The European Social Fund and the Vocational Training of Unemployed Women: questions of gendering and re‐gendering

This article looks at the influence of the European Social Fund upon the vocational training of unemployed women. It concentrates on one member State, the United Kingdom. This highlights the way in which applications for one type of training are prioritised over and above certain other types. The two aspects of this are examined: first, the training given—traditional male manual skills; and secondly, the training which is not given: (a) training for advancement in traditional female jobs; and (b) the crucial new technology skills of the present and future. The result of this occupational gendering and re‐gendering is that women are kept in jobs of low status, low pay and with little control, influence, or prospects for the technological future.