Professor Rae Cooper & Professor Ivana Pais to join CERIC for seminars

Professor Rae Cooper and Professor Ivana Pais will be joining CERIC on Monday 23rd September for a seminar

Professor Rae Cooper will present a talk on 'The pipeline or the pond?: Mobilising supply- and demand-side framings of the ‘problem’ of hyper-masculine jobs'. She is a Professor of Gender, Work and Employment Relations at the University of Sydney Business School, currently visiting Leeds until 26 September.

Professor Ivana Pais will present a talk on 'Home care digital platforms and industrial relations in the UK'. Ivana is a Professor of Economic Sociology at the Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore: PAIS IVANA - Docente Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (unicatt.it) She will visit Leeds from the 19 to 25 September.

Ivana and Rae's talks will be held in Nexus Seminar Room 1, followed by food and drinks in the Atrium. Please see below for full abstracts:

The pipeline or the pond?: Mobilising supply- and demand-side framings of the ‘problem’ of hyper-masculine jobs
The Australian and global economy is marked by high levels of gender segmentation across jobs, sectors, and industries (OECD 2023). The ‘problem’ of men’s dominance in certain sectors has historically emphasised in the scholarly literature as driven by ‘supply side’ factors, such as gendered choice in education, family factors, and social norms relating to gender, work and care. Yet a growing body of research shows how ‘demand side’ forces, including the material and social experiences of work in these sectors, act as a barrier to entry for women, may repel them after they join, or may challenge career sustainability over time (see Foley et al 2022; Durbin et al 2022). The challenges of labour force segmentation have attracted increasing attention in national policy debates in Australia as governments at all levels and key of inquiries have sought to understand the drivers of the situation and the mechanisms to address it (see WEET 2023, WA Treasury 2024). This paper reports on a new Australian study of working life and gendered dynamics in ‘hyper-masculine’ jobs. It draws on national Australian labour market data showing the distinctive features of jobs where men (hyper-) dominate. It then analyses qualitative data, collected in interviews with thirty key industry informants in the engineering and tech sectors. The paper shows how these industry insiders mobilise key narratives to explain the drivers of the problem, the actions they foreground for change, and the implications this has for addressing gendered segregation across jobs and the labour market. 
 

Home care digital platforms and industrial relations in the UK

The demand of “Personal and Household Services” (PHS) – which covers a broad range of activities that contribute to the well-being of families and individuals at home – has significantly increased and so too has the role of care workers. Employment in the home care sector is characterized by a high level of informality, a significant presence of a migrant and female workforce, low visibility of their work, which is often done in private spaces, and weak associational power. The increased level of marketisation and privatisation of the sector, the fragility of working conditions and the growing complexity of social needs to be answered have contributed to deeply redesign the welfare systems in the different models of capitalism. The emergence of digital platforms represents a new driving force that is intertwined with these processes.
Digital platforms, as novel forms of organization, act as private regulators, creating their own institutional and societal embeddedness. This research analyses the role of digital platforms in the ongoing transformations of the home care sector, identifying the specificities of their organizational model with respect to both traditional organizations in the sector and platforms present in other sectors, the consequences on working conditions, the needs for social protection and representation of interests, and the innovative strategies of social actors to respond to these needs. The research is carried out in UK, but the results are compared with those of Denmark, France, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain adopting the same research design (ORIGAMI project, https://origamiproject.it/). 
During the seminar, initial research findings will be presented, starting with mapping of platforms present in the UK and initial interviews with managers and platform workers.