Australian Institute of Family Studies Conference

After the barbeque: women, men, work and family

Speech by Pru Goward, Federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner at the “Families Matter” Australian Institute of Family Studies Conference, Melbourne, 10 February 2005.

Acknowledgements
When the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission released A Time to Value, our proposal for a national paid maternity leave scheme in 2002, there remained a number of outstanding issues.
It was clear from the many submissions we received that while paid maternity leave was a significant step in enabling women to better balance their paid work and family responsibilities, issues such as men"s role in family life and women"s continuing greater responsibility for caring and household work needed attention.
Some submissions pointed out that paid maternity leave on its own would be insufficient without an accompanying challenge to the gender stereotypes which prescribe "women"s work" and "men"s work" in both the paid workforce and in the family.
The issue of how we as a society value the work that men and women do, including the care of family members, is a fundamental issue with implications for the ways in which Australian families will manage their work and family responsibilities in the future.
Far from being just a "women"s issue", and specifically, as it is often assumed, one for women caring for small children, the question of who will provide care for children, ageing parents and other family members and how we incorporate the value of care into Australian society requires further investigation.
We need particularly to explore as a society how gender differences in responsibility for paid work and family are working for Australian families.
This week I launched the Commission"s new project on women, men, work and family. What we will be doing over the next 18 months is tying together the many threads of the paid work and family debate, including balancing work with caring for children and for ageing parents, men"s participation in family life, and gendered roles in the home.
We will discuss these issues in a way that encourages constructive public debate, for while there is a growing body of research in this area, we are yet to have a full and frank national conversation which brings everyone into the insights and arguments for work and family balance.
Getting people talking about paid maternity leave at barbeques was just the beginning of the story.
The scheme was primarily aimed at women, in recognition of the significant needs of women and newborn children for recovery and establishment of breastfeeding in the immediate weeks following birth. However, we clearly distinguished the health needs of women following childbirth from the social needs of both women and men to parent.
We are all familiar with the rhetoric of work and family, work/life balance, or as Barbara Pocock describes it, the "work/life collision". Combining paid work with family commitments during a time when we are working longer hours, with greater intensity and for many with greater job insecurity, has been the topic of much research and debate.
Yet there is still much that we don"t know about work and family.
For example, there is debate over why people are working longer hours. Mark Wooden argues that there are high levels of satisfaction with long hours work, yet even he acknowledges the negative impacts of longer hours, particularly in terms of the strong association with stress-related illness among women.^[1]
There are many more unanswered questions, especially when one considers the issue from a broader social and economic perspective.
For example, what is driving the longer hours culture? Can we continually blame the high cost of housing when housing affordability has improved over the past year?^[2] Weekly housing costs are of course substantial, but interestingly, while the average household size is shrinking, the average size of houses is increasing.^[3]
There are many other factors at play in the paid work and family debate, such as the increase in size of our cities and the long travel times required to get to work or to schools or childcare.
There is an unmet need for childcare, and for low income earners in particular, the availability and cost of childcare affects the decisions primary carers make about whether or not to return to paid work.^[4]
Children are also dependent for longer, with many young adults staying in the family home or walking in and out through a revolving door as they manage their own work commitments with higher education.^[5]
The issue is much more than just caring for children; in light of our ageing population, elder care is the next frontier in the work and family debate.
For the majority of women who combine paid work with a greater share of caring and domestic work, the "double shift" is likely to become a "triple shift" in the future.
Women are having children later in life; the median age for mothers in Australia is 30.5 years, continuing a consistent increase since 1972.^[6] With this increase, the likelihood of overlap between caring for children and caring for ageing parents will also increase.
Already we are hearing of women with the so-called sandwich problem - being squeezed between the demands of care for children and care for elders.
As the population ages - whether we see this as the looming "crisis" that some predict or as one demographic challenge among others - the question of who will provide the care for these people is a critical one for all of us, and not just those concerned with gender equality.
How we value and incorporate care into Australian society is a social and economic issue for government, business, employer groups, unions, communities, families, and individuals.
Many women and men currently struggle to balance the demands of paid employment with their family responsibilities. While this is a major issue for women with small children, who may not be able to access family-friendly workplace arrangements, it is an issue for us all, individual men and women, policy-makers and researchers. Seen in the context of caring for family members across the lifecycle, the "work and family" debate emerges as a policy issue with far-reaching implications.
