New research project on ‘Gender Equalities at Work’ funded by Arts and Humanities Research Council

The School of History, Classic and Archaeology was delighted to hear that a new two-year project involving Professor Louise Jackson will be funded by the AHRC.

‘Gender Equalities at Work: An Interdisciplinary History of 50 years of Legislation’ (commencing January 2021) is a collaboration between researchers from the University of Edinburgh, University College London and University of the West of England, Bristol that traverses the fields of gender studies, history, industrial relations, law and politics.

The project will produce the first comprehensive history (from the 1960s to the present) of the creation, trajectories, legacies and lived experiences of the Equal Pay Act 1970 and Sex Discrimination Act 1975 (now integrated in the Equality Act 2010) in the four nations of the UK. Combining archival research with oral history interviews, it will examine the law in action, as agency, and as personal experience.

Professor Jackson said: ‘The question of how to achieve equality in the workplace remains a pressing one now. Our project will enable recent experiences of discrimination and harassment to be located within a longitudinal context enabling fuller understanding of the pace of change, and of what has worked (or not worked) historically and why.’

Professor Jackson's staff profile