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Men, women, work and family - towards gender equality

Speech delivered by Pru Goward, Australian Sex Discrimination Commissioner

8 March 2004, Side event, 48th session of the Commission on the Status of Women, New York

Ladies and gentlemen, let me start by saying happy International Women's Day to you all and to thank you for coming to this session on men, women, work and family.

The structure for this session will involve a number of short presentations, followed by discussion from the floor.

The types of issues that I hope we will cover include:

Clearly there has already been a significant amount of discussion and debate about how we should approach the issue of the role of men and boys in achieving gender equality more generally.

But let me first say a few brief words about my organisation so that you know the position that I am coming from.

The Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) was established in 1986 and is Australia's national, independent human rights institution, conforming to the Paris Principles 1 Our goal is to foster greater understanding and protection of human rights in Australia and to address the human rights concerns of a broad range of individuals and groups.

My position within HREOC is the Sex Discrimination Commissioner. My policy unit and I undertake research, policy and educative work designed to promote greater equality between men and women. 2

So why engage men and boys in achieving gender equality?

The issue of involving men and boys in achieving gender equality is a relatively new area of work and in many ways is a high risk area.

The perceived risks include:

However, these risks are actually compelling reasons for organisations that have a focus on women's rights and gender equality to actively engage in the debate, and to engage now. Issues about men and boys are very much on the public agenda, and engaging with the debate provides our greatest opportunity to ensure that it proceeds in a way that advances men's and women's rights, gender equality and social justice principles.

In some ways, talking about men and boys on International Women's Day at the Commission on the Status of Women seems slightly ironic. However, there are clear reasons why it is in women's interests to engage men and boys in achieving gender equality.

Gender inequality is essentially about male privilege. A shift in the power relationships between men and women as aggregate groups is essential to achieving gender equality.

As identified by Robert Connell, men and boys are in a position to act as gatekeepers to gender equality. Men commonly control the resources required to effect change and are integrally involved in the relationships that produce gender inequality. 3 Thus they will play a key role in any changes that occur and there is the potential to engage them as "willing gatekeepers". 4

In addition, while there has been significant movement on some equality issues, there are areas where there has been little change and others that appear to be stagnating. Engaging men and boys in achieving gender equality opens another way forward.

However, women and women's organisations should not feel like they are beggars coming to the table asking for equality and for men to play a role.

There are multiple reasons why men should and may choose to take an active role in achieving gender equality, both for their own and the community's benefit.

They may be compelled to engage on the basis that this is the right thing to do. There is a strong moral imperative for equality between men and women.

They may engage on the basis that it is in the national interest to ensure that men and women are equally able to fully participate in community life.

They may act on the basis that gender equality is good for children both in the short term in relation to how they interact with men and women and in the long term in relation to the opportunities available to them in their adult lives.

Men may also engage on the basis of self-interest and the possibilities that gender equality opens to men of different roles and ways of being in their lives.

So how does this apply to the issue of men, women, work and family?

Gender equality for men and women would allow the widest range of work and family choices for both men and women. It would mean that neither women nor men are trapped within traditional gender roles that are unnecessarily restrictive.

The way that women combine work and family has changed in Australia, due to women's advances into the world of paid work. The proportion of women in the paid workforce has increased from 36 per cent in 1966 5 to almost 57 per cent in February 2003. 6

This means that the "male breadwinner/female carer" is no longer the dominant family model. The changes in women's employment patterns, combined with an increase in the number of sole parents, means that only one in four families with children fit that model. 7

This is a change that many Australian men and women accept and support. For example, the 1997 Australian Institute of Family Studies Australian Family Life Course Study found that only 23 per cent of both men and women agreed with the statement: "A husband's job is to earn the money, a wife's is to look after the home and family". 8

However, men's patterns of paid work and unpaid caring have not changed to reflect the changes in women's labour force participation and these apparent shifts in attitude.