Work and family tensions are not simply the products of private decisions made by individuals according to their preference, although some would argue otherwise.
The decisions made by individual families have public policy implications - for example, if more men were to withdraw from the workforce to care for family members, what impact would this have on the economy, in particular the current skills shortage?
If people need to cut back of their paid work in their older years in order to provide informal elder care, what will this mean for superannuation levels, or for the nation"s continuing economic growth? Will this necessarily reduce the productive capacity of the Australian economy, or could it in fact, by averaging the effort more fairly and over a longer time, actually provide the potential for a larger workforce?
There are competing pressures on Australians to engage more, rather than less, in paid work, arguably at the expense of family life. Changes to the welfare role of government, particularly in aged care, economic globalisation and the need for Australia to expand both its work effort and its productivity in order to compete with the economic dragons of India and China, have all encouraged Australians to work longer and harder.
Australian families get caught between the demands of the workplace and the demands of the home, and the implications of this bind are considerable.
There are many national interest issues at stake in the work and family debate, encompassing macroeconomic, intergenerational and equality concerns.
The cost and provision of care, especially elder care, is one example. Of parents currently receiving primary care, 88.5 per cent are cared for by their daughters.^[7] With a generation of women raised to expect many years of education, a rewarding career, an equitable partnership, and children, if they choose, it is not clear whether they will be willing to continue this level of informal care, in effect to save their brothers the effort of caring.^[8]
The economic and social value of informal care for older people, not to mention those with a disability, is enormous. Without it, the costs of formal care for government and for individuals in their later years will be greatly increased.
We know that by 2044-45, one in four people in Australia will be 65 years or over, double what it is today.^[9] Formal aged care needs alone are projected to increase from around 180 per cent to 250 per cent between now and 2044-45.^[10] Over this time the costs of formal aged care are expected to increase by about 2.5 times more than GDP growth.^[11]
While responses to the ageing of the population such as encouraging people to work longer - as suggested in the Intergenerational Report^[12] - will help, if we are serious about assisting people to stay in the paid workforce for longer then we need to make sure these people are able to balance their paid work with their family commitments.
A large proportion of women in the labour force provide care not only for children but for people with disabilities and older people, so there is a need to consider employed carers.^[13]
In 1998 employed women made up 34 per cent of all primary carers.^[14] Fifty nine per cent of carers combine caring with paid employment, with most carers located in older working age groups.^[15] And almost a quarter of people aged 55-64 provide some care.^[16]
Informal carers are projected to increase by about 57 per cent by 2031 to meet the needs of those who cannot access or do not wish to receive formal care.^[17]
As labour force projections indicate a sustained increase in the workforce participation of women workers aged 45-64, and as women in this age group currently make up 40 per cent of female primary carers,^[18] the tension between paid work and caring commitments is likely to become an issue for more women who take on this role in future.
Caring for older people is not only an issue for women, even though most care overall is provided by women - women are nearly three times more likely than men to provide primary care to an older person or person with a disability.^[19]
However, much informal care for older people is provided by both female and male spouses. A significant number of male carers provide primary care for their partners, with men"s caring responsibilities increasing after the age of 45 to about half the level of women"s caring.^[20] The number of male carers is likely to increase in order to maintain current levels of care as the population ages.
Workplaces will need to be flexible enough to accommodate the family responsibilities of older workers if they are to continue their labour force participation.
Putting aside the willingness of younger generations to care, if we are all working until we are 70, we may not have the ability or the time to provide care. Without workplace flexibilities and quality part time work options for older workers, balancing paid work with caring for family members such as spouses, ageing parents and/or grandchildren will be a difficult task.
At the other end of the spectrum we have a fertility rate well below replacement level. Despite a recent small rise in births, the fertility rate has remained steady at around 1.75 babies per woman for the last few years and has dropped significantly over the last few decades.^[21]
Looking further into the future of elder care, it remains to be seen whether fewer children per family (and thus fewer daughters) will reduce the pool of willing elder carers.^[22]
These issues are perhaps nothing new to many of us here today. What our new project will be doing is attempting to reconcile and incorporate various competing interests into a policy framework which would prevent discrimination against women and men on the basis of their family responsibilities. Part of this will be appraising the availability of family-friendly industrial provisions for both women and men. Some of these, such as flexible working hours and parental leave are not uniformly available across the workforce and as many of these are discretionary, access differs across industry, occupation and employer size.
Assessing the level of community support for a more even balance of paid work and family commitments will be one part of the process.
