Jill Rubery

Biographic Data

ID228670
NAMEJill Rubery
GIVEN NAMESJill
FAMILY NAMERubery
SIGNATURERUBERY J
AFFILIATIONSUniversity of Manchester
ORCID0000-0001-9405-0073
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS65
TOTAL CITATIONS600
AUTHOR COUNT61
EDITOR COUNT4
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1989
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX13

  • Sociotechnical Change in British Supermarkets: Examining the Role of Labour

    Open AccessAbbie Winton, Debra Howcroft et al.ARTICLENew Technology Work and Employment2026References: 36

    When predicting the future of retail work, commentators tend to focus on automation and labour replacement and neglect the continued role played by labour, particularly in food retail. To understand this role, this article draws on both interview and newspaper data to show how change unfolded in the sector from before to just after the Coronavirus pandemic. Specifically, it shows how increased technology adoption and use in food retail occurred a…

  • From Precarious Work to Precarious Lives: Managing and Navigating Uncertainty at the Intersections of Employment, Households and the State

    Open AccessEva Herman, Gail Hebson et al.ARTICLEWork Employment and Society2025References: 17

    This article investigates the intersection between precarious work and precarious lives through interviews with workers in the care, hospitality and art sectors. These revealed that workers experienced precarity as a double-edged sword of time and income uncertainty shaped by the context in which they were embedded - namely their employment, their household and their relations with state welfare and care systems. These three domains shaped both t…

  • Digitalisation and the Remaking of the Ideal Worker

    Open AccessDebra Howcroft, Emma Banister et al.ARTICLEWork Employment and Society2025Cited by: 4References: 45

    The ideal worker concept, typified by an unencumbered male, continues to influence workplace norms, despite a more gender-mixed workforce. This article examines whether this concept is being disrupted or reproduced as digitalisation becomes increasingly embedded in the workplace. Based on qualitative research in two professional services firms, the analysis shows how the ideal worker themes of work prioritisation and presenteeism have been mainta…

  • The Makeshift Careers of Women in Malawi: Neither Traditional Nor Flexible

    Open AccessTiyesere Mercy Chikapa, Jill Rubery et al.ARTICLEWork Employment and Society2024References: 25

    Through qualitative research into the career experiences of two groups of Malawian professional women, this article reveals the value of expanding research into women's careers to the global south. Although displaying elements of western-focused traditional and new career models, these women's careers did not conform to either. Instead, due to heavy family responsibilities for both care and breadwinning, including for the extended family, and fac…

  • The Impact of Reduced Working Hours and Furlough Policies on Workers' Mental Health at the Onset of Covid-19 Pandemic: A Longitudinal Study

    Open AccessSenhu Wang, D Kamerade et al.ARTICLEJournal of Social Policy2024Cited by: 7References: 39

    Although reduced working time and furlough policy initiatives are widely regarded as important for economic and business reasons, little is known about their impacts on workers' mental health at the onset of COVID-19 pandemic. Using data from the UK Household Longitudinal Panel Study data from 2018 to February 2020 and April 2020 and change score analysis, this study aims to compare mental health changes between those who worked reduced hours, we…

  • Raising the bar? The impact of the Unison ethical care campaign in UK domiciliary care

    Open AccessMathew Johnson, Jill Rubery et al.ARTICLETransfer European Review of…2021

    This article critically analyses a major trade union initiative in the United Kingdom to raise standards in public contracts for domiciliary care, and in turn to improve wages and working conditions for outsourced care workers. The campaign successfully built alliances with national employer representatives, and around 25 per cent of commissioning bodies in England, Scotland and Wales have signed a voluntary charter that guarantees workers an hou…

  • Travail et technologie – Réflexion sur un siècle de débat dans la Revue internationale du Travail

    Open AccessDeborah HOWCROFT, Jill RuberyARTICLERevue internationale du Travail2021

    L'objet de ce numéro du centenaire est de dresser le bilan d'un siècle de débats sur les rapports entre travail et technologie, tels qu'en rendent compte divers articles de la Revue internationale du Travail . La récente vague d'intérêt pour le changement sociotechnique et ses implications quant à l'avenir du travail conduit de nombreux commentateurs à affirmer que nous sommes à l'aube d'un changement sans précédent, un véritable séisme. Cette sé…

