Why are unpaid full time carers almost invariably female? I care for 2 disabled people. I am either caring or ‘on call’ for 168 hours a week (yes that’s right, 168 hours a week!) I have never had a holiday from this in nearly 20 years and I’m expected to live on £62.50 a week: Carers allowance. That works out at an hourly rate of 37p. (By contrast the national minimum wage is currently £7.50 per hour). I don’t know anyone, at all, who works as long or as hard as me. (Over the yers I have saved the British governmant and British taxpayer hundreds of thousnds of ££ in care fees and accommodarion). Yet, over the years this has been dismissed by numerous men as ‘not work’. Just today I was dismissed as a “lazy woman, expecting a husband to keep you” (I’m single by the way: as an unpaid carer I don’t have the time or energy to start orf maintain a relationship with anyone).
