Dr Jo Armstrong

Research Interests

Current research activities

My main research interests are: gender equality; gendered employment policy; gender relations in work (paid and unpaid); violence against women; the intersection between social class and gender; and intersectionality in equality policies and institutions.

In 2011, as a post-doctoral researcher (for the Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna; and the University of Radboud, the Netherlands) and honorary research fellow (at Lancaster University), I continued my work on the interconnections between gender-based violence and the economy, drawing upon and extending the findings of earlier projects (including QUING: Quality in Gender+ Equality Policies, please see below).

As a member of the UNESCO Chair in Gender Research Group, I have been involved in researching the gendered impact of the financial crisis. I co-chaired a session on 'Gender and the Financial Crisis' at the International Sociological Association XVII World Congress of Sociology in July 2010 as well as giving a presentation which examined the implications of the financial crisis and economic recession for violence against women.

Other recent projects include work funded by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) with Prof. Sylvia Walby and Dr. Sofia Strid which analysed physical and legal security and the Criminal Justice System in Britain. The final report of the project, which contributed to the Commission's Triennial Review, is available here: http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/key-projects/triennial-review/full-report-and-evidence-downloads/research-reports/

I was also a researcher on another EHRC funded project with Prof. Sylvia Walby and Dr. Les Humphreys. This research involved a review of the statistics and indicators that have been (and could be) used to assess inequalities in the areas of gender, ethnicity, disability, age, religion/belief, sexual orientation and social class. The final report from the project is available here: http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/uploaded_files/research/1__review_of_equality_statistics_241008.pdf

Previous research

My background is in Sociology and Women's Studies and I completed my doctorate 'Classed and gendered experiences of employment and motherhood' at Lancaster in 2005. This research used in-depth interviews with mothers and a feminist-Bourdieuian theoretical framework to explore the ways women's dispositions toward employment and motherhood are shaped through classed and gendered processes.

Following my doctoral study, I joined the Department for Educational Research to work with the 'Researching Equity, Access and Participation' team on two disability projects.

I then took up the post in Sociology to pursue and extend my interest in gender equality. I joined the department as a Research Associate in March 2007 to work on the 'QUING' (Quality in Gender+ Equality Policies) project with Sylvia Walby and Sofia Strid. This has involved researching gender equality policies in the UK and Ireland across different areas (general gender equality; non-employment; intimate citizenship; and gender-based violence) as well as comparative work across the EU member states.

Recent conference presentations

The intersection of class and gender in politics and policies on violence against women: a comparative analysis, European Conference on Politics and Gender, Budapest, January 2011.

Assessing the impact of the financial crisis on violence against women, International Sociological Association XVII World Congress of Sociology, Gothenburg, July 2010.

Intersectionality and the quality of gendered employment policy, QUING (Quality in Gender+ Equality Policies) Conference, Central European University, Budapest, October 2009.