A report finds having a degree offers young women little help in the jobs market if they are also mothers needing flexible working hours, one young mum explains her frustration.
“Money is so tight. You never really know how much you are going to get paid each month,” says Issy Mason a 26-year-old graduate, from Nottingham, who also happens to be a single mother.
She has an upper-second class degree in languages and international business from Sheffield Hallam University, speaks fluent Spanish and has completed two internships in marketing, one of them overseas.
She achieved all this alongside having become a mother at 19 – but her skills and qualifications seem to count for little in her hunt for a graduate job – because she needs a flexible work pattern.
She says the only jobs open to her flexible enough to fit around school pick-up for her six-year-old daughter offer zero-hours contracts.
Minimum wage
Throughout her degree, Issy always worked part time. She thought this, alongside her unpaid internships, would make her more employable as a graduate.
But the reality has proved “dispiriting” and she feels shut out of the graduate jobs market. “I have applied for graduate schemes, but there’s not a lot of flexibility,” she says.
“You can’t negotiate start times and finish times for school pick-ups. “There is scope in senior roles for part-time and flexible working, but there’s less flexibility in entry-level jobs.
“I feel a lot of opportunities are out of my reach. It has been incredibly frustrating and depressing. “At times, I really took it personally. It really hit my confidence.”
But she still hopes “for a job that pays a salary rather than minimum wage”. Read more