By and large, around the world, it is still women who are primarily responsible for childcare and housework within the family. Mothers spend 3 times the amount of time caring for children as fathers in Australia. When childcare is measured as either a primary or secondary activity fathers spend about 2 hours a day, mothers spend over 6 hours a day. 9 When childcare is measured as being "in the company of children" fathers spend about 8 hours a day, mothers spend more than 13 hours a day. 10

In addition, many men in Australia are actually spending more time at work than ever before. The proportion of 45 to 54 year old men working more than 50 hours per week increased by 11 per cent from 1986-87 to 1998-99. 11 The proportion of 35-44 year old men working more than 50 hours increased by 6 per cent over the same time period. 12

The fact that men and women are not equally sharing in family responsibilities has significant impacts on women's employment in Australia. They are more likely to be in part-time and casual work; to have taken extended career breaks; and to be absent from the senior management of an organisation. Their caring responsibilities have a direct impact on their employment patterns and prospects as well as a long term impact on their economic security, including their savings for retirement. They also face direct and indirect discrimination due to the assumption by many employers that having children means that women will be unable or unwilling to perform their work.

Clearly there is still significant work to do with employers and workplaces to address these issues. There is also more that governments could do to support women who want or need to combine work and family responsibilities.

However, another option would be for men to share more equally in family and care responsibilities. This would be a direct benefit for women. It would reduce the double burden that many women now bear of paid and unpaid work. It would also confront discrimination against women based on their caring responsibilities and stereotyped assumptions about women and paid work as both men and women would have these responsibilities.

So how do we engage men in family responsibilities?

Perhaps one of the more encouraging things in this field is that many men want to engage in family responsibilities.

Recent Australian research suggests that fathers see being "involved" and accessible to their children as important "in terms of the impact they have on their children's wellbeing and adjustment". 13 However, 68 per cent of 1,000 Australian fathers surveyed stated that they did not spend enough time with their children. 14

Children also express a desire to spend more time with both of their parents. A recent Australian study by Barbara Pocock and Jane Clarke on the views of young people about their parents' paid and unpaid work found that " ... the majority of young people want more time with their parents rather than more money through more parental work. This (was) true of boys and girls from dual earner and single earner couple households as well as single parent earner households." 15

The fact that many men express a desire to be more involved fathers provides an opportunity to advance equal sharing of child care between men and women.

There is also evidence of a generational change, with young people expressing a desire to combine work and family in different ways to their parents. For example, in their study, Pocock and Clarke found: "In many cases young men want an active role in parenting and to be there for their children more than their own fathers have been. Young women want to share the tasks of earning and caring with their partners." 16

What prevents fathers from spending time with their children?

The gap between men's desired relationship with their children and the time-starved reality may be largely explained by external factors. When asked why they could not spend enough time with children, the fathers in one study stated "overwhelmingly ... that the major barrier to their being involved as parents were the commitments they had to paid work". 17

This point is a common sense one, but it is often overlooked. Men will have the most engaged and active relationships with their children when they at least have the opportunity to participate in day to day caring: staying home with a child when he or she is sick; attending school functions; picking children up from school. Men do not take these opportunities if their work arrangements are all-consuming and inflexible.

Fathers' work arrangements prevent them from being with their children because of the combined effects of inflexible workplace structures; social and workplace assumptions about male workers; and self-imposed financial and employment expectations.

Fathers' patterns of working and parenting often mean that they are not fully involved parents. The commonly held view that mothers make the best parents also undermines the capacity and willingness of men to contribute.

So how do we achieve greater sharing of family responsibilities between men and women?

Clearly if there was a simple answer to this question, we would have already done it.

Work to engage men in family responsibilities can be done at multiple levels, by multiple stakeholders. I will run through some of the areas for work and a small number of possible actions for the different stakeholders, to help get our discussions started.

Public awareness

Raising public awareness of the difficulties that both women and men face in balancing their work and family responsibilities is an important part of generating support for and effecting change.

The work of my organisation is targeted at influencing public policy and community attitudes. There is a key role for my organisation in attempting to ensure that broader issues of men and boys are grounded in an equality message. In practical terms, this means participating in the men and boys debate through media comment, speeches and research papers, and engaging with key stakeholders in order to continually link the debate into an equality framework. 18

Women's NGOs can play an effective role in awareness raising about the issues of men, women, work and family. With greater awareness of the issues, men are more likely to choose to be engaged in achieving gender equality in the field of work and family. Awareness raising also helps to promote a wider range of roles for men and women in relation to work and family, potentially helping to overcome the stigma and penalties attached to making life choices outside of traditionally gendered roles.

Governments also have a key role in influencing community attitudes and raising public awareness of these issues.