Drawing a broad range of issues together will be an important part of our work. We have heard a great deal about the ageing population, with the Intergenerational Report and a Productivity Commission Report into the economic implications of an ageing Australia, but these tell only part of the story.
We are yet to fully investigate the gendered impacts of this demographic change and the impact on future caring arrangements. We have had an inquiry into parenting after separation but again, this is one side of the story.
What about inquiring into parenting arrangements in intact families, and men"s role in parenting prior to relationship breakdown? We are yet to reconcile men"s desire to parent actively with our heavily gendered paid and unpaid work arrangements.
In this context we feel it is timely to revisit and draw together the time use statistics on unpaid labour in the home and place this squarely within the work and family debate. There are connections between the paid workforce and the family arrangements which support labour force participation, and understanding how men and women manage their time in the home is central to understanding the ways in which Australian families manage the combination of paid work and family commitments.
Time use surveys show that gender is a significant factor in determining how Australians spend their time. On average, women spend more time in unpaid work (including domestic and caring tasks) than men, while men spend more time in paid work than women.^[23]
Labour force participation rates confirm the finding that men spend more time in the paid workforce: the labour force participation rate for men is 71.5 per cent, while for women it is 56.1 per cent.^[24]
Women"s lower labour force participation rate is linked to women"s greater responsibility for the care of children, with mothers" workforce participation differing according to the age of their children. Peter McDonald"s disaggregation of Census data showed that the labour force participation rates of mothers with one child is 39 per cent when the child is aged up to one year, 57 per cent when the child is aged 1-2 years and 68 per cent when the child is aged 3-4 years.^[25]
It is interesting to note, of course, that going on these figures the current workforce participation rate of mothers with young children over one year old is greater than women"s general participation rate.
Participation in paid work is also linked to work in the family home. However, the effect upon women is much stronger, with gender and age being strong factors in influencing what families do in the home.^[26]
Less time in paid work for women means much greater time spent in unpaid work, while for men, even a large reduction in time spent in the labour market results in only a small increase in time spent in unpaid work.^[27]
Considering the broadest definition of unpaid work, which includes "outdoor" and traditionally "male" tasks such as car maintenance, women"s unpaid work accounts for 70 per cent of all household work in Australian households.^[28]
While we might expect that women"s greater share of unpaid work is related to their lower level of labour force participation and their greater responsibility for the care of children, women spend more time on unpaid work regardless of time spent in paid work.
Across all labour force status, whether part time or full time, on average women perform more child care than their male partners.^[29] While it has been suggested that part time work is a way for women to balance paid work with a heavy unpaid workload, part time work does not reduce total paid and unpaid workload for women; rather, it appears that women who work part time attempt the full job of childcare in a shorter amount of time by doing more things at once.^[30]
Lyn Craig"s recent paper shows that women in the paid workforce don"t reduce childcare significantly but instead sacrifice time spent on other activities such as sleep, eating and leisure.^[31]
Significantly, attitudinal surveys show that men and women in Australia have egalitarian attitudes towards parenting in that they believe that housework should be shared between men and women.^[32] However, these attitudes are not reflected in practice across the life course, with time use patterns demonstrating that transitions such as marriage and parenting exaggerate the gender differences in unpaid work.
Across all age groups, both lone and partnered women do more domestic and caring work. Unpartnered women do more domestic work than unpartnered men, while marriage and cohabitation increase this gap significantly. Among those aged 25-44 who are partnered, for example, women did 71 minutes a day more than men, while lone women did just 12 minutes per day more than lone men.^[33]
In terms of combined paid and unpaid work, one time use study found that men and women in couple (married or de facto) families prior to parenting spend roughly equal amounts of time in unpaid work: among childless men and women, total amount of time spent in paid and unpaid work is similar, at 7.42 and 7.45 hours per day respectively.^[34]
It is parenthood which is the most significant factor in determining use of time in families.
While fathers have increased their average weekly hours spent with young children over the past 30 years (to 9.6 hours per week), women still spend a disproportionate amount of time with young children as a primary activity (19.6 hours per week).^[35]
Including child care, fathers average a total of 10.7 hours a day in paid and unpaid work combined, while women spend an average of 12.58 hours per day in paid and unpaid work.^[36]
Excluding childcare, not only does parenthood increase the time women spend in unpaid work (mothers average a total of 4.76 hours per day in contrast to childless women on 4.52 hours), it reduces the time men spend in unpaid work (fathers average a total of 2.1 hours per day, while childless men average 2.8 hours).^[37]
Caring activities are also gendered.
