A lot more to give

Sometimes a good education and career aren’t enough when dramatic life events happen.

When Kesrewan (not her real name) was forced to flee her home country in the Middle East, she’d hoped to continue working as a journalist or librarian to give her children a good life. But once she reached the UK, the reality was far different.

Despite being educated and in her mid-fifties, Kesrewan has found it hard to land secure and well-paid work here, resorting to a series of precarious jobs as a cleaner.

Meanwhile, Kiki (again, not her real name) is 63 and retired on medical grounds. She had polio as a child and, during her thirties, experienced the onset of post-polio syndrome, which has led to significant disabilities. She was a human rights lawyer and had to stop working for a long time due to the impact on her physical and mental health.

She lost her job, and her marriage broke down. She eventually left her family home and moved to a small flat. But without a full medical pension, she could barely afford it.

For both educated, professionalwomen, there were the harsh realities of facing discrimination based on age, race, ethnicity and language barriers in the UK job market.

Kesrewan’s and Kiki’s stories are just two of those shared by 100 women from Greater Manchester
as part of the Uncertain Futures research project. An arts and research collaboration supported by Manchester Met and The University of Manchester, it aims to highlight and analyse inequalities relating to gender, age, race, disability, migration and other statuses while understanding how these issues impact women’s paid and unpaid work.

The women interviewed are over 50, twothirds are from ethnic minority backgrounds, and all are keen to have their voices heard. They are based in or around an age-friendly city — in 2010, Manchester became the UK’s first to join the World Health Organisation (WHO) Global Network of Age-Friendly Cities and Communities. The city is focused on developing strategies to ensure that it is a good place for people like the women interviewed to grow old, challenging the inequalities people experience later in life.

But Manchester still has a younger demographic. There are many people between 50 and 64 who are out of work, with older women more likely to be unemployed than men of the same age. Women also often experience more inequalities around pensions and exiting work due to fragmented working lives caused by a range of issues, including health and caring responsibilities.

Backdrop

It’s against this backdrop that Uncertain Futures was founded by US artist Suzanne Lacy and Manchester Art Gallery. As with all of Lacy’s work, it evolved to become an expansive, collaborative project. Soon, Manchester City Council’s Work and Skills team got involved along with an advisory group of 15 women aged over 50 from the city’s ageing and community groups.

Dr Sarah Campbell, Senior Lecturer at Manchester Met and co-lead on the project said: “The contributions of older women in work are not always recognised and, even if they are, this doesn’t necessarily change their situations — their value is not [always] financially rewarded.”

As well as being an important body of research, central to the Uncertain Futures project is an exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery that features the stories of women who were interviewed about their own experiences of work. The stories were captured in a specially constructed room during interviews with Dr Campbell and her collaborator Elaine Dewhurst, from The University of Manchester. The anonymised transcripts were then displayed on the gallery’s walls along with audio soundtracks.

It was a collaborative effort that tapped into Manchester Met’s creative expertise, with Mark Thomas from the School of Digital Arts (SODA) working on the exhibition alongside Lacey. There was also a film of a celebration dinner involving the project’s participants, and Manchester Met’s students lent their talents by making short films with the women.

The stories tell of a range of issues facing the women — employed, unemployed, or in paid or unpaid
work. Just under two-thirds of those interviewed were from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds, and all were heavily over-represented in shift work and non-permanent jobs.

Typically, those with paid work are working in kitchens, warehouses, or as cleaners — mostly on zero-hours contracts. Others work in poorly paid or voluntary care roles, and many described experiencing abuse and discrimination in the workplace.

Dr Campbell said: “Many of the women we interviewed were living in very modest or challenging financial circumstances in later life. This was made worse if women were not living in owned homes, but were still paying rent. Working lives impacted by disability and health issues or other caring responsibilities often mean that later life will be more financially challenging because there is no opportunity to build financially secure futures through occupational or private pensions.

“Some of the women we interviewed had been asylum seekers who were now here on [indefinite]
leave to remain (the right to live, work or study here — also called ‘settlement’).

“They wanted to have their stories heard. It’s encouraged some of them to look at their own financial situations around things like pensions, which they didn’t know about before.”

Despite such progress, the global pandemic impacted the project. Dr Campbell said that it also gave
the team time to think about how the health crisis was impacting the women and their work.

Although roles in healthcare and cleaning became more valued, the team found that many women in
these jobs were still on zero-hours or temporary contracts, despite acute labour shortages in some occupations.

Further interim findings of the project pointed to how particular conditions, such as good health, strong social networks, decent pensions — including a husband’s pension — and home ownership allow for more comfortable retirements for some of the women. Where women didn’t have those, a financially secure later life was less achievable.