Involving men at a program and organisational level

Consideration can be given to the extent to which it is a appropriate to involve men in programs and organisations that have a gender equality and women's rights mandate.

This does not mean changing the focus of an organisation or removing services to women. Rather it is about considering where engaging with men and boys can advance an issue. This may be through men's direct involvement in the work of a program or organisation; it may be through partnerships and collaboration with men's groups; or it could be through consultation with men in order to inform future work. The extent to and way in which an organisation engages with men and boys will very much depend on the nature of the organisation and the programs that it runs.

For Women's NGOs it is not about picking up men's issues, but rather plugging into this work where it advances the organisation's own mandate.

For governments, this means expanding services to involve men and should not be about cutting places for women or expecting services to deal with more clients with the same level of funding.

It is possible to import a gender focus into almost, if not all programs. Thus existing programs can be reassessed to see how they engage and include both men and women, and the extent to which this is appropriate. In the field of work and family, there will be cases where it may be appropriate to expand programs that support mothers to support parents. For example, preschools and childcare centres may want to think about how they engage men who are primary carers. In other cases, the service may not directly relate to men, but men can be engaged as active supporters of the issue. For example, the services and support of breastfeeding associations are appropriately targeted at women. However, there may be scope to consider how men can support their partners if they are breastfeeding and how men can support the organisation.

A more problematic issue that we recently debated in Australia was that of paid maternity leave. Australia does not have a paid maternity leave scheme. My organisation has suggested that the Government introduce a scheme that provides 14 weeks of paid maternity leave. 19 Given that this is a very short period of time, HREOC has recommended that the leave be provided to the mother of the child only. 20

Providing this leave to the mother recognises that it is women who give birth and have the health issues associated with giving birth; who require time to establish breastfeeding; and that it is overwhelmingly women who suffer both immediate and long term economic disadvantage as a result of becoming parents.

That said, HREOC is very aware of the importance of fathers' role in caring for their children. For this reason, HREOC has strongly urged the Government to consider introducing an additional two weeks paid supporting parents' leave. This would be on top of the 14 weeks paid maternity leave and would enable fathers to be at home with their families during this important time. In addition, HREOC considers that should the Government decide to introduce a longer period of paid leave than 14 weeks, that the additional leave should be available to the primary carer of the child.

Measuring outcomes

One of the most important starting points in this debate is to know how we are currently doing on gender equality for women and men, how effectively we are making change over time and what more needs to be done. As part of this, it will be important to measure outcomes for both women and men, and to carefully consider exactly what it is that we are measuring. 21

Governments need to provide leadership in identifying desirable outcomes and ensuring that there is national, credible data available to measure them. 22

For employers and other organisations, key performance indicators (KPIs) for gender equality could be set against which performance could be measured. These KPIs could be based around the extent to which staff are able to balance their work and family responsibilities. Similarly, initiatives such as triple bottom line reporting are possible vehicles to focus business on the social impact that they are making and how they are affecting the parenting of the men and women employed in their organisation. 23

Encouraging workplace change

Changes at the workplace level can have an immediate impact on the ability of women and men to manage their work and family responsibilities. Men can be involved in seeking workplace change and can also be included as potential beneficiaries of such change. Ensuring that both men and women are able to access family friendly measures in the workplace increases the possibility of sharing of family responsibilities.24 It can also help to break down the gender stereotype that caring responsibilities are exclusively women's concerns by ensuring that they are seen as a parental responsibility.

National human rights institutions have a role to play in promoting changes in working conditions, legislation and government programs to better support parents. Governments can also influence workplaces through legislative requirements and by encouraging and promoting best practice. 25

Women's NGOs also have a key role in lobbying for change, and the women's movement has successfully pressured business for change in working conditions in the past. One such success in Australia was the introduction of 12 months unpaid parenting leave, with the parent having a guaranteed right to return to work. This kind of work remains crucial. In Australia, the women's and union movements are very active in lobbying for changes to work conditions to reflect the needs of parents. 26 Men and boys can be engaged in this lobbying work to exert extra pressure on business. The impact of proposed changes on men and boys can also be considered and benefits for men and boys can be incorporated in the message to governments and business as an additional reason for change.

