Women and Welfare Conditionality: Lived Experiences of Benefit Sanctions, Work and Welfare

Front Cover\nHalf-title\nSeries page\nWomen and Welfare Conditionality: Lived Experiences of Benefit Sanctions, Work and Welfare\nCopyright information\nContent warning\nTable of Contents\nList of figure, tables and charts\nList of abbreviations\nAcknowledgements\nONE What does work-based welfare reform mean for women?\n	Introduction\n	What is welfare conditionality?\n		Benefit sanctions\n		From conditionality ‘creep’ to ‘ubiquity’\n		Switching work expectations for lone parents: from protected status to androgynous workers\n	Applying Dorothy Smith’s ideas to interpreting welfare conditionality from a feminist perspective\n	The study\n		Sanctioning patterns\n		Defining gender\n			Gender, ‘race’ and intersectionality\n	Structure of the book\nTWO Re-theorising conditional welfare as gendered lived experience and street-level practice\n	Introduction\n	Gendering the concept of conditionality\n	The ethics of care\n	Conceptualising how women’s real lives are mediated by welfare conditionality\n		Feminising interpretivism and street-level bureaucracy\n			Street-level studies of contemporary welfare conditionality\n			Profit-making in Public Employment Services\n			Discretion\n	Applying Dorothy Smith: social security as ‘textually mediated relations of ruling’\n		Gendered hierarchy of ‘facts’\n		Boss texts\n		Ideology and disjuncture\n	Four layers of welfare conditionality text – mediating relations of ruling\n		Layer one: tracing the origins of policy texts to domain assumptions\n		Layer two: ‘boss texts’ in law and policy\n		Layer three: hidden institutional texts that shape front-line practice\n		Layer four: how the encounter is shaped by the text of policy instruments\n			The male subtext of the ‘claimant commitment’\n	Conclusion\nTHREE Policy context: the hidden gendered impacts of conditional welfare reforms\n	Introduction\n	Women face deep labour market inequalities despite obvious gains\n		Historical context of unequal employment for women\n		Limited options: occupational segregation and low pay\n		Part-time work\n	Women and work-related welfare policies\n		Early state intervention: excluding women as ‘different’\n		New Labour: putting lone parents to work\n			Lone parents’ loss of conditionality-free Income Support\n			Addressing low pay, child poverty and childcare shortages\n		‘Austerity’ and the Conservative-led punitive turn from 2010\n			Neutered discourse disguises the loss of part-time work strategies\n		Welfare conditionality\n			Benefit sanctions\n			Shutting off options for lone parents\n			Impoverishment by design: the two-child limit\n			Financial subordination and economic abuse\n			The in-work conditionality trial\n			Easing work transitions and supporting childcare\n	Universal Credit, ubiquitous conditionality and a hard push into unequal work\n	Older women workers\n		Pensions reform: prolonging women’s employment\n	Scottish social security\n	Conclusion\nFOUR Rewriting retirement as ‘work experience’: older women’s gendered encounters with the work ethic\n	Introduction\n	Sanctions for baby boomers\n		Anne’s story: “it’s not as though women really retire, do they?”\n		Sanctioned between a rock and a hard place: elder care and disability\n	Redefining retirement as unemployment: job seeking in the pension void\n		Redefining disability as unemployment: Universal Credit and full-time work expectations for those in constant pain\n		Interdependency: digital reliance on adult children to fulfil conditionality requirements\n		Donna: a lifetime of good citizenship for a broken bargain – ‘us pensioners should be left alone’\n	Conclusion\nFIVE Crushing conditionality: women living through heavily enforced work-related conditionality\n	Introduction\n		Sarah’s story: Universal Credit – “how much more can you sanction me? ... I can’t just leave my mum”\n		Helen’s Story: ESA Support Group sanctions on the unstoppable Work Programme merry-go-round\n		Jo’s story: excessive expectations and the power of listening\n		Mira’s story: lone parenting, workplace racism and heavy sanctions\n	Conclusion\nSIX In the shadow of sanctions: disciplining women and children for violating male-defined work norms\n	Introduction\n	Widespread fear of sanctions among those never or rarely sanctioned\n		Children: increasing mothers’ sanctions risk and at risk of impacts from sanctions\n		Sanctioning mothers for child illness and disability\n	Sanctions on mothers and impacts on children\n		Domestic abuse and violence\n		Yastika’s story: from a missed appointment to survival sex and rape\n	Conclusion\nSEVEN Conclusions\n	Introduction\n	Chapter contributions\n	Welfare conditionality changes since 2018\n		Changes to conditionality\n		Changes to sanctions\n		Temporary COVID-19 changes: labour market, child care, Universal Credit £20 uplift\n	Key issues for policy and practice\n		‘Permitted work’ crucial as an ‘unconditional’ work activity\n		In-work Universal Credit conditionality\n			Rethinking care\n	Policy recommendations\n		Social security design\n			Welfare conditionality\nAppendix 1: The Welfare Conditionality study\nAppendix 2: Sanctions overviews\nNotes\n	one\n	two\n	three\n	four\n	five\n	six\n	seven\n	Appendix two\nReferences\nIndex