  • A case of employers never letting a good crisis go to waste? An investigation of how work becomes even more precarious for hourly paid workers under Covid

    Open AccessEva Herman, Jill Rubery et al.ARTICLEIndustrial Relations Journal2021

    The fragility of employers' voluntary, business‐case‐based improvements to employment standards for front‐line hourly paid staff is revealed in two organisational case studies from the art and care sectors. For different reasons, Covid provided a catalyst for employers to enact passive and active exit strategies that made work more precarious

  • The founding of the Gender, Work and Organization journal: Reflections 25 years on

    Open AccessJill RuberyARTICLEGender Work and Organization2019References: 36

    This article reflects on the founding of the journal some twenty five years ago. It identifies five major themes related to gender equality that were rapidly developing at the time of the launch and demonstrates how the first two volumes of the journal contributed to these developing debates. It concludes by reflecting how recent events such as the #metoo movement have had the beneficial effect of quelling any ideas that gender equality issues ha…

  • Market Exposure and the Labour Process: The Contradictory Dynamics in Managing Subcontracted Services Work

    Open AccessD Grimshaw, Jo Cartwright et al.ARTICLEWork Employment and Society2019Cited by: 8References: 45

    Marketization of the employment relationship is a key causal factor explaining the adverse impact of subcontracting low-wage services on employment conditions. This article extends existing sociological theory by analysing the market-making and rule-breaking roles of client and subcontractor firms through qualitative data. It finds that client organizations construct different types and temporalities of marketized cost pressures, that clients and…

  • Employment relations and gender equality

    Gail Hebson, Jill RuberyCHAPTERRoutledge Companion to Employment…2018

    This chapter argues that a gender lens has had four key impacts on the subject discipline. First, it has expanded the subject’s scope by going beyond the traditional embedding of workplace employment relations within product market, political and education and training institutions to include the family, welfare and gender relations. Second, a gender lens has extended the traditionally class-based focus on inequality and required the development …

  • Joan Acker and Doing Comparable Worth

    Open AccessJill RuberyARTICLEGender Work and Organization2018Cited by: 1References: 2

    Joan Acker's seminal book Doing Comparable Worth , based on her first‐hand experience of implementing comparable worth for Oregon state employees, constitutes a major contribution to understanding the obstacles to achieving the goal of equal pay and is a precursor of her inequalities regimes work. For Acker the foundering of the comparable worth exercise on the rocks of management's opportunistic strategy to marginalize trade unions provided a di…

  • The IPPR Commission on Economic Justice: The Strategy for Labour Market Reform

    Open AccessJill RuberyARTICLEThe Political Quarterly2018

    If justice and prosperity are to go hand in hand, a new social settlement in the labour market is urgently needed. The IPPR proposals provide a good start that could begin to transform the UK labour market, particularly by re‐establishing collective regulation. However, the programme is incomplete. Welfare reform is not addressed yet Universal Credit can be expected to have negative impacts on the labour market. Most importantly the report, despi…

  • Challenges and Contradictions in the 'Normalising' of Precarious Work

    Open AccessJill Rubery, D Grimshaw et al.ARTICLEWork Employment and Society2018Cited by: 77References: 20

    Precarious work is increasingly considered the new 'norm' to which employment and social protection systems must adjust. This article explores the contradictions and tensions that arise from different processes of normalisation driven by social policies that simultaneously decommodify and recommodify labour. An expanded framework of decommodification is presented that identifies how the standard employment relationship (SER) may be extended and f…

  • Advancing Gender Equality through European Employment Policy: The Impact of the UK's EU Membership and the Risks of Brexit

    Open AccessColette Fagan, Jill RuberyARTICLESocial Policy and Society2017Cited by: 14References: 6

    This article examines the development of the EU's gender equality framework of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ law, including the incomplete gender mainstreaming of the European Employment Strategy. It highlights contradictions, rooted in political tensions between the social democratic principles which underpin the European Social Model, and the promotion of neo-liberal economic policies. It assesses the UK's role in shaping this European framework, and the f…

