Retail roles were once ‘a golden ticket’ offering stability, flexible hours and proper holidays. Now huge job losses are hitting female employees hardest.

The British Retail Consortium identified in 2016 that nearly half a million people will be vulnerable to job losses from the high street, 70% of whom will be women. In the two years since, job losses on ‘high street’ shopping strips have been unrelenting. Since 2008, 11,000 high street outlets have gone under.

Every time I hear about another store closing I think … “What’s going to happen to me?”

Michelle Gray has worked at the budget retailer Poundworld for more than five years. She found out last Thursday that her store will close today. “ All the sites will be gone next week, as no agreement has been reached for a sale. I’m heartbroken.” 

She has two interviews lined up for next week: one at a stationery shop and another at a perfume shop, but neither offer enough hours for her to make ends meet. “The best I could find was 22 hours … Really, I need at least 30, but hopefully there’ll be overtime.”

Kemi Okoye, 32, lost her job at supermarkets group John Lewis in 2009 and has struggled to find a new one since she started looking this year, after having three boys, now aged four, five and nine. Her husband is a part-time cleaner, struggling to find more hours, and Okoye regularly forgoes meals to make sure the rest of her family can eat: “It’s so hard. Every time I hear about another store closing I just think: Oh my God. What’s going to happen to me?” she says.

“Women’s jobs are disappearing,” says Liz Sewell, who runs Grow, a project to help mothers back into work: “Historically, a good quality job in the retail sector was a golden ticket for women, providing stable jobs with flexible part-time hours and proper holiday, so women who have caring responsibilities can do both. Today it can be ruthless.”

She says it is particularly difficult for women who are already disadvantaged: “Jobs have become much more flexible, but in a way that benefits the employer. So, if you’re a woman with a child who can’t come in at the drop of a hat, that works against you. Even worse if you’re a woman whose child has a medical condition.”