While fathers spend a high proportion of their time with children in play activities, the physical care of children remains largely the responsibility of women. Fathers typically assist in caring tasks rather than taking responsibility for the job as a whole.
Time-diary evidence shows that fathers give up less of their leisure time than mothers do, and "help out" rather than take full responsibility for the care of children. ^[38]
These figures are not new and many of you will be familiar with them. For many of you this information is a "home truth" - women here today will no doubt know from their own experience that they do more child care, more cleaning, more organising and more monitoring and management of the household.
There are plenty of exceptions of course; we can all point to examples of egalitarianism in the sharing of housework and examples of highly involved, active fathers, yet the statistics are unequivocal. And judging from the "schemes and dreams" of the young men and women revealed in Chilla Bulbeck"s recent study, the difficulty in instituting shared child care and housework looks set to continue, with an imbalance between the plans of each gender.
While sharing childrearing was endorsed by 16 per cent of the young women, only five per cent of the young men indicated that they would participate, and then only in terms of "assisting" to varying degrees. Only eight per cent of the young men addressed the issue at all, preferring the traditional breadwinner role.^[39]
The disjuncture between attitudes and actual participation in household and caring tasks is an intriguing one. Women"s disproportionate share of this work suggests that cultural factors and other pressures play a strong role in determining "who does what" in family life.
For sitting alongside the time use statistics is the growing number of men expressing the desire to be more involved with family life. Men clearly value and want to spend more time with family, yet the pressures of combining a breadwinner role with a "hands on" fathering role are considerable. Graeme Russell"s survey of 1,000 Australian fathers showed that 68 per cent felt they did not spend enough time with their children, and 53 per cent felt that their job and family lives interfered with each other.^[40]
In the same survey, more than half believed that the major barrier to being the kind of father they wanted to be was the commitment to paid work, in particular, barriers associated with paid work such as expectations of working long hours and inflexibility.^[41]
In spite of the romantic imagery and discourse of the "new father" and the range of roles and family arrangements potentially available to men, the primary breadwinner model continues to shape men"s identities and dominate the structure of their lives, often at the expense of family relationships.
While provision and access to family-friendly provisions differs across the labour force we know that where they are available to men the take up rate is low.^[42] We can point to a number of possible factors for men"s low uptake, such as concern over damage to career prospects - being relegated to the "daddy track" - beliefs about masculinity, or a workforce culture that values intense and long hours.
The proportion of men working very long hours has been increasing in recent years - average hours worked by full time workers is now 44 hours per week, 45 hours for men and 41 hours for women.^[43] This increase is more striking for men aged between 35-54 years, despite a slight decline in the labour force participation of men aged 45-54 years. This is particularly pertinent when the median age for first time fathers is 32.3 years.^[44]
The low uptake may be due to a number of factors, such as the continued reliance on a male breadwinner as the model worker. Let"s not forget that underlying the choices that couple families make about who will participate the most in childrearing is the continuing gender pay gap; women still earn only 85.1 percent of the male dollar for full time ordinary time earnings.^[45]
It is not surprising then that the model of the man as primary breadwinner and woman as part time worker and full time mother persists as either the arrangement of choice or the default position for most couple families with children.
Part time work, where women represent 71.2 per cent of workers,^[46] allows many women to accommodate their family responsibilities with paid work. Yet it does not necessarily mean quality part time work or enough hours of work, although a recent study using HILDA data shows that part time workers typically attracts an hourly pay premium as opposed to a penalty.^[47]
Many part time and casual positions are segregated from permanent full time jobs and their benefits such as providing a career structure, training, and development opportunities.^[48] Casual part time jobs also lack family-friendly entitlements such as family or carers leave, flexible start and finish times and maternity leave.
We can speculate that greater gender equality in the home would reduce much of the tension in balancing paid work with family life. This does not necessarily mean lower workforce participation or having men withdraw from the workforce in order to take on more family tasks. If you share the load in the home well, then nobody has to leave the workforce, and the total work effort may well not decrease or negatively affect Australia"s productivity.
Considering these sorts of questions is the beginning of the public debate we will have to have if we are to meet not only our current caring demands but our future ones. There are an array of benefits the be gained from greater sharing of domestic and caring responsibilities in the home, and better support for men and women within the workplace to meet their family obligations would be a good start.
