The gendered nature of safety has been explored empirically and theoretically as awareness has grown of the pervasive challenges to women's safety. Notions of ‘safe space’ are frequently invoked in wider feminist environments (particularly, recently, in relation to debates about trans people's access to women's spaces), but are relatively neglected in academia. Indeed, despite a body of scholarship which looks at questions of gender, safety and space, relatively little attention has been paid to exploring the meaning of ‘safety’ for women and, particularly, the meaning and experience of spaces they consider to be ‘safe.’ Drawing on focus group data with 30 women who attended a two-day, women-only feminist gathering in the UK, this paper analyses experiences of what they describe as ‘safe space’ to explore the significance and meaning of ‘safety’ in their lives. Using their accounts, we distinguish between safe from and safe to, demonstrating that once women are safe from harassment, abuse and misogyny, they feel safe to be cognitively, intellectually and emotionally expressive. We argue that this sense of being ‘safe to’ denotes fundamental aspects of civic engagement, personhood and freedom.

Over-reliance on convenience foods, including ready-meals, has been suggested as one contributor to obesity. Little research has systematically explored the nutritional content of supermarket ready-meals. We described the nutritional content and cost of UK supermarket ready-meals. We conducted a survey of supermarket own-brand chilled and frozen ready-meals available in branches of ten national supermarket chains in one city in northern England. Data on price, weight and nutritional content of meals in four ranges ('healthier', luxury, economy and standard) and of six types (macaroni cheese, meat lasagne, cottage pie, chicken tikka masala, fish pie, and sweet and sour chicken) were collected. Nutritional content was compared to ranges used to identify low, medium and high fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt in nationally recommended front-of-pack labelling. 166 ready-meals were included from 41 stores. Overall, ready-meals were high in saturated fat and salt, and low in sugar. One-fifth of meals were low in fat, saturated fat, salt and sugar, including two-thirds of 'healthier' meals. Meals that were low for three out of the four front-of-pack nutrients were the cheapest. Supermarket ready-meals do not have a healthful nutritional profile overall. However, a number of healthier meals were available - particularly amongst meals specifically marked as 'healthier'. There was little evidence that healthier meals necessarily cost more. Further effort is required to encourage producers to improve the nutritional profile of the full range of ready-meals, and not just those specifically labelled as 'healthier'.

The menstrual cycle remains neglected in explorations of public health, and entirely remiss in occupational health literature, despite being a problematic source of gendered inequalities at work. This paper proposes the new concept of blood work to explain the relationship between menstruation (and associated gynaecological health conditions) and employment for women and trans/non-binary people. We build on and extend health and organisational literature on managing bodies at work by arguing that those who experience menstruation face additional work or labour in the management of their own bodies through the menstrual cycle. We discuss how this additional labour replicates problematic elements that are identifiable in public health initiatives, in that it is individualised, requiring individual women and trans/non-binary people to navigate unsupportive workplaces. We present findings from an analysis of qualitative survey data that were completed by 627 participants working in higher education, revealing that employees’ blood work comprises distinct difficulties that are related to the management of painful, leaking bodies, access to facilities, stigma, and balancing workload. We suggest developing supportive workplaces and public health policies, which refocus the responsibility for accessible, equal workplaces that accommodate menstruating employees, and those with gynaecological health conditions.

Disabled people continue to face a variety of significant barriers to full participation and inclusion in work and employment. However, their experiences remain only sparsely discussed in relation to human resource management (HRM) practices and employment contexts. The current study contributes to this gap in understanding by drawing together relevant work connecting HRM practices, diversity management and disability studies to examine the experiences of a sample of 75 disabled academics in the UK. Through the social relational model of disability, HRM practices socially construct disability in the workplace. Interview and email data from disabled academics in the UK are drawn upon to illustrate how organisational practices and policies, while intended to ‘accommodate’ disabled people, inadvertently construct and shape disability for people with impairments or chronic health conditions.

This article focuses on the workplace as a significant site of convergence between the disciplines of medical sociology and disability studies. As disability remains on the margins of sociological exploration and theorising relating to health and work, disabled workers remain on the margins of the workforce, subject to disproportionate rates of unemployment, under employment and workplace mistreatment. The article focuses on the experiences of people with ‘leaky bodies’, focussing specifically on employees who experience troubling menstruation and/or have gynaecological health conditions. It brings together data from three studies conducted between 2017 and 2020; interviews with disabled academics (n = 75), university staff with gynaecological health conditions (n = 23), and key stakeholders in universities (n = 36) (including university executives, line managers and human resources staff). These studies had separate, but linked foci, on the inaccessibility of workplaces, managing gynaecological health conditions at work and supporting disabled people at work respectively. Drawing on the Social Relational Model of disability and theories of embodiment, we explore the experiences and management of workers with leaky bodies in UK University workplaces. Data illustrates how workplace practices undermine embodied experiences of workers with ‘leaky’ bodies by maintaining workplaces which ignore their material reality. We highlight that addressing embodied needs alongside acknowledging disabled people as an oppressed political category represents a theoretical meeting point for disability studies and medical sociology.