Mckie, L.

Employment and social policies continue to be based upon a gender template that assumes women, especially mothers, are or should be natural carers. Invariably, policies that seek to promote women's entry to paid work do so by facilitating their management and conduct of caring work, thus reinforcing the gender template. In addition, contemporary debates around concepts of citizenship emphasise the obligation to paid employment but fail to tackle the gendered division of caring activities and organisation of care.

This paper draws upon qualitative data from a mixed-methods study to consider women's everyday experiences of combining paid employment with informal care for older relatives. Women who participated in the study were employed in shop floor jobs in the Scottish food retail sector. We offer data and analysis of two under-researched topics, namely eldercare, and the reconciliation of unpaid caring with employment in food retailing.