Care drove these women's need to get work and shaped their ability to perform particular types of job. It structured the women's lives on a financial, relational and emotional level. For these reasons, this book focuses on women's experiences providing care before it goes on to cover women's experiences at work. This chapter describes the types of care these women performed, who they cared for and how, their daily routines and how they scheduled care. It concludes by exploring the emotional and wider effects of care on women's lives: the feelings they reported in trying to balance care alongside precarious work, and their sense of being overwhelmed and exhausted. Chapter Four goes on to describe and explore care networks: the varied webs of family, friends, nurseries, partners and ex-partners, grandparents, schools and care workers that women weaved together in order to provide care around their precarious jobs.

Interviewees provided unpaid care in a range of ways and through multiple care commitments. A common theme was women performing what Carers UK has called ‘sandwich care’: caring for a dependent under 18 years of age while also caring for an adult. Care was needed in specific daily and weekly rhythms, fitting around other care providers, hospitals and schools. Women's daily routines involved getting up early, engaging in sequential periods of care and work with little “wiggle room”, sometimes going without sleep, and providing care in their own homes for adults or making regular visits to other people's homes. They scheduled care around work, sometimes finding out late about last-minute shifts, and using strategies such as phoning around, diarizing and using shared calendars to coordinate care around their jobs. Unpaid care therefore involved significant emotional, intellectual and physical effort. Women reported feeling out of control, pulled in several directions, anxious, distracted, sometimes depressed and often overwhelmed. This was the context in which they turned up to work, managing uncertain shift patterns on zero-hours contracts and performing short hours or temporary contracts.

Types of care

Care is notoriously difficult to define, involving a wide range of activities, relationships and emotional work inside and outside of the home that is oriented to another person's daily and/or developmental needs.