Professor and Director of the Centre for the Study of Women and Gender

Email: nickie.charles@warwick.ac.uk

My research focusses on women and gender and includes an interest in gender relations at work and at home and how women - through involvement in feminist social movements - can bring about social change. It falls into four main areas:

• gender divisions and the relation between paid and unpaid work;
• Families, households and kin relationships and the distribution of resources within family-households;
• Human-animal relations;
• Feminist social movements and social change – in particular the refuge movement and policy change relating to domestic violence.

A key theoretical concern is with the way gender relations are reproduced and/or challenged over time

Current research

I am currently working on a research project exploring the relationship between gender and political processes in the context of devolution. This research takes Wales as a case study and investigates the extent to which an increase in the proportion of women representatives in devolved government is associated with a change in the gendering of political processes and, particularly, whether policy developments incorporate a greater awareness of women’s and gender issues. I am also writing a book on a recently completed research project which explores the way kinship relations and patterns of family formation have changed between 1960 and 2002. Some of the findings from this research can be found at http://www.swansea.ac.uk/sssid/Research/R&H/Working%20Papers.htm. Both these projects are funded by the ESRC.

Past research

I have carried out research on women in the paid workforce, exploring the way gender ideologies and trade union policies and practices shape gender divisions of labour, how women's experience of shiftwork affects gender relations at home, and how gender affects experiences of job insecurity. This last project was part of the ESRC’s Future of Work programme. My interests in families and households encompasses research on food practices within families and their relation to gender divisions of labour and research on various aspects of domestic violence ranging from refuge funding through the housing needs of women and children escaping domestic violence and their mental health needs to an audit of local domestic abuse services.

I have written five books –Women, Food and Families, (Manchester University Press, 1988), Gender divisions and social change (Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993), Feminism, the state and social policy (Macmillan, 2000), Gender in Modern Britain (Oxford University Press, 2002) and Families in Transition (The Policy Press, 2008) - and co-edited five others - Practising Feminism (Routledge, 1996), Gender, ethnicity and political ideologies (Routledge, 1998), Gender and Social Justice in Wales (Cardiff University Press, 2010), Nature, Society and Environmental Crisis (Sociological Review Monograph, Wiley, 2010) and Humans and other animals: critical perspectives (Palgrave, 2011).

Current and recent PhD supervision

• A qualitative enquiry into the effects of domestic abuse upon the workplace
• Maternal benefits in New Labour’s childcare strategy? Care, choice and constraint in women’s lives
• Voluntary childlessness
• Role of women in food security in North Kordofan state, Western Sudan
• Gender and change in the Dulais valley mining communities

Publications other than books since 2000

Charles N, Gilkes M and Symonds A: Evaluation of the organisational structure of Welsh Women's Aid, Welsh Women's Aid: Cardiff, 2001

Davies C A and Charles N (2002) ‘The piano in the parlour: methodological issues in the conduct of a restudy’, in Sociological Research Online, 7(2), www.socresonline.org.uk/7/2/davies.html

Charles N and James E (2003) ‘The gender dimensions of job insecurity in a local labour market’, in Work, Employment and Society, 17 (3): 531-552

Charles N and James E (2003) ‘Job insecurity, work orientations and gender’ in The British Journal of Sociology, 54(2):239-257

Walters V, Avotri J and Charles N (2003) ‘”Your heart is never free”: women in Wales and Ghana talking about distress’ in J M Stoppard and L M McMullen (eds) Situating sadness: women and depression in social context, New York University Press: New York and London

Charles N (2004) ‘Feminist politics and devolution: a preliminary account’ in Social Politics, 11(2):297-311

Charles, N (2004) ‘Feminism, social movements and the political order’ in G Taylor and M Todd (eds) Democracy and participation: Popular protest and new social movements, Merlin Press: London: pp. 248-272

Charles N, Griffiths L and Kinnear J. (2004) The mental health needs of women who have experienced domestic abuse, Neath Women’s Aid

Charles N and James E (2005) ‘He earns the bread and butter and I earn the cream’: job insecurity and the male breadwinner family’, in Work, Employment and Society, 19(3):481-502

Charles N and James E with Ransome P (2005) ‘Perceptions of job insecurity in a retail sector organisation’ in P.Stewart (ed) Employment, trade union renewal and the future of work, Palgrave, 164-186

Charles N and James E (2005) ‘Gender, job insecurity and the work-life balance’ in D.Houston (ed) Work-life balance in the 21st century, Palgrave: Basingstoke, pp.170-188

Charles, N and Davies, CA (2005) ‘Studying the particular illuminating the general: community studies and community in Wales’ in Sociological Review, 53 (4): 672-690

Charles, N, Jones, S and Edwards H (2005) ‘An audit of domestic abuse in Swansea: report of consultation finding’,’ presented to the City and County of Swansea in September.

Davies C.A., Charles N and Harris, CC (2006) ‘Welsh identity and language in Swansea, 1960-2002’ in Contemporary Wales 18: 28-53

Becker B and Charles N (2006) ‘Layered meanings: the construction of the family in the interview’, Community, Work and Family, 9 (2):101-122

Ball W and Charles N (2006) ‘Feminist social movements and policy change: Devolution, childcare and domestic violence policies in Wales’, Women’s Studies International Forum, 29 (2)

The Family and Social Change restudy working papers

Gender and political processes in the context of devolution

Books