Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of tables and figure
- List of abbreviations
- About the author
- Acknowledgements
- one Introduction
- two The social security system and gender: unpaid care, paid work and agency
- three Universal Credit and the new conditionality regime for mothers
- four Universal Credit and unpaid care: “we’re doing a massive job anyway”
- five Universal Credit and paid work: “you can job search and job search and not get anywhere”
- six Universal Credit and agency: “there’s no element of choice”
- seven Conclusion
- References
- Index
six - Universal Credit and agency: “there’s no element of choice”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 January 2024
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of tables and figure
- List of abbreviations
- About the author
- Acknowledgements
- one Introduction
- two The social security system and gender: unpaid care, paid work and agency
- three Universal Credit and the new conditionality regime for mothers
- four Universal Credit and unpaid care: “we’re doing a massive job anyway”
- five Universal Credit and paid work: “you can job search and job search and not get anywhere”
- six Universal Credit and agency: “there’s no element of choice”
- seven Conclusion
- References
- Index
Summary
Introduction
Agency refers to the ability to determine one's own daily life (Annesley, 2007) and relates to the capacity for free choice (Gould, 1983; Lister, 2003; Wright, 2012; McNay, 2016) (see Chapter Two). Enlarging women's ability to exercise agency regarding engagement in both unpaid care and paid work is a key aspect of creating a more gender-inclusive citizenship framework, given the importance of enabling women to participate in both unpaid care and paid work (see Chapter Two). Therefore, policies are needed that not only promote the valuing of unpaid care and women's position in the paid labour market but also enable women (and men) to make genuine choices regarding engagement in unpaid care and paid work (Lewis and Giullari, 2005). However, there have been concerns that rather than promoting genuine choice regarding unpaid care and paid work, conditionality may deny mothers the choice to carry out unpaid care and restrict their agency in regard to decisions about their engagement in the paid labour market (Grabham and Smith, 2010; Davies, 2012, 2015; Whitworth and Griggs, 2013; Rafferty and Wiggan, 2017; Millar, 2019). To investigate these concerns and how mothers respond to the compulsion within the Universal Credit regime, this chapter explores the extent to which mothers experience compulsion through being subject to the welfare conditionality within Universal Credit and how they respond to it over time.
This chapter starts by detailing the participants’ work– care choices. It then investigates the extent to which the participants’ Claimant Commitments were negotiated before discussing the participants’ experiences of compulsion over time. Following this, the chapter explores the participants’ views on the compulsion within Universal Credit and then discusses their responses to it. The final section explores the overall impacts of the compulsion on the participants’ agency regarding engagement in unpaid care and paid work.
Participants’ work– care choices
In line with previous research (for example, Thomas and Griffiths, 2006; Coleman and Riley, 2012), the majority of the participants reported that they wanted to undertake parttime paid work. While there was variation in the number of hours the mothers wanted to work, they consistently referred to wanting paid work that fitted in with their caring responsibilities:
‘Children aren't a nine to five so, again, you have to work around them, not them work around you.’ (Natasha, single mother, one child aged 14, wave one)
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Welfare That Works for Women?Mothers' Experiences of the Conditionality within Universal Credit, pp. 106 - 131Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2023