Gender

There were four research officers who formed, along with Peter Townsend and Brian Abel-Smith, the core of the initial research team: Hilary Land (at the LSE),  Denis Marsden, John Veit-Wilson and Adrian Sinfield (at the University of Essex). These research officers conducted the pilot studies and were involved in the planning of the main survey. Below you will find interviews with Hilary Land, John Veit-Wilson and Adrian Sinfield. Dennis Marsden died in 2009 after a long academic career, in the course of which he undertook a number of major and pioneering qualitative studies on education and the working-class, lone mothers, unemployment, and on couples and intimacy.

Comparing people’s actual living standards with the minimum standards which the public thinks everyone should have, there are in Scotland: 

• almost one million people cannot afford adequate housing conditions 

• 800,000 people are too poor to engage in common social activities 

• over a quarter of a million children and adults aren’t properly fed. 

Changes to the benefits system made by the UK coalition government since it took office in 2010 have hit women disproportionately hard, according to a new study published by the Scottish Government. The study provides an overview of the impacts of each element of benefits reform on men and women.

Tackling poverty among lone mothers can play a crucial role in reducing the lifetime inequality in incomes faced by women, according to an analysis from the Institute for Fiscal Studies. The report also points out that the tax and benefits system inherited by the coalition in 2010 was 'particularly successful' in reducing income disparities for women during the main childbearing years.