  • The triumph of instrumental over equality policy in European employment policy

    Jill RuberyARTICLECanadian Journal of Development…2017Cited by: 3References: 10

    This article presents an overview of shifts in European Union (EU) gender equality policies since the 1990s. It shows that attention to gender equality was increasingly justified on instrumental grounds, for example by promoting childcare provision to enable women to do wage work. After the 2008 crisis, all policy came to be justified on efficiency (growth) grounds, and EU policies – such as advocating cuts to public expenditure and public-sector…

  • Labour Market Segmentation and the EU Reform Agenda: Developing Alternatives to the Mainstream

    Open AccessJill Rubery, Agnieszka PiasnaARTICLESSRN Electronic Journal2016

  • Part‐Time Work

    Open AccessJill RuberyCHAPTERWiley Encyclopedia of Management2015

    Part‐time work has been increasing in OECD countries but its incidence remains highly variable. This growth is often attributed to the growth of service work, employers' need for flexibility and women's increasing participation but these apply to all OECD countries. Different institutional arrangements, social norms and gender relations account for more of the variable incidence. Part‐time work in some contexts offers convenient hours for those w…

  • Women and European Employment

    Colette Fagan, Damian Grimshaw et al.BOOKWomen and European Employment2015

  • Regulating for Gender Equality: A Policy Framework to Support the Universal Caregiver Vision

    Jill RuberyARTICLESocial Politics International…2015Cited by: 12References: 11

    Twenty years on this article reengages with Fraser's call for feminist “systematic reconstructive thinking” on how to reform welfare and employment systems. It complements Fraser's vision of a universal caregiver world by identifying reforms to promote and support a gender-equal society, including delinking social protection from employment, delivering a new reproductive bargain and developing policies to reverse flexibilisation and extend employ…

  • Austerity and the Future for Gender Equality in Europe

    Open AccessJill RuberyARTICLEIndustrial and Labor Relations…2015Cited by: 10References: 27

    Austerity policies in Europe are disrupting and potentially reversing progress toward gender equality, a core principle of European policy from the mid-1990s onward. Not all EU gender-related policy has been aimed at promoting equality but instead has been associated with reforming the EU social model toward more neoliberal, flexible, and high employment labor markets. In this article, the author assesses these uses and potential abuses of the ge…

  • Rethinking job satisfaction in care work: Looking Beyond the Care Debates

    Open AccessGail Hebson, Jill Rubery et al.ARTICLEWork Employment and Society2015Cited by: 44References: 26

    Studies of care workers frequently reveal relatively high levels of job satisfaction despite poor employment conditions. The rewarding nature of care work, altruistic motivations and gendered social norms have all been used to explain why subjective job satisfaction is high despite poor pay and terms and conditions. Using data collected in case-study research with domiciliary and residential care workers, this article offers a new direction for c…

  • Women and Austerity: The Economic Crisis and the Future for Gender Equality

    Maria Karamesinē, Maria Karamessini et al.BOOKWomen and Austerity2013

    Part I 1. Introduction: Women's vulnerability to recession and austerity Maria Karamessini 2. From 'Women and Recession' to 'Women and Austerity: A framework for analysis Jill Rubery 3. Challenging the Balkanization of Gender Contracts Jacqueline O'Reilly and Tiziana Nazio Part II 4. Women and Men in the 'Great European Recession' Francesca Bettio and Alina Verashchagina 5. Gender Impacts of the 'Great Recession' in the United States Randy Albeld…

  • Public sector adjustment and the threat to gender equality

    Open AccessJill RuberyCHAPTERPublic Sector Shock2013

    From the Second World War onwards the public sector played a highly significant if variable role in integrating women into wage employment and promoting gender equality (Kolberg 1991; Whitehouse 1992; O’Connor 1993; Gornick and Jacobs 1998; Pillinger 2004; Mandel and Semyonov 2005, 2006; Mandel and Shalev 2009). A large public sector has been associated with better employment opportunities and conditions for lower-skilled women but also with high…

  • Women and recession revisited

    Open AccessJill Rubery, Anthony RaffertyARTICLEWork Employment and Society2013Cited by: 50References: 27

    In earlier work (Rubery, 1988), the extent to which women might act as a flexible reserve over the business cycle was argued to depend on three main factors: the pattern of gender segregation and its relationship to employment change; women's commitment to labour market participation; and state policy and support for women's employment. This article revisits these factors in the context of the 2008/9 recession and the follow-on austerity policy t…