Abstract
In the United Kingdom informal carers are people who look after relatives or friends
who need extra support because of age, physical or learning disability or illness.
The majority of informal carers are women and female carers also care for longer hours
and for longer durations than men. Thus women and older women in particular,
shoulder the burden of informal care. We consider the costs of caring in terms of the
impact that these kinds of caring responsibilities have on employment. The research is
based on the responses of informal carers to a dedicated questionnaire and in-depth
interviews with a smaller sub-sample of carers. Our results indicate that the duration
of a caring episode as well as the hours carers commit to caring impact on their
employment participation. In addition carers’ employment is affected by financial
considerations, the needs of the person they care for, carers’ beliefs about the
compatibility of informal care and paid work and employers’ willingness to
accommodate carers’ needs. Overall, the research confirms that informal carers
continue to face difficulties when they try to combine employment and care in spite of
recent policy initiatives designed to help them.
https://genderlibrary.org/a/images/papers/Charmichael_Fem_Econ_preprint.pdf