At the workplace level, management can play a leadership role in achieving gender equality by modelling good behaviour. It has been shown that unless senior executives in larger organisations participate in flexible working initiatives, it is highly unlikely that lower level male employees will take part. 27 The behaviour and attitude of management also affects the extent to which female employees can use family friendly work measures and the penalty for doing so.

In conclusion:

Clearly much remains to be done on the issues of women, men, work and family. My personal view is that by engaging with this debate, and engaging now, we can ensure that the focus remains firmly on gender equality.

By engaging men in the work and family debate, we can effect change at multiple levels:

Make no mistake, done well, engaging with men and boys could be the next step in the equality revolution. It is not a zero sum game where for one to win the other must lose. It needs to be based at all times upon the awareness of current and persistent gender power relations, and growing from the efforts to achieve equality for women.

1. United Nations General Assembly National institutions for the promotion and protection of human rights A/RES/48/134, 85th plenary meeting, 20 December 1993.
2. This work is undertaken under the Australian Sex Discrimination Act 1984. This legislation gives effect to Australia's obligations under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).
3. R W Connell The Role of Men and Boys in Achieving Gender Equality United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women EGM/Men-Boys-GE/2003/BP.1, 7 October 2003, 3-4.
4. R W Connell The Role of Men and Boys in Achieving Gender Equality United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women EGM/Men-Boys-GE/2003/BP.1, 7 October 2003, 4.
5. B Pocock The Work/Life Collision The Federation Press Sydney 2003, 19.
6. Australian Bureau of Statistics 6203.0 Labour Force, Australia Commonwealth of Australia Canberra 2003, 13 Table 3. http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/abs@.nsf/lookupMF/D5DD1464CE5BCFFCCA256A95008176E2
7. In 2001, 28 per cent of all families with children under 15 years were couple families with one parent employed. Forty-three per cent of all families with children under 15 years were couple families with both parents employed. Australian Bureau of Statistics 4102.0 Australian Social Trends 2003 Commonwealth of Australia Canberra 2003, 41.
8. H Glezer and I Wolcott "Work and family values, preferences and practice" Australian Family Briefing No 4 Australian Institute of Family Studies, Commonwealth of Australia Melbourne September 1997, 1. In the same survey, 65 per cent of men and 69 per cent of women agreed that: "Both partners should contribute to the household income". Note however, in relation to public attitudes towards paid work for mothers of young children, 69 per cent of Australian women surveyed in the 2001 International Social Science Survey indicated that women should stay at home and not participate in the paid workforce when they have pre-school age children at home: M D R Evans and J Kelley "Employment for mothers of pre-school age children: Evidence from Australia and 23 other nations" (2001) 9(3) People and Place 28-40. This indicates that there is a gap between public views on what Australian mothers of small children should do and what they actually do. See also M D R Evans and J Kelley "Changes in public attitudes to maternal employment: Australia, 1984 to 2001" (2002) 10(1) People and Place; B Pocock The Work/Life Collision The Federation Press Sydney 2003, 76.
9. L Craig "Do Australians Share Parenting? Time-diary evidence on fathers' and mothers' time with children" Australian Institute of Family Studies 8th Annual Conference Melbourne 12-14 February 2003. Note that this paper is based on an analysis of the Australian Bureau of Statistics 1997 Time Use Survey.
10. L Craig "Do Australians Share Parenting? Time-diary evidence on fathers' and mothers' time with children" Australian Institute of Family Studies 8th Annual Conference Melbourne 12-14 February 2003. Note that this paper is based on an analysis of the Australian Bureau of Statistics 1997 Time Use Survey.
11. E Healy "The shift to long working hours: A social and political crisis in the making" (2000) 8(1) People and Place 38 at 41
12. E Healy "The shift to long working hours: A social and political crisis in the making" (2000) 8(1) People and Place 38 at 41
13. G Russell et al Fitting Fathers into Families Department of Family and Community Services Canberra 1999, 40. Unpublished research by the Social Policy Research Centre funded by the federal Department of Family and Community Services confirms both the importance to fathers of having close and involved relationships with their children, and the difficulties they have finding time to be with children because of (real and perceived) work responsibilities: M Bittman, S Hoffman and D Thompson Fathers' Uptake of Family-Friendly Employment Provisions Report forthcoming in the Australian Department of Family and Community Services Policy Research Papers series. Quoted in Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Submission to the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Family and Community Affairs Inquiry into child custody arrangements in the event of family separation August 2003, 16. http://www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/fca/childcustody/subs.htm
