Bio: (1966-) British sociologist. Lisa Adkins teaches at the University of Newcastle. She is best known for her research on feminist political theory, sociology of gender, and sociology of sexuality, and she also studies economic sociology, post-industrial economics, and the new political economy.

In her book Gendered Work (1995), Adkins studied the influence of Bourdieu's theory on feminism, as well as the processes of the sexualization of women's occupations. She believes that the patriarchy's control over women's work limits women's access to certain jobs. There are jobs on the labor market that have a gendered character, so they are intended for only one sex. Sexuality is an integral part of many jobs aimed exclusively at women, and she calls this aspect of women's work "sex work". To investigate her hypotheses, she conducted field research in hotels, bars, and amusement parks.

She discovered that in all these catering activities, women perform the work of welcoming and serving guests. They are expected to be young, beautiful, and well-groomed, to cope with the sexual harassment of male guests, and even not to protest because of that, so as not to get fired. Another type of sexual segregation in these companies was the employment of married couples, where the husband was given a higher, mostly managerial position, while the wife was serving guests. Companies were thus able to pay these married women less because the total earnings that the married couple earned were sufficient motivation to stay in those companies. Adkins criticized Rosemary Crompton's pluralistic approach to the relationship between gender and labor because that kind of approach underestimates the importance of the role of gender in segregation and exploitation in the workplace.

Main works

Gendered Work: Sexuality, Family and the Labour Market (1995);

Revisions: Gender and Sexuality in Late Modernity (2002);

Feminism After Bourdieu (2005);

The Post-Fordist Sexual Contract: Working and Living in Contingency (2016);

Bourdieusian Prospects (2016);

Gender and Labour in New Times (2017);

The Time of Money (2018);

Germaine Greer: Essays on a Feminist Figure ( 2018);

The Asset Economy (2020).