Older women need flexible working

More older women are long-term unemployed and fewer working flexible hours.

Older women are falling further behind in the jobs market, two leading UK charities claim.

Analysis by Age UK and Carers UK found that while the total number of people working has grown steadily over the last two years, the significant fall in the number of older women in jobs indicates that many want to work but can’t find suitable employment.

Age UK looked at the Labour Force Survey and found that long-term unemployment among women aged 50-64 rose from 34.5 per cent in 2010 to 40.7 per cent in 2012 – an increase of nearly a fifth.

And in 2012, 36.8 per cent of women worked flexibly, down from 38.3 per cent in 2010.

The charities say that caring commitments - for ageing parents, children and grandchildren - prevent many older women from working traditional hours.

They say that as a result women find themselves locked out of the jobs market and the result is the fall in the numbers working flexibly.

Age UK and Carers UK believe improving opportunities to work flexibly could help many of these unemployed women find work.

A recent TUC report  found that almost half of women over 50 are in part-time work with average wages of less than £10,000.

The report argued that many of these women could only take part-time jobs because of their caring responsibilities which thus trapped them in low wage jobs.

The Labour Party set up a Commission on Older Women as part of its Policy Review.  It recently published its interim report calling for government-funded programmes targeted at helping older women back to work, for companies to conduct gender pay audits and for a public debate about whether parental leave could be shared with grandparents.

The government has committed itself to extending the right to request flexible working to all employees in June 2014.

The charities welcome this as an important first step, but believe that we should go further to encourage employers to promote and encourage flexibility in the workplace.

Flexible working can include a range of options, including working from home, doing flexitime or compressing hours, all of which can allow people to balance personal responsibilities with work.

Caroline Abrahams, charity director of Age UK said, “We know that many older women especially are finding it impossible to hold down a full time job at the same time as fulfilling their caring responsibilities.

“In the end, many have to stop employment altogether or take a poorly paid part-time job, where their skills are often wasted and their income plummets.

“That’s why we need ‘Flexible by Default’, so that everyone can work flexibly unless their employer can justify otherwise to harness the wasted potential of many older women - and indeed older men.”

Heléna Herklots, chief executive of Carers UK, said: “1 in 4 women in their 50s and 60s have caring responsibilities, many struggling to combine paid work with supporting ageing parents or an ill partner.

“Unless carers can access flexibility at work and reliable care services at home they are at risk of being forced to give up work entirely, with serious costs not just to their family finances but also to their employer and the economy.”

Currently, only parents with children under the age of 16 and those with formal caring responsibilities can request flexible working.

Story published on Women's Views on News, 15 April 2014.

Working households in poverty says report

Story published in Women's Views on News, December 3, 2012

A new report finds that the nature of poverty in the UK is changing.

And most working-age households affected by poverty are in work rather than unemployed, with low income (or poverty) defined as ‘people living in households with income below 60 per cent of the median for that year’.

For the tax year ending 5 April 2012, the median gross annual earnings for men were £28,700, and for women were £23,100.

According to the report, ’Monitoring Poverty and Social Exclusion 2012′, written by the New Policy Institute for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation there are now 6.1 million people living on less than two thirds of the average wage – on around £8,400 a year.
And around 6.4 million workers are under-employed – wanting to work more but unable to obtain extra hours.

According to the Office for National Statistics, part-time workers are four times more likely to be those under-employed.

Just under one fifth of people in Britain are on low incomes at any one time, but poverty affects a third at some time in a four-year period.

Over half of the children living in poverty now live in working households.

And poverty is no longer confined to those living in social housing: most poor people live in the private rented sector.

The government’s welfare reforms are worsening their plight, as they are cutting things like tax credits and housing benefits, which the working poor need to supplement low wages and meet rising housing costs.

And these trends are more likely to affect women. Women living in the most deprived areas can now expect to live shorter lives than men in the richest parts of the UK.

The report concludes that ’changing the benefits system will not solve problems such as in-work poverty, increasing underemployment and rising health inequalities’.

According to a recent TUC study, three quarters of the UK’s over 8 million part-time workers are women and they earn 36 per cent less per hour than full-time workers.

The regional earnings distribution figures released recently by the Office for National Statistics showed how wages in the UK differed by sex.
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While weekly earnings were highest in London for both sexes, earnings for men were lowest in Northern Ireland, at £479, and for women they were lowest in the East Midlands, at £402.