The point at which each of the women interviewed for this book entered precarious work in the first place was a crucial one for them. It shaped their ability to provide for themselves and their loved ones financially, and it set in motion a range of daily and weekly working and caring patterns with effects on wider networks of family and friends. This chapter explores these women's narratives of looking for work and starting precarious jobs.

It is often argued that women choose zero-hours or temporary contracts so as to allow them to better manage unpaid care alongside their jobs. The women on this study told a different set of stories. A common theme was lack of choice. These women did not opt for precarious work in a situation where they felt control over the jobs available to them. They chose zero-hours, temporary, or low-hours jobs because they needed the money and because there was a lack of other work available to them. There was evidence of structural racism affecting which jobs women could take on. Interviewees did not report negotiating over the terms and conditions of their jobs; indeed, as we will also see in Chapter Seven, they believed the power to decide about the types of jobs available and to set terms and conditions resided with the employer or manager. While women did find ways to assert themselves at work, they often could not negotiate care-friendly working patterns right at the outset of their employment. This meant they started their new job with little power over whether or how they were going to be able to provide care alongside their paid work.

We turn next to how these women survived financially in precarious work. The uncertainty of contracts and the irregular timing and low levels of pay created a set of financial coping strategies that are grouped under the theme of ‘making ends meet’. Interviewees sometimes found themselves paying up front to work, as temporary contracts were paid at the end of a period of months and nursery costs and transport all had to be settled before their pay came in.