Section head
Women and Work- The Facts - Care and Childcare
Understanding carers will increasingly become a significant consideration for employers whilst considerations of childcare affect both mothers and fathers.
- Care is not a gender issue. Seven out of ten carers under 50 and 8 out of 10 carers aged 50 – 60 give up work to care (46)
- Over the next 30 years, the number of carers in the UK will increase from 6 million to 9 million (47)
- Three out of five is the number of people who will care for someone at some point in their life (48)
- There are 3 million working carers in the UK. Of these 1.4 million are men and 1.7 million are women (49)
Considerations of childcare affect mothers and fathers
- 12.8 million is the number of working age parents with dependent children (50)
- £152 is the typical cost per week for nursery place for child under two (51)
- £962 is the annual amount saved by each lower-rate tax-paying parent making use of an employer childcare voucher scheme (52)
- Increasingly, fathers are taking a greater role in caring for children. In the UK, fathers in two-parent families carry out an average of one-quarter of the family’s childcare related activities during the week, and one-third at weekends (53)
- Women currently spend twice as much time on housework and on childcare as men (54)