14. G Russell et al Fitting Fathers into Families Department of Family and Community Services Canberra 1999, 40.
15. B Pocock and J Clarke Can't Buy Me Love? Young Australians' views on parental work, time, guilt and their own consumption Discussion Paper Number 61 The Australia Institute Canberra February 2004, ix.
16. B Pocock and J Clarke Can't Buy Me Love? Young Australians' views on parental work, time, guilt and their own consumption Discussion Paper Number 61 The Australia Institute Canberra February 2004, xii.
17. G Russell et al Fitting Fathers into Families Department of Family and Community Services Canberra 1999, 41-42.
18. Specific examples of work to date include:
- a submission to an Australian Parliamentary inquiry into child custody arrangements in the event of family separation which identified the need to address structural and attitudinal barriers to fathers spending time with their children prior to parental separation (such as workplace laws, practices, policies, and cultures) which limit the formation of, or erode, fathers' relationships with their children (http://www.humanrights.gov.au/sex_discrimination/pml2/index.html);
- speaking at the National Strategic Conference on Fatherhood (http://www.humanrights.gov.au/speeches/sex_discrim/fatherhood.htm); and
- as part of a proposal for the federal Government to introduce a 14 week paid maternity leave scheme, suggesting the Government consider introducing an additional two weeks paid supporting parents' leave to enable fathers to be at home with their families during this important time and to make any additional paid leave beyond 14 weeks available to the primary carer of the child (http://www.humanrights.gov.au/sex_discrimination/pml2/index.html).
19. Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission A Time to Value: Proposal for a national paid maternity leave scheme HREOC Sydney 2002.
20. The proposal allows for the paid leave to be paid to a primary carer in exceptional circumstances such as where the mother has died, where the mother is not medically able to care for the child, or where the child has been adopted.
21. For instance, the UNDP gender development index and gender empowerment index demonstrate that exactly what we measure about gender is important. In 2003, Australia ranked 4th on the Gender-related development index (GDI), suggesting a certain level of success in relation to gender equity. However, the Gender empowerment measure ranked Australia as 11th. The combination of these two indices gives a better picture of how Australia is actually fairing in relation to gender equality. United Nations Development Programme Human Development Report 2003. Millennium Development Goals: A compact among nations to end human poverty Oxford University Press New York 2003, 313&317.
22. For example, "GRB (Gender Related Budget) initiatives have now been implemented in forty countries, nearly half of them in the Commonwealth, at national, provincial or local levels. These Commonwealth countries include Australia, Barbados, Botswana, Canada, Fiji Islands, Kenya, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, St Kitts and Nevis, Tanzania, Uganda, UK, Zambia and Zimbabwe": D Budlender, D Elson, G Hewitt and T Mukhopadhyay Gender Budgets Make Cents: Understanding gender responsive budgets The Commonwealth Secretariat London January 2002, 63-64.
23. For further discussion see E Cox Creating a Better Society: Some Notes on Gender Equity and Ethical Practices 23 February 2004 unpublished.
24. Note that HREOC does not consider that this means that all workplace measures should be equally available to men and women. In certain cases, special measures will be required to overcome the historical disadvantage that women have experienced in the workplace and to reflect the physical impact of pregnancy and childbirth on women.
25. For example, workplaces in Australia are required to comply with the legislative requirements of the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 and the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Act 1999 and have best practice rewarded through the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) and Business Council of Australia (BCA) National Work and Family Awards 2003/04, which are run by a partnership of the private sector and government.
26. For example, the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) has a test case before the Australian Industrial Relations Commission that seeks to set an award standard regarding particular family friendly measures. The elements of the case include access to additional unpaid parental leave, a right to part-time work until a child is school aged, a right to vary hours and place of work to accommodate caring responsibilities and a right to unpaid emergency leave for family emergencies. http://actu.asn.au/public/papers/famikit.html
27. For discussion of the research see, for example, G Russell and L Bowman Work and Family: Current Thinking, Research and Practice Department of Family and Community Services Canberra 1999 and M Flood Fatherhood and fatherlessness Discussion Paper Number 59 The Australia Institute Canberra November 2003.

Last updated 12 May 2004.