After the main patient she cared for passed away on Christmas Day three years ago, nurse Sharon’s work hours dropped from 45 a week to zero immediately.
“I had no hours left, no pay – nothing at all,” says Sharon, who has worked in the Morecambe care sector for around 20 years.
She is one of about 3.9 million women in positions with unpredictable pay, no guaranteed hours and little access to employment rights, according to a new study.
Women in the UK are almost twice as likely as men to be ‘trapped’ in such highly insecure jobs, the Work Foundation has found.
The think tank, which is working to improve working conditions in the UK, said it means many women are now “on the sharp end of the cost of living crisis”.
Sharon, who wishes to remain anonymous, has been working on a zero-hour contract for years and says “every hour counts”.
“I call my manager every week and ask him for more hours,” she says, although she mainly spends her work day going from house to house helping patients at home when they are discharged from the hospital.
While she’s built her hours back up to about 30 a week, she describes the uncertainty as “very distressing.”
She’s also trying her best to save money to ensure she can cover her bills should her hours drop again, despite “loving her job and her patients.”
With prices rising quickly, some of her co-workers are living “hand to mouth,” she says, and one can’t afford the gas to drive to appointments if paychecks don’t arrive on time.
Sharon adds that the zero-hour contract means she feels a lack of control – where she’s obliged to accept last-minute work and is contacted on days off.
“If you say no once or twice, they offer other people jobs. You scratch their back, they scratch yours,” she says, worried that saying no would affect her future work hours.
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The Work Foundation’s research, shared exclusively with BBC News, is based on official labor market statistics.
It previously found that workers in hospitality, retail and agriculture were more often forced to work in insecure jobs with limited access to basic rights such as sick pay or severance pay.
Their new findings showed that mothers generally work more short-term or zero-hour contracts than men.
Those with children under the age of nine were 2.7 times more likely than fathers to work in a “highly insecure” role.
Additionally, it found that black women and disabled women were more likely to have insecure jobs than their white or able-bodied counterparts.
In the UK, 15.6 million women aged 16 and over were employed between June and August this year – 96,000 more than a year earlier, according to the Office for National Statistics.
Although the proportion of women in the workforce has increased, Melanie Wilkes, Research Director at the Labor Foundation, said: “It seems that too often women have to make trade-offs between access to flexible work practices and secure jobs.
“Against the backdrop of the cost of living crisis, falling real wages and a looming recession, we live in extremely challenging times for those in low-paying, insecure jobs who are struggling to make ends meet.”
The Work Foundation wants the government to increase access to affordable childcare and allow all employees flexible working from day one.
It also called on politicians to commit to increasing universal loan payments in line with the cost of living from April – something the government has yet to commit to.
The Department for Works and Pensions said it was helping low-paid workers in a variety of ways, including support for energy bills.
“As part of our €37 billion support package
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