We are delighted to share that our first publication from the project is now out in the British Journal of Sociology. Entitled ‘Equally Bad, Unevenly Distributed: Gender and the ‘Black Box’ of Student Employment’, the article draws on data from the Annual Population Survey (APS) to examine the paid work undertaken by full-time students, asking what patterns exist with respect to employment rates, pay, hours and occupation and how these are gendered.
Key Findings:
- Gender is identified as a key variable in shaping student employment rates, with women considerably more likely than men to work while studying across all age groups.
- We found generalised poor pay for students, with most student workers paid below the adult National Minimum Wage and a sizeable minority paid below lower age-defined legal minimums. In addition, we identify a ‘studentness penalty’ with student workers aged 21–22 and 23–29 on average earning less than non-student workers of equivalent age.
- We find no evidence of a gender pay gap in EwL, but this is largely because most student workers are concentrated in two very poorly paid occupations. As such our research suggests not a gender-equal utopia within student employment, but rather equally low pay for the large numbers of students engaged in such work.
- Given that women are more likely then men to be working during their studies, and this work is poorly compensated, we argue that the disadvantages of student work are unequally distributed among men and women students (thus: ‘student work is equally bad but unevenly distributed’)
- We find that students move into increasingly gendered occupations at older ages and there is some evidence of pay advantages to working in dominant-gender occupations, suggestive of potential incentives for occupational gender segregation.
In light of our findings, we argue that student employment—including its gendering—requires greater attention. Student employment (or EwL) should be theorised as work equivalent in significance to any other and recognised as part of young people’s work histories and working-life course. This necessitates an expansive conceptualisation of young people as simultaneously workers and students.
You can read the article in full here
How to cite:
Zhong, M.R., Cohen, R.L., Allen, K., Finn, K., Hardy, K. and Kill, C. (2025), Equally Bad, Unevenly Distributed: Gender and the ‘Black Box’ of Student Employment. British Journal of Sociology. Available here. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-4446.13210
