The Network will undertake nine substantive projects grouped into three interlinked themes: the first theme explores individual life-course pathways through to adult attainment; the second theme is concerned with resource allocation of time and income, and gender, ethnic and class inequalities; and the third theme focuses specifically on policy responses such as corporate governance and UK/EU initiatives concerning work and care.

Theme one: Pathways to Adult Attainment

Three large scale longitudinal projects, using state-of-the art analysis of quantitative survey data are examining the gendered pathways to adult attainment. Picking up on concerns raised by Denise Kingsmill in her Employment Review about the wastage of talent in the British economy, Shirley Dex, Heather Joshi (Institute of Education) and Peter Dolton (Royal Holloway) will examine how policy initiatives and employer practices affect the careers of men and women and mothers and fathers, and how career paths have changed across the generations. Ingrid Schoon, a psychologist (Institute of Education), will focus on young people's changing aspirations and attainments. Demographers, Wendy Sigle-Rushton (LSE), John Hobcraft and Kathleen Kiernan (York) will examine the distinctive gendered pathways that contribute to the different ways childhood (dis)advantages affect adult attainment.

Theme two: Resources, Gender, Ethnic and Class Inequalities

A second theme, with four-inter-related projects, concerns resource allocations and gender, ethnic and class inequalities. Jonathon Gershuny (Oxford) will use cross-national time trend data to test further hypotheses concerning how household division of labour reproduces gender inequities across time and place. In an innovative quantitative and qualitative study, economists, Holly Sutherland (Essex), Sue Himmelweit (OU) and Fran Bennett (Oxford) will look at the way the new tax credits help or limit families' capacities to adapt to new opportunities for gender equality in paid and unpaid work. Geographer Linda McDowell (Oxford) will examine the gendered opportunities and disadvantages faced by new migrants and different ethnic groups in the service sector of London. Sociologist Rosemary Crompton (City) will extend and develop her ongoing study of how particular labour market sectors are changing as a result of a feminised or feminising work-force.

Theme three: Policy Responses to Gender Inequalities

All the projects are concerned to address policy, but two projects are explicitly concerned with policy response. One project based in Cambridge (Simon Deakin and Jude Browne) will investigate the role of corporate governance in the public and private sectors in promoting and blocking the employability of women and men across the life course. Another project on work and care in the UK and EU, with Jane Lewis (LSE) and Ceridwen Roberts (Oxford) will use a historical perspective to understand the turning points in the way problems are defined and solutions proposed. Qualitative in-depth interviews will be used to look at the tensions that exist between competing ways of conceptualising equal opportunities and the interplay between conceptions of equality and human rights.