Work and Family: Expanding the boundaries
Speech delivered by Pru Goward, Federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner at Women’s Work, Ballarat VIC, 13 November 2003
- Catherine King, Federal
Member of Parliament for Ballarat, Ladies and Gentlemen.
- Thank you for inviting
me here this evening.
- It gives me great pleasure
to address the launch of “Women’s Work”. Congratulations
to Jane Charles for all her great work, effort and passion in getting it going.
- The challenge today
for women in regional Australia, as it is in our capital cities, is to achieve
a better balance between work and family.
- It is very easy to
think of balancing work and family as a city issue.
- In reality however
rural Australia is a significant employer of Australian women, and the two
million women in regional and rural Australia contribute to their local communities
and local economies – while caring for their families.
- Many of the work and
family ‘city’ issues are actually much worse for rural women.
- Accessing childcare
for example is difficult enough in cities despite the presence of numerous
childcare centres. This problem is exacerbated in rural areas where resources
and facilities are often scarcer.
- Although many rural
areas are large centres they simply do not have the population, large government
bureaucracies or large scale workplaces to justify multiple childcare centres.
- There will probably
be just one childcare centre. Obviously its location and hours cannot suit
everyone.
- It is unlikely for
example that there is the funding, staff or demand to justify keeping it open
for the few women needing to pick up their children after hours.
- For these few women
however this can cause major stress and disruption to their work and family
lives.
- Rural Australia cannot
ignore the need to balance work and family for the same reason urban Australia
cannot. Our sanity, our happiness and our prosperity depend upon it.
- Especially when our
economic growth is increasingly dependent on female workforce participation;
- And not when we have
in place a system of government which prides itself on effectively responding
to the challenges of those it governs.
- Women in rural areas
are particularly dependent on a government response to work and family issues.
- Their female counterparts
in the city can rely upon larger employers to foster competitiveness and the
need to acquire the best possible staff and reputation.
- In this environment
the ‘business case’ pushes employers to provide family friendly
provisions.
- Consider for example
paid maternity leave. Without a national scheme in place it is provided ad
hoc and at the employer’s discretion.
- With only ‘business
case’ as impetus for its introduction it is not surprising that it is
most likely to be available to women with high skill levels and higher education
working full time, or in the public sector.
- As long as we rely
solely on the business case for these measures to be introduced they are unlikely
to appear in more country areas, where market forces operates differently.
It should come as no surprise that employer provided paid maternity leave
is least available in rural areas. There are not the huge government bureaucracies
or large scale commercial employers who can afford it.
- To the contrary, regional
areas are more likely to be small to medium size business strongholds –
the employers least to be able to afford to pay for maternity leave themselves.
- Women outside of major
cities are the most likely to have to wait for a national scheme of paid maternity
leave to be introduced before they reap the benefits of such a scheme.
- When exactly this will
happen? It is hard to predict.
- It is quite amazing
that present and past governments’ responses to work and family issues
have been so painfully slow.
- Reluctantly I have concluded
that the nature of federal politics, the away-nature of parliamentary life,
has affected the capacity of Australia’s political leaders to grapple
with the work and family debate.
- The tyranny of distance
has forced federal parliamentarians to live lives remote from the rest of
us.
- In the work and family
stretch, they are a long way behind most of us. They don’t see their
children daily, they don’t often even prepare their own food, mowing
lawns is a bit of a luxury, taking their parents out for a Sunday drive is
someone else’s job and visiting relatives in nursing homes has been
known to have been carried out by long suffering staff members on their behalf.
- When do they talk to
cleaners and factory workers, when do they see kids behaving badly at school
or in shopping centres? Unless they are the occasional constituent come to
make a complaint, rarely.
- Very often they have
partners who don’t work, or grown up children. Little wonder that many
find it so difficult to relate to the work-life collision being suffered by
many Australians everyday and rely instead on their own memories or ideas
about what should be the case.
- It is easy to assume
that our family experience is like everyone else’s, and that we are
fit to judge how other families’ lives work.
- There is no need to
work on these assumptions. In today’s information overloaded world we
simply need to look at the facts to see the reality of the lives of Australian
families.
- Today 61 per cent of
mothers in couples and 47 per cent of sole female parents have jobs. The female
participation rate has risen from 36 per cent in 1966 to 55 per cent in 2002.
- As the PM has said the
biggest social change since the war.
- Most two income families
are not rich professional couples, living inner city with children in private
schools.
- In 1999-2000, median
income for couples with children under five was $917 per week, including welfare
benefits. For couples with children over the age of 15, median family income
was $1,238.
- Among our poorest families,
mum at home and dad in a full time if unrewarding job is rare.
- About 5 per cent of
families with incomes of less than $30,000 have stay at home mums and working
dads. The rest are either both unemployed or both working in low paid jobs.
