SWBG blog

Women’s Work: The Juggling Act of Multiple Jobs

Guest blog by Louise Lawson, Lecturer in Public Policy and Health Policy in the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Glasgow

The exhibition ‘Women’s Work: The Juggling Act of Multiple Jobs’ built on research based at the University of Glasgow exploring women’s low paid employment, highlighting issues around multiple paid and unpaid work, caring responsibilities and health and wellbeing. The project and exhibition provided unique and timely insights into the key features of the women’s work, caring and health, detailing the lived experience of multiple low-paid employment in the UK today.  The exhibition will be turned into an online resource and will be available for charities and third sector organisations. It showcases a selection of the research findings alongside artworks and filmed personal testimonies of women working multiple jobs.

Over 100 women were interviewed for the research project. The sheer hard work of many women working multiple jobs was striking: many working five, six or seven days a week, early starts, non-standard hours, stretched hours, but still “skint”, “working for nothing”, and “squeezing it all in”. Many felt their work lacked recognition and value: “we are just numbers”, “absolutely done in”, and “one day I will not have to suffer this”. Metaphors were used to describe the often relentless nature of multiple low-paid work: “juggling act”, feeling like a “hamster in a wheel”, “on a rollercoaster”, “forever on a loop”. Yet there were also stories of joy and determination with some women dedicated to and finding fulfilment from their work, seeing it as a route to something better and optimistic for the future”.

Have your Say

A key aim of the project was to give voice to women in multiple low-paid employment, and to provide opportunities to raise the profile of women’s work, paid and unpaid. We are taking our research findings to the Scottish Parliament at the end of May.

If you are working multiple jobs, or have experience of working multiple jobs, and would like further information or some involvement in our work then please contact Louise Lawson louise.lawson@glasgow.ac.uk