Single mums may feel the sharpest end of the cost of living crisis as they try to balance soaring childcare fees with a single lower average income, an expert has warned.
According to the Family and Childcare Trust charity the average cost of putting a child under two through a full-time nursery in the past year was £263 per week.
This was the main reason which prevented Holly Smith, 30, who has two boys aged nine and 12 from access to education to become a social worker.
The single mother from Old Catton, who is separated from her husband, said: "We live in a country where we are blinded by inequality. Women are still oppressed.
"Society has created additional pressures. We are expected to work like we don't have children and do things in the home like we don't have a job."
She added even after working hard to gain professional qualifications for her career, which can be done within flexible hours, she was terrified about rising living costs.
She said: "I'm worried we are going to need to choose whether we pay for heating or eating."
According to Office for National Statistics figures, the number of single parents in the East of England leapt to 642,000 in 2020 from 583,000 in 2017.
On a national scale the vast majority of lone parents are single women, with data from ONS revealing that in 2020 85pc of single parents were mums.
Emma Palmer, 42, who has a five-year-old daughter, has been a single working parent since her 2019 divorce.
The property solicitor who lives in Blofield Heath said it was a worry only having her income to rely on because of rising living costs.
She felt lucky her employer allowed her to work full-time from home because childcare costs are so expensive.
Ms Palmer said: "I have a spreadsheet showing every penny going out and coming in.
"It is hard work but I get to show my daughter you have got to have a work ethic and you don't have to rely on someone else."
And on International Women’s Day, Dr Laura Harvey, lecturer in economics at the University of East Anglia, said not only are mums being “pushed out” of higher-paid jobs but that the economy is ultimately “losing out”.
She explained this was due to a combination of increased childcare costs and a lack of flexible working hours.
She said: "There is still a room for improvement, not just in government policy but in terms of shifting social norms of this expectation that women should be the primary caregiver.
“This attitude is changing but needs government policy.
“Women are increasingly outperforming men in education but that changes in the labour market.
"Women are more than likely to be in lower paid occupations. We need to support businesses to level up the gender pay gap.
"There is research that businesses that have better gender equality on the board perform better than ones that don’t.
“I’m hopeful that Covid has taught us that we could look further to improve things.”
The 28-year-old added that increasing costs for early years childcare places was a hurdle for many parents in terms of returning to jobs.
"There is still a trade-off of going to work and putting your child into early years care and whether work is worth it," she said.
But the lecturer added: "Things are changing. We are heading in the right direction. It is important for women to stand their ground and keep pushing."
Jennie Genders, 36, from Hellesdon, who works as a GP, said she and her teacher husband, Dan, felt "grateful and lucky" her in-laws and father provided childcare and wraparound care for their children.
Mrs Genders, whose children are seven, five and two, said the arrangement allowed the couple to do their jobs.
She added: "A lot of women have to face the decision to go back to work or look after the children."
Analysis: Financial pressures as a working parent
It was always my intention to return to work as a reporter after having my son and daughter, aged six and three, because I had worked hard for it.
But I would be lying if I said paying over £500 a month to put both children in nursery two days a week was not a financial challenge.
I work three days a week and my husband, who works full-time, does one day a week of childcare.
If we had to pay for extra early years care, it would not be worth me working.
We had a three-year age gap between having both children was because our son's nursery fees would drop by several hundred pounds a month due to 30-hours subsidised funding when he turned three.
As the cost of living increases we are glad the funding has started for our daughter meaning we now pay £140 a month rather than £518.
What is International Women’s Day?
International Women's Day is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women.
The day also marks a call to action for accelerating women's equality.
IWD has occurred for well over a century, with the first IWD gathering in 1911 supported by over a million people.
The first event was celebrated in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland.
The day was made official in 1974 when the United Nations started marking the event every year.
It was in 1966 that the event began having a theme. The first year a theme was announced it was ‘Celebrating the Past, Planning for the Future’.
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