- Going up the income
brackets, single income households become more common, although in no category
are they the dominant family type.
- So fact one- families
have both parents away from their children or engaged in for at least part
of the time. As a consequence, parents with young children, particularly mothers,
are extremely time poor.
- In 1997 amongst people
who actually did some childcare, men spent an average of five hours a day
and women spent eight hours a day on child care in combination with other
activities.
- Since 1982, there has
been a 76 per cent increase in the amount of time that married and de facto
women spend working. They have managed this extra work in a range of ways,
including by sleeping less, buying more pre-prepared food, outsourcing domestic
chores and spending less time on recreation and leisure.
- Remember that for women
in the country some of these ‘management’ techniques are simply
non-options.
- In 1997, women undertook
around three quarters of unpaid childcare work, and two thirds of housework.
- Now why are they working?
- They’re working
because we’re an aspirational culture, we want our children to have
more than we did.
- This is also why we
will patiently sit out this season’s drought rather than packing up
and moving on. We see our land in terms of our family’s future generations.
- Women are also working
because we want them to.
- Australia tends not
to favour high immigration intakes but does like economic growth. We want
to be part of this sexy new global market place and we like 3 per cent growth
rates when the rest of the post-industrial world is wallowing at a third of
that.
- So we have been quite
happy to send women to work, children or not. The size of the labour market
is a direct determinant of economic output and women have been the single
largest contributors to rising family living standards since the seventies.
- So Fact Two: Australia
needs women to work and has actively pursued this policy for thirty years.
- Put that together with
the demographic shift and no wonder we have unemployment trending to a record
low and the work force predicted to actually decline, when baby boomers start
to enter retirement. We get Fact Three: Australian women need to work more
than they ever have. For their own old age and for the sake of the future.
There is no turning back.
- This leads directly
to Fact Four- the work life balance collision course. We have increasingly
onerous family needs and increasingly onerous work needs. There is however
one discretionary “choice” area - the number of children we have.
No wonder the number of only child families has increased from 1 in 5 families
in 1981 to 1 in 3 families in 2001.
- If, as the statistics
tell us, this is increasingly the experience of families and in particular
women, who continue to do the lion’s share of childcare and housework,
it is not difficult to see the key issue facing women today - the need to
turn the work life balance collision into a work life balance.
- How do we do this?
- Option one, we could
make it illegal for one parent to work or sole parents to work – as
women currently do most of the caring for children it makes sense that we
make it unlawful for them to work.
- If this is the option
we choose, we may as well stop sending girls to high school or teaching them
how to read or write.
- It is safe to assume
then that banning two income families is clearly out of the question.
- Option two, we regulate
and encourage industry to provide working conditions more conducive to family
life.
- As Federal Sex Discrimination
Commissioner I am a strong proponent for this option (over the first option
anyway!).
- The measures introduced
as part of this approach will go some way in addressing the workforce discrimination
that women experience as they bear and care for children and work in a workforce
that is not conducive to family life.
- It is hardly surprising
that in this environment women experience discrimination.
- It takes the form of
a gender pay gap.
- The average weekly
full time ordinary time earnings of women are 84.3% of male earnings; when
part time and casual workers are added into the equation, women earn only
63 cents to the male dollar.[1]
- Women also suffer financial
disadvantage compared to men as a result of foregone earnings from taking
time out of the workforce to give birth to children - women with high levels
of education (12 years) forego $239 000 in lifetime earnings from having one
child [2]. Even those women regarded as having low levels
of education (10 years) will forego as much as $157 000 if they have one child.
- One component of this
option would be to introduce paid maternity leave as it allows women time
out of the workforce around the time of the birth of their child, without
having to forgo all of their income.
- Paid maternity leave
is both a starting point and a centrepiece of this option.
- In December last year
I proposed that the government introduce a national scheme of paid maternity
leave.
- The proposed scheme
was for a government funded benefit of up to the minimum wage for women who
had been in paid work for fourteen weeks, to enable them to stay at home after
childbirth.
- It was a very modest
recommendation, yet one that will ensure women in cities, regional, rural
and remote areas will receive the entitlement. It would be available to casuals,
part-timers, contractors, self-employed business owners – whoever relies
on their own earnings to live.
- I proposed that women
who received this benefit would not receive others and some may even choose
not to take the paid leave.
- The net cost of the
scheme was calculated at $213million a year; this would have to be the cheapest
family support programme in the country.
- We devoted much air
time, print space and public debate to this policy proposal.
- We contemplated it from
every angle, raised every question and considered every surrounding issue.
- Yet we are still to
introduce it!
- As stated by Linda Duxbury,
a Canadian academic researching work and family issues, there is only one
question that Australia should be asking in this debate – and it is
not “can we afford to do it?”
