Why did we do this research?

Most young people do paid work before they finish school or college. For those who continue their studies at university, paid work is increasingly common due to rising student fees and a spiraling cost of living crisis. Girls and young women are especially likely to undertake paid work alongside their studies. Common jobs include babysitter, retail cashier and waitress, and – increasingly – many engage in income-generating activities involving digital platforms such as Etsy, Depop and Instagram.

Whilst previous studies have suggested that gender inequalities exist even in these early forms of work, we still know little about the detail of young people’s first experiences of work, nor how these may engender longer-term patterns and establish differences between men’s and women’s working lives that we know grow as workers get older. Indeed, even though young women now outperform men in education, and outnumber them in higher education, by the time they hit their 30s, working women experience a growing gender pay gap.

A large part of this is due to occupational segregation, and the concentration of women in more insecure work and lower-status jobs. Moreover, many of the gains made in women’s employment have been stalled by recent economic disruption, including austerity and the COVID-19 pandemic, with government ministers, women’s charities and business representatives voicing concerns that we risk rolling back on previous improvements in gender equality.

To address these challenges there is an urgent need to revisit our knowledge about young women’s early experiences of work and reconceptualise labour market entry. This study explores the previously invisibilised experiences of paid work that young women accrue before they officially transition from education, and which have been under-theorised in studies of gender and work to date. In doing so, it advances current understandings of how the work of very young workers, including that undertaken alongside learning, contributes to gendered inequality in the workplace.

What did we do?

The study’s overarching objective is to provide empirically evidenced policy relevant knowledge that advances theoretical understandings of young women’s working lives, and the experiences, knowledge, values and structural conditions that shape them.

To achieve this, we used a range of methods to examine different phenomena across three work packages:

• Work Package 1: quantitative analysis of national survey data (Annual Population Study, Next Steps, COSMO).

• Work Package 2: 16 Focus groups with 83 young women students in schools, colleges and universities in England (aged 14-23 yrs) who had experience of earning while learning.

• Work Package 3: 76 biographical one-to-one working life interviews with women (aged 23-29 yrs) in England who were working in feminised sectors and no longer in formal education.

You can read about our project findings in our project report and publications, featured on this website.

Who is involved?

The study is led by a team of interdisciplinary researchers working across Work and Employment Studies, Youth Studies and the Sociology of Education.

The project was supported by a Project Advisory Board of academic and non-academic experts, as well as a Young Women’s Advisory Board – facilitated by our partner organisation The Young Women’s Trust – who we consulted on all stages of the project design and analysis.