As I have said, the intergenerational concerns are significant and poised to become more so. Along with older workers, women"s labour force participation must increase if we are to meet the future challenges of meeting increased aged care and health costs, higher productivity and economic growth.
While the labour force participation of Australian mothers is higher than earlier decades, by international standards it is still low. Of Australian women with two or more children, only 43 per cent are in the workforce, compared with 82 per cent in Sweden and 62 per cent in the UK.^[49] Better gender balance within the home is one way of increasing this figure.
Let us not downplay gender equality in itself as an important goal, regardless of the other benefits of good work and family balance to Australian society.
We have spent a lot of time focusing on the advancement of women in the public arena - in education, in the workforce, in senior representational and decision-making roles.
We have made many gains and of course there remains much more to be done. Yet we can only go so far without change in the more complicated and more personal private sphere.
To approach work and family from this angle is not to poke our noses into people"s private lives and dictate what decisions individual families should make - we are not proponents of a "nanny state".
What we do want to do is ask what families need to be better placed to make real choices in both their paid and unpaid working arrangements. In doing so we confront the vexatious public/private divide - where we ask how far we can go in terms of public policy for supporting care, when so much care takes place in private.
People have their own individual preferences and write their own social scripts as they see fit. But the structural social and economic pressures that men and women face in making work and family decisions differ and are not experienced equally. It is here that the Commission hopes to make a useful contribution.
Let me also make it clear that in putting the spotlight on men in the home we do not wish to downplay the contributions men make to families through their traditional breadwinning role. Men of course contribute to their families through their breadwinning, which should not be underestimated in terms of the economic benefits and stability it gives to families. And men should feel free to choose this path if that is indeed what they and their family want to do. But a life devoted purely to earning an income means that along with avoiding the sheer drudgery of many household tasks men lose out on the pleasures and joys of family work. Caring for others is, after all, more than simply a job.
There is a growing awareness of this among many men themselves, and with the growth in programs supporting men in their family relationships - such as parenting programs and ante natal classes for men - there are opportunities to enable men to have more time and involvement with family in ways that not only enrich men"s lives but which support and enable women to make further gains in public life. Expanding these opportunities will ease the work and family tensions for all.
Just as women demanded the right to enter public life and did so in droves during the women"s liberation years, so may we see men demanding a similar right to enter private life.
In many ways we have already seen this, although the loudest voices are often the father"s rights groups seeking greater contact after separation. Greater contact between men and their children within intact families, as I and others have argued, would be a major step toward better outcomes for men after separation as well as within intact families.^[50]
There are other benefits to be gained from genuine work and family balance. Men"s greater participation in unpaid work appears to be linked to higher fertility rates in Scandinavian countries, and in countries such as Italy, where the fertility rate is low along with men"s contribution to housework.^[51]
The recently released AIFS report on fertility decision-making also links the two in that women view the parenting capacity of their partners and their partner"s job security as factors in their decision to have a child or not. This may well relate to women"s awareness that they are more likely to carry greater responsibility for childrearing.^[52]
Greater recognition of and support for the work of caring also delivers the many personal and relationship benefits that come with caring for others and the broader social capital benefits for society.
There are benefits for children, many of whom express a "time hunger" for the "hyper-breadwinner" working long hours, even in households where the mother is at home outside school hours.^[53]
As to how best to assist men and women to balance work and family, we will proceed as we did with paid maternity leave, by listening to what the various stakeholders and interested people propose once we release our discussion paper later this year.
We will begin, as always, by listening to what the community tells us. We do not seek to "socially engineer", to use a public language cliche, although lets not kid ourselves by thinking that policy-makers and governments don"t socially engineer. They do it all the time, with work and family policies that manufacture a greater or lesser degree of choice, depending on where you sit within the spectrum of Australian families.
The project will focus not on public policy pressure per se, but there will certainly be public policy implications. The decisions individual families make about paid and unpaid work influence the outcomes that work and family policies aim to produce.
We won"t necessarily make recommendations for regulations, but re-adjusting the policy mix for incentives for shared care may be one outcome of a robust national discussion we hope to have over the next 18 months. Looking at the structures and social conditions that support or hinder choice in managing family responsibilities will be a big part of this conversation.
I will finish by posing some of the questions which will no doubt come up across the life of the project.
