Employment contributes to well-being, yet many autistic people who want to work face barriers to meaningful employment. Much research focuses solely on employment rates, rather than taking a more holistic view of professional trajectories and occupational experiences. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 18 autistic adults to explore their…

Supporting more autistic people into employment is a major priority of the United Kingdom's National Autism Strategy (2021-2026). However, little is known about the barriers employers perceive to hiring autistic people. A pre-registered cross-sectional survey study was conducted on a nationally representative sample of 1212 individuals with recent…

Thirteen per cent of all 16-24-year-olds in the UK are not in education, employment or training (NEET). This equates to nearly one million young people who are not currently learning or earning. The long-term scarring impact of being NEET for a sustained period of time on young people, society, and the economy, is well known. It is therefore of…

A plethora of work has identified forms and sources of gender inequality in sport coaching. Quantitative studies with psychological framings dominate the literature. However, a smaller and more recent body of qualitative work has identified structural gender hierarchies as the root of inequalities, specifically the prevalence of hegemonic…

Collegiality and the contribution to the sustenance of the academy through academic citizenship are central to commonly held conceptions of what it is to be a university. This study investigates the articulation and recognition of academic citizenship through institutional promotion criteria, including both traditional research and…

This paper critically examines New Labour's New Deal for Young People (NDYP) and its intended role in reducing the number of socially excluded young people classified as NEET (not in education, employment or training). It focuses on New Deal as an example of Third Way policy design aimed to address social exclusion, including the promotion of an…

Using UK data supplied by universities, this paper confirms that women academics earn less than men, even after controlling for a range of covariates. Despite narrowing after 2004/05, the observed (unconditional) pay gap was still -0.089 in 2019/20, while the conditional pay gap was relatively unchanged remaining at around -0.050 in 2019/20. The…

Offering education by distance provides an important sociological tool for equalising opportunities in developed nations. However, for developing nations and more particularly some of the least-developed countries in the world, it has the potential to play a much larger role in providing both basic and advanced educational opportunities and,…

Utilizing the Survey of Adult Skills from the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) and the OECD database, this study investigates the role of gender inequality and public social spending in the gender gap in Not in Employment, Education, or Training (NEET) risk across various age cohorts. The research identifies a…

Background: The advantages of including people with learning disabilities in research teams have been well described, but it is rare for researchers with learning disabilities to be employed at a university. This paper explores the extent to which university recruitment procedures are accessible to job applicants with learning disabilities.…

Do employers prioritize university prestige above an applicant's skills in the hiring process? To distinguish between the effect of human capital in the hiring process from the effect of the name of the graduating university--while controlling for networking effects--2,400 fictitious applications were submitted to IT and accounting jobs in the US,…

This critical autoethnography is an account of my experiences as a woman of color (WoC) academic at a predominantly White institution in the times of COVID-19 and the consequential turn to online teaching and learning. It reflects on how the pandemic has exacerbated my experiences of discrimination, marginalization, isolation, and the struggles to…

This study explores gender-related inequality in participation in Adult Education and Training (AET) in four countries with vastly different adult learning systems and support measures for women's AET. Our examination of the data from an original international survey conducted in 2022 has found that the participation of men and women clearly…

Precarious employment is considered a social determinant impacting the health of workers, families and communities. The Academy is known to utilise non-standard employment contracts, coming under widespread criticism from its social partners for exploitative practices. Whilst there is much research suggesting certain groups (e.g. early career…

What is the significance of regulations of job contracts and wages when it comes to young people's access to labour market? This is an issue that has attracted and continues to attract a great deal of interest in both research and politics. Proposals for deregulated employment protection and reduced entry-level pay recur regularly in public…