Gendered futures: how early work shapes young women’s lives
At the end of 2025, The ‘L-earning: Rethinking Young Women’s Working Lives’ research team launched their final report from a 3-year study exploring young women’s earliest experiences of work.
The final report, launched at an event held on 12 December 2025 at the City St George’s University of London, marked a significant devleopment in research and understanding of how early work can impact the trajectory of women’s working lives.
Speakers at the launch highlighted how this research has helped shape understanding, and called for action for this to be addressed. Among the speakers were Professor Jo Littler from Goldsmiths University, Ashley Austin from the Young Women's Trust, and a young woman who represented the research advisory group.
“It is very gratifying to see a call for increased employment rights literacy, which yes, absolutely should be embedded in the national curriculum – as well as promoted by the NUS in colleges and universities. I particularly like how its recommendations take a segmented, multisector approach. This furnishes the techniques to build awareness of rights, the practical skills to embed them and the support to contest employment abuse.”
– Professor Jo Littler from from Goldsmiths University
"We are now at a pivotal moment with the creation of the Fair Work Agency, and renewed focus on employment rights and the enforcement thereof. (...) If we want young women to not just survive but thrive, we must take their early working lives seriously, and build systems that support, protect and empower young women from the very beginning of their working lives."
– Ashley Austin from the Young Women's Trust
"Young women have never lacked strength. We have lacked systems that see us, respect us, and protect us. I stand here not just as a statistic in this report, but as someone who has lived these realities — the insecurity, the overwork, the silence we’re expected to swallow. And I refuse to carry them quietly.
“Young women are not waiting to be empowered. We are already powerful. What we’re asking for is a world courageous enough to match us. And institutions to actively do the work. This report shows exactly where that work and change must begin."
– Demii Lee Walker Narine, a member of the Young Women's Advisory Board
Reflections from the research team
Members of research team include School of Sociology and Social Policy colleagues Professor Kim Allen and Dr Lilith Brouwers, who reflected on the findings and significance of the three-year study.
“Despite young women’s increasing participation and ‘success’ across education and the labour market, stubborn gendered inequalities remain in both the gender pay gap, and in gendered occupational segregation. As our research shows, in addition to low pay in sectors where a lot of women work, we have also commonly heard about unfair treatment, illegally low pay, understaffing, sexual harassment, pressure and burnout. Young women, and all workers, deserve better from employers, and when they bring issues up to employers they should be heard and supported. Throughout this project we have found that a lot of young women, both in education and afterwards, do not know their rights at work and struggle to advocate for them. This is why we encourage educational institutions to improve Employment Rights Literacy in young people.”
“Historically, young women have been encouraged to go into fields of work that are essential but also provide low security and pay, such as childcare, education and healthcare. They want to stay in these fields because they know their work is important, but many are forced out due to low pay, no permanent contracts, and burnout. Many of our participants were dependent on family or partners for housing, which can put young women in dangerous situations. As a society, the solution is not just to encourage women to consider all fields when thinking about their careers, but to also improve the working conditions in feminised fields. No person, in any kind of work, should need to give up financial independence in exchange for doing a job that our society needs.”
Read the final report or find out more information on the project website.
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