First, and the question of most importance to government, is there a net economic and social gain from a more equal balance of family responsibilities? Determining the fiscal impact of supporting both men and women to meet their paid work and their family obligations will be a key question if we find that something more than awareness and cultural change is required. However in many ways the outcome of greater equality in this area is difficult to measure.
Secondly, we know that men"s take up of already existing family-friendly arrangements is low. Some will argue that consequently no further provisions are necessary, but perhaps the reason men don"t use what they already have is because they have not been sufficiently tailored to their needs.
We know that men say their role in the workforce is the biggest barrier to spending time with family. It may be that workplace culture is the key to understanding the barriers to men becoming more involved in family life. Some commentators have suggested that workplace and managerial cultures impede men"s use of existing unpaid parental leave provisions, and have suggested that income maintenance may assist in encouraging fathers to take time out of the workforce to care for children.^[54] While men appear less likely to take periods of unpaid leave, it has been suggested that they would be willing to use periods of paid paternal leave. This has been attributed to an unwillingness or inability to forego income, particularly where men"s income is generally higher than women"s.^[55] Internationally, there has been some success with this approach. In Scandinavian countries such as Sweden, where paid parental leave for both mothers and fathers is mandated, the take up rate among fathers is relatively high.^[56]
Thirdly, it may be asked if women really want men to share equally in the responsibility for caring. Maternal gatekeeping of caring and household tasks is often cited as a barrier to greater involvement by men. The extent and nature of women"s control in the home is contentious but it is something we will need to grapple with. If women do indeed gatekeep (as opposed to mediate) in order to preserve maternal power in the domestic realm, then is this any different to the gatekeeping of men in positions of power in public life? And does this mean that attempts to institute gender equality in the home are doomed? No. Men might be in position to act as gatekeepers of their privilege, as Bob Connell reminds us, but they are also, by virtue of this position able to open the door to greater equality, to be "willing gatekeepers".^[57] If we can encourage men to take on this role in public life, and to draw on the strengths and skills of men as parents, then we must also encourage and expect that women can "let go" of some of their traditional domestic power and allow men to partake in both the mundane household tasks and the pleasures and rewards of domestic life. Asking men what they want and drawing on the skills and strengths that men already have as loving parents will be no doubt one of the ways forward.
With this project we aim to shed some light on these and other questions. In doing so, we hope that researchers, policy makers, service providers and the broader community will join us in making sure Australian families are properly supported now and into the future.

THANK YOU

1. Mark Wooden, "The Changing Labour Market and its Impact on Work and Employment Relations" in Working Futures: The Changing Nature of Work and Employment Relations in Australia, (eds) Ron Callus and Russell D Lansbury, The Federation Press, Sydney, 2002, pp 61-64.
2. Media release, "Signs of Hope for First Home Buyers", Quarterly Review of Housing Affordability September Quarter 2004, Housing Industry Association and Commonwealth Bank, 13 December 2004 (http://economics.hia.asn.au/media/NatReleaseSep04.pdf accessed 2 February 2005)
3. ABS, Cat. No. 1301.0 Year Book Australia, Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2005.
4. Taskforce on Care Costs, "Creating Choice: Employment and the Cost of Care", Aequus Partners, forthcoming.
5. David de Vaus, Diversity and change in Australian families: Statistical profiles, Australian Institute of Family Studies July 2004 p 144.
6. ABS 3301.0 Births, Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2003, p 11.
7. David de Vaus, Diversity and change in Australian families: Statistical profiles, Australian Institute of Family Studies, July 2004, p 252.
8. AIHW, Carers in Australia: Assisting frail older people and people with a disability, Aged Care Series, No. 8 Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Canberra, October 2004, p 35.
9. Productivity Commission, Economic Implications of an Ageing Australia, Draft Research Report, Productivity Commission, Canberra, November 2004, p 1.1.
10. Productivity Commission, Economic Implications of an Ageing Australia, Draft Research Report, Productivity Commission, Canberra, November 2004, p xxxix.
11. Productivity Commission, Economic Implications of an Ageing Australia, Draft Research Report, Productivity Commission, Canberra, November 2004, p xxxix.
12. Treasury, Intergenerational Report 2002-03, 2002-03 Budget Paper No. 5, Commonwealth of Australia, 14 May 2002.
13. AIHW, Carers in Australia: Assisting frail older people and people with a disability, Aged Care Series, No. 8 Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Canberra, October 2004, p 59.
14. AIHW, Carers in Australia: Assisting frail older people and people with a disability, Aged Care Series, No. 8 Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Canberra, October 2004, p 59.