- It is “can we
afford not to do it?
- Duxbury believes that
the cream of the Australia’s female workforce will be poached by overseas
bosses if Australia does not introduce such a scheme.
- She predicts that Canada,
also facing labour shortages – and currently offering new parents up
to 50 weeks of leave, paid by the government at the rate of 55 per cent of
average weekly earnings - will be recruiting good women from Australia.
- It’s already happening.
- Over 40,000 Australians
left our shores permanently last year- the largest number ever- to seek a
future elsewhere.
- These are likely to
be young, skilled workers who are directly joining the mobile global economy.
They will go where there are good wages, political stability and social stability.
- Increasing the size
of our workforce, or maintaining it, is emerging as a key concern for Australia.
- Immigration is not
the answer- skilled migrants are like hens-teeth in the English speaking world
and we are beginning to compete with other countries, also suffering ageing
populations. Canada, the US Hong Kong and the UK are fighting us for our nurses,
teachers, doctors and scientists for example.
- A family friendly labour
force is incentive to stay – or in today’s world – an overseas
lure.
- On economic grounds
then there seems to be no doubt that it is better for the family and for the
country to retain the investment in the education of women and girls and to
maximise the size of the workforce and its productivity.
- This is heightened
when we consider that the baby boomers are beginning to leave the labour market.
The size of the labour force is predicted to fall from 2015.
- As a response to skill
and general staff shortages, it makes sense to engage women in paid work more
rather than less.
- Alternatively, we could
make our existing workers begin working earlier and work until they are older.
This I understand is the Treasurer’s preferred approach.
- We have certainly expanded
the effective age range of our labour force – while increased education
has delayed the start of full-time work for young people, most students now
work at least part time and employers are encouraged to keep workers on until
well into their sixties- but these mechanisms are also limited in effectiveness.
- Enabling more women
of prime work age to work and mother is, by contrast, an excellent alternative.
- In other words there
is a strong case for adopting family-friendly industrial practices if these
produce a total increase in labour effort.
- However, such a restructure
will also not be without economic price- after all part time work cannot produce
the same output as full time work, even if it is more efficient per hour,
and flexible work practices involve administration and management costs for
employers , even if they are not great.
- Another route to greater
work-life balance is the greater engagement of fathers.
- This means we modify
gender roles so that men and women share evenly in the available time with
and responsibilities for families.
- Because it is only when
the responsibilities of child care can be more equally apportioned, and fathers
and mothers take equal care of their children, that we will truly reap the
benefits of ‘family friendly’ workplaces.
- Equality between men
and women has hit a brick wall- and only the engagement of men in the struggle
for work and family balance will move equality closer.
- Engaging men on this
issue should actually be quite simple, because unlike child bearing, which
is a function biologically limited to one sex, child caring and child raising
is about parenting – and parenting is about both mothers and fathers.
- Both women and men
should be given the ability and opportunity to work and parent.
- However this requires
practical and attitudinal changes.
- Practical change one
– the introduction of paid parental leave. While we recommended the
first fourteen weeks of paid leave be maternity leave only, and available
to non birth parents only in very limited circumstances, any longer period
of paid leave should be shared between parents.
- This is the standard
practice across Europe.
- n Denmark for example
28 weeks of paid maternity leave is provided to mothers, the last 10 of which
may be taken by the father.
- Turning to more long
term measures - flexible working arrangements, including part time work should
be available to all parents.
- It can be argued that
currently they are. The year of unpaid parental leave is available to either
mothers or fathers.
- In theory there is
nothing stopping men from accessing part time working arrangements or flexible
work hours.
- In reality, we do not
live in a society which tolerates or venerates men who do part time work or
leave work early to pick up a sick child from school.
- Our culture is such
that these men are more likely to be seen as uncommitted to their careers
to an even greater extent than women who allow their family life to intrude
into their working life.
- The tariff for being
involved in the unpaid caring work of their families is very high for men.
- So most of them don’t
do it.
- And as long as men
continue to earn more than women it usually makes more sense for the women
to change her paid work arrangements to factor in child care.
- The discrimination is
self perpetuating.
- Gender stereotypes
may also prevent men from taking on a greater role in family life. This can
be particularly evident in smaller communities where social change is seen
as threatening an existing order.
- The reality is then
that we can implement as many ‘family’ friendly practices or policies
as we like, however unless they are coupled with a genuine belief that either
parent can access these measures they will be for ‘women only’.
- Averting the work/life
collision and replacing it with a genuine work life balance is the key issue
and key challenge facing women today. It is also the key issue and challenge
facing men.
- That makes it a challenge
for all of us, and it’s time Australia got on with fixing it, we’ve
talked enough.
Thank you.
[1] ABS
statistic
[2] Bruce Chapman et al study.
Last updated 2 December 2002
