“Worklessness”: Examining the Rise of a Key Concept in UK Political Discourse and its Gendered Consequences

In 1996 the Office for National Statistics in the UK began collecting data on the number of “workless” households, as opposed to just statistics on the number of unemployed individuals. These figures include those previously classed as “economically inactive”, for example due to retirement, sickness, disability or care commitments. Since then, the term “worklessness” has become synonymous in political discourse with being out of paid work, for whatever reason, and figures relating to the number of “workless” households have increasingly been used by politicians, instead of unemployment figures, in justifying welfare reform. In 1997, in his inaugural speech as Prime Minister, Tony Blair made the case for welfare reform to bring the “new workless class back into society". During the 2000s the Conservative think-tank The Centre for Social Justice championed radical welfare reform to tackle what they called “Breakdown Britain”, identifying “worklessness” as a key contributor to this. Most recently, the Conservative and Liberal Democrat Coalition Government (2010-2015) and subsequent Conservative administrations have made the need to tackle “worklessness” a key justification for some of the most far- reaching welfare reforms in UK history. This article presents discourse analysis of welfare speeches from each administration since 1997 to examine the way in which the term “worklessness” has functioned in political discourse in the UK over the past quarter of a century. In particular, it considers the consequences for women and gender equality given that women, due to unpaid care commitments, are less likely to participate in paid work than men and more likely to rely on welfare. Findings suggest that the term “worklessness” has been used by the political right and left in justifying increasingly punitive welfare policies. Not only has it been used as a catchall term for all those not in paid work, but it has also been associated with a moral “underclass”, portrayed as choosing to rely on welfare and often engaged in immoral, or even criminal, behaviour. A recent tendency has also been to portray all welfare recipients as “workless” (despite many being in paid work but on low incomes) and to pitch the interests of this group against those of the “hardworking” taxpayer. The argument is that the use of the term in political discourse is deeply problematic for women and gender equality as it functions to minimise recognition of unpaid care work, predominantly done by women, as valuable work. It also obscures the ways in which welfare policy interacts with existing inequalities within the family, labour market and society that mean women are less likely to be in paid work than men and, on average, earn less when they are. Furthermore, with men more likely to be taxpayers and women more likely to head “workless” households, the constructed moral dichotomy between the deserving taxpayer and the undeserving “workless” welfare recipient serves to deepen existing unequal gender relations. Ultimately, it is argued that the demonisation of “worklessness” has allowed successive governments to implement welfare reforms that have fallen hardest on women and undermined gender equality.