ES News email The latest headlines in your inbox twice a day Monday - Friday plus breaking news updates Enter your email address Continue Please enter an email address Email address is invalid Fill out this field Email address is invalid You already have an account. Please log in Register with your social account or click here to log in I would like to receive lunchtime headlines Monday - Friday plus breaking news alerts, by email Update newsletter preferences

Women in London are more likely to be pushed into controversial “zero hours” contracts than anywhere else in Britain, disturbing research reveals today.

A survey of more than 1,000 women earning low pay found that zero hours regimes were more than twice as common in the capital.

Nearly a third of the London women surveyed — 32 per cent — were on zero hours contracts, which fail to offer set hours or job security and often mean employees are called in to work at short notice. The nationwide figure was 14 per cent and The Fawcett Society, a women’s equality charity which carried out the research, said London women were “bearing the brunt”.

Most of the women surveyed said that they had not chosen to go on a zero hours contract, but that they were forced into it by circumstances or pressure. Four in 10 said it was the only work available, 17 per cent said they were under pressure from the company they worked for and eight per cent felt pressed to accept such a contract by their local job centre.

Almost three in 10 said they did not get as many shifts as they wanted and most said that they feared getting less work if they turned down an awkward shift.

Eva Neitzert, deputy chief executive of The Fawcett Society, said: “Zero-hours contracts provide the ultimate flexibility for employers, but our research shows that this comes at a cost to some of the most vulnerable workers — those on low pay.

“Low-paid women in London seem to be bearing the brunt. With zero hours contracts, there is no guarantee of work at all, so this can be a route into financial insecurity and hardship.”

The poll — conducted by pollster Survation, which questioned 1,003 women earning less than £7.44 per hour in the survey funded by union Unison — found that 16 per cent said they felt they “might not be offered any future work at all” if they turned down a shift, while 44 per cent feared that they would be “less likely” to get more work.

Zero hours contracts have grown in sectors where women tend to dominate the workforce, including hotels, catering and social care.

Their spread in London may partly explain why the wage gap in the capital between men and women has widened from 10.9 per cent to 13.2 per cent.