BIO

Fran Bennett works part-time as a Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Social Policy and Social Work, University of Oxford. Her research interests include gender, poverty, social security and participatory methodologies. She is also a self-employed social policy consultant/researcher, often working with NGOs and others on similar issues. Fran has worked part time for Oxfam GB as a policy advisor on UK/EU poverty issues, and before that was deputy director and then director of the Child Poverty Action Group. She is currently part of the EU non-government experts team working on the UK National Action Plan on Social Inclusion. Fran has worked on gender issues for over 20 years. Most recently she has written for the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the Equal Opportunities Commission and the Fawcett Society on gender and the social security benefits system in the UK. She is currently working with Sue Himmelweit and Holly Sutherland on 'Within Household Inequalities and Public Policy', a research project which is part of the programme of the Gender Equality Network, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. The project is exploring some of the issues which she will raise in her paper for the conference, and is an innovative mixed methods research project which will include qualitative and quantitative research as well as policy simulation.