has inspired and motivated you to progress this work?
The vast majority of us - approximately four in five women in the UK- have children in our lifetime and it is at the point of childbirth that the gender pay gap starts to pick up pace with men’ and women’s career trajectories changing direction. The gender pay gap is mostly a maternal pay gap. To improve gender equality in employment, we need to improve the conditions under which mothers work and live. At the moment, we are asking mothers to work like normative fathers have always done. I don’t think this is good enough and we can see mothers making great sacrifices to be there for their children in the early years, when children are at their most dependent. Of course, having my own children inspires me. Small children bring so much joy and have a wonderful way of civilising and grounding us. But becoming a mother also makes us vulnerable and emphasises the dissonance in power between employers and employees.
How do you hope that this work will make a difference to promote gender equality and have you seen any impact so far?
More access to work is presented as the solution to achieving women’s financial independence and to achieving a sense of accomplishment. But when we look at the statistics, what we actually see, is that for many of us work can become a source of great stress and disappointment, and with often devastating consequences for family life. I am hoping that my work can contribute to developing this area of research which sits in between the employment and domestic spheres. We need to arm families to buffer the potentially hazardous effect of the latter on the former. It’s been a real joy to work with a number of brilliant PhD students on projects related to motherhood, breastfeeding, employment and migration, and to encourage this as a worthwhile area of study because it affects so many of us.
What did you enjoy most about this piece of work and do you have any plans going forward?
My first monograph Gendered Hierarchies of Dependency (Oxford) was published in 2023. I really enjoyed being able to think more about dependency; with regards to children and other care commitments, but also with a focus on employment and the relationships we form in corporate hierarchies, the extent to which we can trust in relationships with employers and how these relations are lived out in different welfare contexts. It is often the unencumbered norm that constraints men and women alike rather than any culturally determined notion of what parenting ought to look like. The book summarises the findings of a study of elite women working in accounting firms across borders. It shows how even women with great financial resources feel that they must manage and hide their care responsibilities, with the primary beneficiary of this concealment being the employer and its clients. Looking ahead, I plan to continue focusing my work on studying families and the impact of employment relations on work and the home. I am interested in thinking more about the extent to which the relative withdrawal of the welfare state, leaves many families exposed to often unstable employment relations.
Please share any publications or resources from your work that would like to highlight
Kokot-Blamey, P. (2023). Gendered Hierarchies of Dependency. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Available online through Oxford Academic.