15. Seniors and Means Test Branch, Australian Government Department of Family and Community Services, "The role of families in an ageing Australia" in Family Matters No. 66, Australian Institute of Family Studies, Spring/Summer 2003, pp 46-53 at p 49.
16. David de Vaus, Diversity and change in Australian families: Statistical profiles, Australian Institute of Family Studies, July 2004, p 251.
17. Richard Percival and Simon Kelly, Who"s going to care? Informal care and an ageing population, Report prepared for Carers Australia, National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling, NATSEM, University of Canberra, June 2004, p 28.
18. AIHW, Carers in Australia: Assisting frail older people and people with a disability, Aged Care Series, No. 8 Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Canberra, October 2004, p 35.
19. David de Vaus, Diversity and change in Australian families: Statistical profiles, Australian Institute of Family Studies, July 2004, p 251.
20 .David de Vaus, Diversity and change in Australian families: Statistical profiles, Australian Institute of Family Studies, July 2004, p 251.
21. ABS, Cat. No. 3301.0 Births, Australia, Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2004. There was only a slight increase in births in 2003 - 200 more births than 2002.
22. Richard Percival and Simon Kelly, Who"s going to care? Informal care and an ageing population, Report prepared for Carers Australia, National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling, NATSEM, University of Canberra, June 2004, p 10.
23. David de Vaus, Diversity and change in Australian families: Statistical profiles, Australian Institute of Family Studies July 2004 p 281.
24. ABS Cat. No. 6105.0 Labour Market Statistics, Australian Bureau of Statistics, November 2004.
25. Peter McDonald "Work-family policies are the right approach to the prevention of low fertility" 9 (3) People and Place, 17-27, 2001, p 18.
26. Michael Bittman and Jocelyn Pixley, The Double Life of the Family, Allen and Unwin, St Leonards, 1997, p 101.
27. Michael Bittman and Jocelyn Pixley, The Double Life of the Family, Allen and Unwin, St Leonards, 1997, p 102
28. Michael Bittman and Jocelyn Pixley, The Double Life of the Family, Allen and Unwin, St Leonards, 1997, p 96
29. Lyn Craig, "The Time Cost of Parenthood: An Analysis of Daily Workload", SPRC Discussion Paper No. 117, Social Policy Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney October 2002, p 17.
30. Lyn Craig, "The Time Cost of Parenthood: An Analysis of Daily Workload", SPRC Discussion Paper No. 117, Social Policy Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney October 2002, p 18.
31. Lyn Craig, "How do they do it? A time-diary analysis of how working mothers find time for the kids", SPRC Discussion Paper No. 136, January 2005.
32. Michael Bittman and Jocelyn Pixley, The Double Life of the Family, Allen and Unwin, St Leonards, 1997, p 145.
33. David de Vaus, Diversity and change in Australian families: Statistical profiles, Australian Institute of Family Studies, July 2004, p 293.
34. Lyn Craig, "The Time Cost of Parenthood: An Analysis of Daily Workload", SPRC Discussion Paper No. 117, Social Policy Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney October 2002, p 10. These figures include what is defined in time use studies as simultaneous "secondary activities" (activities done at the same time as "primary activities"), the bulk of which in this study was child care. This study also does not include time in which child care was recorded as a secondary activity to sleeping.
35. Michael Bittman, "Parenting and employment: what time-use surveys show" in Nancy Folbre and Michael Bittman (eds.) Family Time: the Social Organization of Care Routledge London 2004, pp 152-170 at pp 160-161.
36. Lyn Craig, "The Time Cost of Parenthood: An Analysis of Daily Workload", SPRC Discussion Paper No. 117, Social Policy Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney October 2002, p 10.
37. Lyn Craig, "The Time Cost of Parenthood: An Analysis of Daily Workload", SPRC Discussion Paper No. 117,Social Policy Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney October 2002, p 11.
38. Lyn Craig,"Do Australians share parenting? Time-diary evidence on fathers" and mothers" time with children" Paper presented to the Australian Institute of Family Studies, 8th Annual Conference, Melbourne 12-14 February, 2003 and Michael Bittman and Judy Wajcman "The rush hour: the quality of leisure time and gender equity" SPRC Discussion paper No 97 Social Policy Research Centre, University of New South Wales, 1999, pp 19-20.
