Fran Bennett
About
Fran Bennett was a (Senior) Research and Teaching Fellow in the Department of Social Policy and Intervention (part time) for over 20 years and is now an Emeritus Fellow.
Her research focuses on social security policy, gender issues, and poverty and income distribution. She is also an independent consultant, and has written extensively on social policy issues for the UK government, NGOs and others. She is currently involved with the European Social Policy Analysis Network, having been one of the UK independent experts on social protection and social inclusion for the European Commission.
Fran is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. She is a member of the policy advisory group of the Women's Budget Group (which carries out gender analysis of government Budgets, expenditure and policies). She was a specialist advisor to the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee inquiry into universal credit (with Professor Jane Millar) and was on the management committee of a local advice centre for over 20 years.
Before coming into academia, Fran worked for ATD (All Together in Dignity) Fourth World, GMBATU (a trades union), the Child Poverty Action Group as deputy director and then director, and for Oxfam as policy advisor on UK/EU poverty issues. She maintains links with a number of NGOs nationally and locally, including being an active member of the local group Oxford and District Action on Child Poverty.
Expertise
- Welfare reform, benefits, social security policy (largely UK), especially universal credit
- Women and benefits, women and welfare reform, women and social security policy, gender analysis of social security (largely UK)
- Poverty, child poverty, policy/strategy on poverty (largely UK)
- In work poverty / living wage
- Management and distribution of resources within the household (couples)
- Lived experience of poverty, public participation of people in poverty
Selected publications
- A Research Agenda for Financial Resources within the Household, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Bennett, Fran, Avram, Silvia and Austen, Siobhan (editors and contributors) (2024)
- Take-up of social security benefits: past, present – and future? Journal of Poverty and Social Justice 32(1): 2-25. Bennett, Fran (2024)
- Couples Navigating Work, Care and Universal Credit, Bath: Institute for Policy Research, University of Bath. Griffiths, Rita, Wood, Marsha, Bennett, Fran and Millar, Jane (2022)
- Gendered Economic Inequalities: A social policy perspective, London: Institute for Fiscal Studies (commentary on gender inequalities report, IFS Deaton Review). Bennett, Fran (2021)
- 'How government sees couples on Universal Credit: a critical gender perspective', Journal of Poverty and Social Justice 29(1): 3-20. Bennett, Fran (2021)
- "Universal credit: assumptions, contradictions and virtual reality", Social Policy and Society 16(2): 169-182.Millar, Jane and Bennett, Fran (2017)
- "The 'living wage', low pay and in work poverty: rethinking the relationships", Critical Social Policy 34(1): 46-65. Bennett, Fran (2014)
- “Poverty through a Gender Lens: Evidence and policy review on gender and poverty”, working paper for Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Bennett, Fran and Daly, Mary (2014)
Media experience
Fran Bennett has extensive media experience, across television, national and local radio, and print. Some recent examples listed opposite.
Also:
Oral evidence to inquiry into in-work poverty (as member of Women’s Budget Group) to All Party Parliamentary Group on Poverty, reproduced as blog on WBG website (2021).
Participant in ResPublica seminar on Rethinking Social Security (2021)
Blogpost with Marilyn Howard for the Institute for Policy Research (University of Bath), ‘Continuing confusion about Universal Credit and Couples’ (2021)
Speaker in ‘Universal Credit and Couples: policy issues’ webinar (podcast), with response by Neil Couling (then Senior Responsible Owner, Universal Credit, Department for Work and Pensions), 2020
Blogpost on Coronavirus and Universal Credit, initially for IPR, University of Bath and reproduced for DSPI, University of Oxford, (2020)
Recent media work
Languages
English, some French