Almost half the women interviewed disclosed living with a health condition or disability that had impacted their working lives, sometimes leading to early retirement with inevitable consequences for
pension provision.

Similar, too, was the impact of caring responsibilities.

Caring for children in earlier years had often impacted the ability to work full time, and also limited the work they could do. Many of the women continued tohave caring responsibilities in later
life, sometimes supporting adult children with disabilities or caring for grandchildren or older relatives.

Complexity

For example, Nora is a 77-year-old single parent to an adult child with learning disabilities and physical health needs. In her Uncertain Futures interview, she described the complexity of her working life: she had to work part-time and in roles that were term-time only, such as dinnertime assistantor playground assistant.

Low-paid roles like those meant that Nora couldn’t save or pay into a private pension scheme. Aged 57, she became a volunteer with an agency that provides transport to health and social care service users, taking them to appointments and social care settings — a role she’s been in for 25 years.

Volunteering gives Nora a rewarding feeling. It’s important for her to feel connected with her community and to be doing something useful. She said: “It means getting out of the house. When you’re transporting people, everybody’s thankful.”

But Nora leads a frugal life with a very limited pension pot. She said: “I don’t have a lot of money,” she explained. “But [it’s] enough for me to do whatever I want to do. [I’m] very good with my bills and haveenough to pay my tax, so I’m quite happy. Although I don’t have a lot, that’s okay with me.”

It’s important to recognise the work of women like Nora who have spent and continue to spend their
later lives giving time to support the provision of health and social care services.

Many of the women interviewed did a substantial amount of unpaid work, including those with health
problems and disabilities, either through voluntary work in their communities or by providing care to
family members.

Dr Campbell said: “The contribution of women’s unpaid labour must be recognised for the important societal value it provides.”

There were particular challenges for migrant women who often had years within the asylum system, and then faced difficulties accessing the job market. Many reported health problems, which they felt were brought on by the stressful lives they were forced to lead with insecure housing and financial circumstances.

Another area of concern was technology and the need to be digitally savvy in today’s job market.

Gemma is 60, she was the first in her family to study at university and is educated to masters level.

Reflecting during her Uncertain Futures interview, Gemma admitted that despite her education, her
working life has always been precarious. She hasn’t had what she would call a ‘career’, and much of her work has been short-term contracts and seasonal work in the cultural and education sectors.

Her recent experience of trying to find work is that everything requires you to use online portals for the application process, which is challenging.

Gemma said: “I don’t have a smartphone because I don’t have enough money to know that I can always pay for one, so I have a little Nokia with a SIM-only deal. Every job now wants you to fill in an application form. Even if it’s a little part-time job, it’s as though you’re going for a massive Civil Service career when you’re actually applying for 12 weeks in Lidl.

“Everything is on portals. And everything assumes that you have a certain amount of technology at your fingertips and the ability to not panic when it goes wrong.”

She lives in private rented accommodation and worries about her financial future, feeling certain she
will have to continue to work into her later years just to survive.

She said: “At the end of every tax year, I always get one of those letters. Ones that say, you need to
make so much money to be within the pension scheme. I know I will probably get a sort of Universal
Credit-type basic pension. I’m expecting I’ll be cleaning toilets till I’m 85.

Exhibition

The Uncertain Futures exhibition is now in its second iteration and will draw to a close in December
2023. There are plans for a third showing once the outcomes of the research are published, with a key recommendation for action in the form of a manifesto to effect social change.

Dr Campbell said: “We really want the valuable contributions of older women like Kesrewan and Kiki to be recognised and to be valued because I think one of the problems is that we look at contribution in a very narrow way, and that doesn’t pay off for people.

“As well as publishing a report, a film of the project is planned. We’re having fruitful conversations with other organisations who are doing similar kinds of work, like the Runnymede Trust, to join forces and say we really need to make some changes here to influence social policy and improve things for women.”

And what of Kesrewan and Kiki?

Kesrewan has eventually found a paid role, but it’s only sessional, which means it’s not full-time and is also irregular. But it’s doing work that she feels is important as it’s supporting other refugee women like herself, and within an organisation where she feels accepted and her skills recognised.

Meanwhile, Kiki’s circumstances changed dramatically. She retrained as a life coach and mentor, working freelance and gaining some economic independence again.

She is now financially stable and will receive her state pension in a few years. But she leads a modest life. And, like many of the women interviewed, Kiki also looks after her elderly mother with her siblings.

Reflecting on their stories, Dr Campbell said: “Both women represent many of those in Uncertain Futures and show the power of endurance through challenging life experiences, and the impact that illness and disability have on work and on later-life financial security.

“Yet despite these limitations and challenges, women continue to provide care and also find
ways to earn a living."