39. Chilla Bulbeck, "Schemes and dreams: young Australians imagine their future", paper presented at the Australian and international feminisms: Where have we been and where we"re going. Celebrating 30 years of HECATE: Interdisciplinary Journal of Women"s Liberation, Sydney University, 12-14 December 2004.
40. Graeme Russell, Lesley Barclay, Gay Edgecombe, Jenny Donovan, George Habib, Helen Callaghan, and Quinn Pawson, Fitting Fathers into Families: Men and the Fatherhood Role in Contemporary Australia, Report prepared for the Department of Family and Community Services, Canberra, 1999, pp 40, 36.
41. Lyndy Bowman and Graeme Russell Work and Family: Current thinking, research and practice, Macquarie Research Limited, Sydney, 2000.
42. Bittman, Michael, Sonia Hoffman and Denise Thompson, Father"s Uptake of Family Friendly Employment Provisions, Final Report prepared for the Department of Family and Community Services, SPRC, April 2003, p 24.
43. ABS Cat. No. 4102.0 Australian Social Trends 2003 (accessed 12 December 2004)
44. ABS "National Families Week and Mother"s Day 2003: ABS facts and figures" Media Release 9 May 2003.
45. Based on full time ordinary time earnings in August 2004. If both full and part time work is included, women only earn 66.1 per cent of what men earn. (ABS 6302.0 Average Weekly Earnings, Australia November 2004).
46. ABS Cat. No. 4102.0 Australian Social Trends, Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2004, p 102.
47. Alison Booth and Margi Wood, "Back-to-front Down-under? Part-time/Full-time Wage Differentials in Australia" Centre for Economic Policy Research Discussion Paper No 482, Australian National University, December 2004.
48. Sara Charlesworth, Iain Campbell and Belinda Probert, with June Allen and Leonie Morgan, Balancing work and family responsibilities: Policy Implementation Options, a report for the Victorian Department of Premier and Cabinet and Department of Innovation, Industry and Regional Development, Centre for Applied Social Research, RMIT University, June 2002, p 5.
49. Christina Lee, "Australian women facing the future: Is the Intergenerational Report gender-neutral?" An Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia sponsored workshop held in Brisbane 1-2 July 2004, Policy e-paper series (http://www.assa.edu.au/policy/papers/3004/intergen.htm). Paper accessed 9 December 2004.
50. Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Submission of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission 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 (http://www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/fca/childcustody/subs/sub1052.pdf) and for another example see Michael Flood, "Fatherhood and Fatherlessness" Discussion Paper No 59, The Australia Institute, November 2003, p 49.
51. Lyn Craig, "The Time Cost of Parenthood: An Analysis of Daily Workload", SPRC Discussion Paper No. 117, Social Policy Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney October 2002 and Daniela Del Boca, "Why are fertility and participation rates so low in Italy (and Southern Europe)?" Paper prepared for presentation at the Italian Academy at Columbia University October 29, 2003, The Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America.
52. Ruth Weston, Lixia Qu, Robyn Parker and Michael Alexander, "It"s not for lack of wanting kids" A Report on the Fertility-Decision Making Project, Report prepared by the Australian Institute of Family Studies for the Australian Government Office for Women, Department of Family and Community Services, Australian Institute of Family Studies, Commonwealth of Australia, 2004, p 150.
53. Barbara Pocock and Jane 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, February 2004, p x.
54. John Buchanan and Louise Thornthwaite Paid work and parenting: Charting a new course for Australian families Chifley Research Foundation, University of Sydney, Sydney 2001, p 24.
55. Department of Workplace Relations and Small Business, Work and Family Unit, "Working fathers and working mothers - Do their needs differ?" Work and Family Insert No. 17, August 1998, and John Buchanan and Louise Thornthwaite Paid work and parenting: Charting a new course for Australian families Chifley Research Foundation, University of Sydney, Sydney 2001, 24.
56. Linda L. Haas and Philip Hwang "Programs and Policies Promoting Women"s Economic Equality and Men"s Sharing of Child Care in Sweden" in Organizational Change and Gender Equity: International Perspectives on Fathers and Mothers at the Workplace, (eds) Linda L. Hass, Philip Hwang and Graeme Russell, Sage, Thousand Oaks, 2000, pp 133-161 at p 145.
57. 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.

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After the barbeque: women, men, work and family

Speech by Pru Goward, Federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner at the “Families Matter” Australian Institute of Family Studies Conference, Melbourne, 10 February 2005.

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