Support needed from Harrogate women for research project and “The Second Shift”

Melanie Craddock from Harrogate is calling for support for a research study that forms part of the final year of a degree.

Melanie said:

I’m in my fourth year of a full-time degree in Social Policy at the University of Leeds, where I’ve been studying as a mature student.

I decided to change my career path after voluntary work at a local prime school, Grove Road Primary School.

My time there as Chair of Governers helped me to understand the complex challenges that families can face and how community engagement really makes a difference.

I entered a Social Sciences Foundation Year in 2017 at the University of Leeds, which is an inclusive programme designed to allow people of all ages, who have not met their academic potential, to attend a Russell Group University.

I’m graduating this year and have secured a place on a national children and families social work programme where I will work towards an MSc in Advanced Relationship Based Social Work Practice with Children and Families over the next two years.

Melanie said:

My research focuses around Harrogate women and aims to further understand their experience of working “The Second Shift”.

The ‘second shift’ is a concept based on a ground-breaking feminist theory by Arlie Hochschild, first published in 1989, and is even more relevant now than it was then.  Hochschild saw that the societal shift towards greater equality in work and pay increased the expectation on women to ‘have it all’ because success at work did not relieve the pressure to still perform as wife and mother.

My research aims to explore how Harrogate women experience the added pressures that stem from the demands of unpaid work (which is housework, childcare, and the care of extended family) when they are working from home, specifically examining households where married or co-habiting women also have children.

Hochschild (1989) found that even when in paid work, most women are still responsible for most of the unpaid work and my research aims to discover whether recent changes brought about by Covid-19 measures such as furlough, working from home and school closures have affected this.

Please email Melanie on ss17mjc@leeds.ac.uk if you would like to participate.