HRMWE Research Community Seminar – Dr Kate Hardy
Title: Undervalued and underpaid: the crisis in early years education and care
Guest Speaker: Dr Kate Hardy, Leeds University Business School
Date: 02 November 2022
Time: 14:00-16:00
Venue: NUBS 2.05
If you would like to attend, please register using the following link: https://forms.office.com/r/kJEzWPVZM7.
Abstract
Early years education and care (ECEC) is a foundational public good. Quality early years provision addresses inequalities and enables parents of young children to participate in the labour market. ECEC has risen up the policy agenda in the global North in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. This presentation draws on a large multi-method research study on the the experiences of workers in the ECEC sector during the height of the pandemic, including 5000 survey responses and over 300 interviews with nursery workers and managers, nannies, childminders, parents and grandparents. We find that the pandemic has pushed an already fragile sector into crisis and that under-funding had led to diminishing provision and a mass exodus from the sector, due to declining real wages, poor conditions and a fundamental lack of recognition for this essential work.
As a result, we argue that four key policy objectives are needed to establish a sustainable early years care and education (ECEC) sector in England and Wales: fair wages and pay progression; affordable access for parents and families using ECEC; a greater proportion of publicly administered services to avoid market volatility”
Dr Kate Hardy is an Associate Professor in Work and Employment Relations at the University of Leeds. Dr Hardy is currently working on employment issues in the early childhood education and care sector and sex worker organising across Latin America. Her research interests include paid and unpaid work; gender; agency; materialist feminism; collective organising; political economy; the body; disability; social reproduction; care sex work and social struggles. Her work has been widely published academically in monographs, journals including Work, Employment and Society; British Journal of Industrial Relations and Environment and Planning and Kate currently Editor-in-Chief of New Technology Work and Employment. Dr Hardy’s research is driven by a commitment to developing methodologies which work alongside research participants, in order to undertake socially and politically transformative research and to widely disseminating through popular formats, including radio and news media.