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Exploring everyday finance, gender, and the future of pensions

Dr Hayley James of Aston University explores how life experiences - from parenthood to income volatility — shape how people save, borrow, and plan for their financial future.

Feb 20, 2026

3 min

Dr Hayley James
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Money in everyday life


For Dr Hayley James, finance isn’t just numbers on a balance sheet - it’s woven into the realities of everyday life. From saving and borrowing to the challenge of long-term pension planning, her work at Aston University’s Centre for Personal Financial Wellbeing (CPFW) explores how financial decisions are shaped by family, gender, life stage, and stability of income.


Her research stems from her PhD, which examined how people make decisions after being automatically enrolled into workplace pensions - a starting point that sparked her continuing focus on pensions and everyday financial behaviour.


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“Finance is often portrayed as objective, but in reality, our money decisions are tied up with all the other meaningful factors in our lives.” – Hayley James




At CPFW, Dr. James and her colleagues have observed a shift in policy and industry thinking. Where once the focus was on pushing people to act in “rational” financial ways, attention is now turning to redesigning systems that reflect how people actually manage money.



Gender and the pension gap


A key focus of Dr. James’ research has been pensions, particularly how gender and life events shape saving habits. She has found that parenthood has very different impacts on men and women’s retirement planning:

  • Motherhood often discourages pension saving - reducing both capacity and perceived importance.
  • Fatherhood often encourages saving - reinforcing traditional financial roles.

While many assume household specialisation balances out, reality shows otherwise: separation or divorce often leaves women financially disadvantaged.


These insights underpin her book Pension Saving in a Gendered Lifecourse (2025), which argues for pension systems that move beyond gender neutral models to become gender friendly - systems that acknowledge the very different realities men and women face across their life course.



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Tracking real lives: the “Real Accounts” project


Beyond pensions, Dr James has led research into how people actually manage day-to-day finances. In the Real Accounts project, she and colleagues followed UK households for 10 months, recording income and spending in real time.


The findings reveal how income volatility — sudden drops, irregular hours, unexpected bills — creates stress and undermines financial stability. These insights are helping policymakers and providers rethink how products like pensions, credit, and debt advice are designed.


Collaboration and impact


Dr. James’ work bridges academia, policy, and practice. Partnerships include:

  • Nest Insight – public-benefit research centre, co-leads on Real Accounts.
  • Glasgow Caledonian University – joint research on household finances.
  • Christians Against Poverty – literature review on measuring the impact of debt advice, aimed at improving frontline support for the most vulnerable.


Through these collaborations, her findings are already shaping practical change in how organisations design support for households under financial strain.


Looking ahead


With her British Academy Innovation Fellowship concluding, Dr. James is turning to new questions: How do diverse households — across sexuality, ability, ethnicity, and household structure — navigate finance? How can financial systems evolve to reflect real lives, not abstract models?


Her book sets out a roadmap for rethinking pensions through a gendered lens — offering policymakers, providers, and households a new way to understand and prepare for later life.



Selected publications


For readers who want to explore her research in more depth, here are a few recent publications:

• James, H. (2022). Everyday finance and the politics of financial subjectivity. Review of International Political Economy.

• James, H. (2022). Financial wellbeing and the lived experience of income volatility. New Political Economy.

• James, H. (2023). Household finance and the gendered lifecourse: Reframing pensions research. In Handbook on Everyday Finance (Edward Elgar). Available via RePEc.


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About Dr. Hayley James


Dr. Hayley James is a Senior Research Fellow at Aston University’s Centre for Personal Financial Wellbeing. Her research spans pensions, household finance, and the social context of money. She has published widely and works closely with policy and community partners to translate research into action.


To explore more of the Centre’s work and access project reports, visit the CPFW Projects page at Aston University.


Connect with Hayley by clicking the profile icon below.

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Dr Hayley James

Dr Hayley James

Senior Research Fellow

Dr James is an expert on the lived experience of financial products, tools and services in everyday life.

LifecourseEconomic SociologyFinancial WellbeingGender and Finance
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