All aboard the 'mummy track'
Pru Goward Federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner
20 minute speech
8 May 2003
VIVE Magazine Working Mothers Forum
Four Seasons Hotel (The Regent)
199 George Street
Sydney NSW
- Angie Buttrose, editor of Vive, ladies and gentlemen thank you for inviting me here today.
- I am delighted to have been given the opportunity to address the Vive Magazine luncheon and to be sharing the stage with Naomi Wolf. If you are here today because you think women have the right to choose, look no further. Between the two of us I think you have a smorgasbord of opinions from which to select!
- In Misconceptions, there are two matters Naomi Wolf raises with which there can be no disagreement; one that successive generations of mothers to be need to be reminded -and to remind their sisters- of the importance of remaining in charge of your body when you get pregnant, and two, that the power relationship between mothers and fathers or between parents and the rest of the world almost inevitably changes when baby arrives- its not just the state of the laundry.
- This change, in personal, social and professional relationships is the heart of the feminist challenge.
- Babies and the balance of power is our focus here today.
- Consider the counter-factual situation, where men and men were able to bear children.
- It would have to be a very different place.
- Maternity wear, stretch mark creams and pregnancy classes would have a whole new target audience to consider!
- Work and family issues would long ago have been identified as matters of priority.
- Flexible working arrangements, part time hours and return to work policies would be the norm.
- And paid maternity leave would be an unquestioned industrial entitlement in much the same way as holiday leave, long service leave and sick leave.
- Unfortunately this is not the world we live in and despite scientific advances it is unlikely that it will be the world of our children or grandchildren either.
- The nature of technological change suggests we might be the last century where children can only be borne from a woman's womb, but that is a discussion for another day.
- So long as science remains unable to save the day, work and family remains society's issue to address.
- Compared with growing children in test tubes, fixing work and family issues is a relatively easy task!
- So where do we stand on this issue today and where do we need to go?
- Everywhere we are bombarded with images, implied or actual, of frazzled career women - baby in one arm, paper work in the other and mobile phone cradled at neck!
- The reality is not too far from the stereotype: the notorious double shift of paid work and unpaid child care is putting unbearable pressure on many women. Many don't even have the luxury of a mobile phone and of being able to work while breast feeding their babies.
- The overwhelming majority of families with total incomes of $A30,000 or less have working mums. In Australia, the poor family has a working mother. Overall, 70% of all families with dependents have at least the mother working.
- Sure, many mothers work part-time or casually, if they can get it.
- But while more parents are working, there is no evidence that children need less of their parents' time.
- So super mums had to be invented, to make up the difference.
- Unfortunately there is no correlating statistic showing that men are putting more time into unpaid childcare.
- In fact, recent research shows that mothers spend over 30 hours a week in primary, direct child care; fathers spend eight hours a week in child care and one third of these hours is spent in play ...And yet it is still women who feel guilty for leaving work early or requesting flexible work arrangements from employers and still beat themselves up for not spending enough time mothering!
- Australia's time use survey shows men increased the amount of child care they did from 13 minutes to ....14 minutes a day between 1992-7. Wow! You have to ask was that extra minute worth letting him off mowing the lawn!
- Women are still spending 45 minutes a day on child care- more than three times as much- even though they are doing less of it than they used to.
- Working mothers especially shoulder an immense responsibility with very little help.
- Why?
- Because work and family issues are at best given lip service - not prioritised. The work place is still unaccommodating. The lack of access to paid maternity leave shows, for example, just how limited our national commitment is. How else do you explain the why more than 60% of women in Australia do not have access even to paid maternity leave for example?
- As Federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner I began my work on work and family by lobbying for the introduction of a national scheme paid maternity leave.
- A scheme that responds specifically to the needs associated with the gender specific role of child bearing.
- In December last year I proposed that such a scheme be government funded at the Federal Minimum wage ($431); ( a bit less than a reservist's wage) available to all women who have been in paid work for 40 of the past 52 weeks, regardless of how many different employers they have worked for and positions they have held; and for 14 weeks.
- Why this period of time? Why not longer? When the UK offers 6 months paid leave; and Norway, Sweden and Denmark all offer 18 weeks.
- Often these longer periods of leave are actually paid parental leave - or a period of maternity leave followed by paid leave accessible by either partner.
- This is the next step.
- Here in Australia we are still taking baby steps. We are trying to ensure that a period of paid leave is available to all women after the birth of a child. If we are worried about fathering and discrimination against men, then let's lobby for parental leave AFTER we have maternity leave.
- As Naomi has so eloquently described in her book, it is women after all whose bodies are exhausted and rent asunder by giving birth, who must have time to recover .....
- .... time to recover from childbirth, from their caesareans (remember 1/3 of women over 35 will have a caesarean section), shake off mastitis, cracked nipples or milk that just won't let down when required, establish a breastfeeding routine and bond with their child. The last thing they need is the worry of financial stresses or the mortgage forcing them back to work in the first 14 weeks of their child's life.
- The net cost of the scheme is $213 million a year to taxpayers. That's the upside of Australia having so few babies. Only 250,000 were born last year and the number keeps dropping. Paid maternity leave would be the cheapest family support programme in the country.
- And yet the level of public and political debate this modest policy proposal has been subject to is unprecedented.
- No social support scheme has been opened up to this sort of scrutiny. Can you remember having your say on the half a billion dollar baby bonus, or the Family Tax rebates, or even the 1993 maternity allowance measure?
- Some women have been a bit puzzled by the intensity of the debate.
- There is no hard hitting moral issue at hand.
- It is not a debate about stem cell technology, abortion or euthanasia.
- It is about providing Australian women with an entitlement most women in the western world already receive. This isn't a dangerous social experiment, this is catch up. Thank goodness for the United States, which also doesn't provide paid maternity leave, or Australia would be alone at the bottom of the heap!
- After decades of successive Australian governments refusing to countenance paid maternity leave, you could say on this issue, there is a bi-partisan Coalition of the Unwilling.
- So what are the key objections?
- First the issue of why the State should pay for a woman who makes a personal choice to have a baby? Perhaps it is a consumer decision- this year a new car, next year it's a baby- but let's not forget we subsidise the manufacture of cars quite heavily in Australia!
- Older women who had their children without paid leave have been especially vocal. They didn't get it, why should their daughters?
- Well there's one basic reason why they did not get it-that is, why WE did not get it- until twenty years ago, very few women worked with children, or even when pregnant.
- We told the office we were expecting, put on a spotty dress with a big white collar, disappeared from photographs and went home for several years.
- But that doesn't mean we did not support those women and their families.
- Australia has always supported families; subsidized home loan rates, unmeans-tested child endowment, tax deductible school fees, family allowances.
- Last financial year, the Australian Government spent $17billion supporting families and nobody complains about personal choices. It is after all, about social good. It is about making sure every child has a decent start, whatever the status of their parents.
- We need to continue this support, but make it relevant.
- And today, the number one need for that vast number of women who work - before they have their children - is to have time off when the baby is born.
- Paid for, so they are not forcing themselves back to work. This wasn't an issue for many of my generation- I didn't get out of a nightie for 3 months, and my fat and happy baby didn't give a damn what I looked like, as long as I was there.
- Next the issue of why working mothers, let's include mothers who are not in paid work as well?
- First of all, a good deal of government assistance is already available to mothers who stay at home.
- The fact is that mothers who do not work already receive $3.1 billion in non means tested government benefits and more, once means tested benefits and parenting payments are included. That assistance has been given because the federal government believes non-working mothers deserve recognition and support for the job they do. I do not remember there being blood in the streets as working women expressed their opposition to this. There has been no opposition from other women, it has been respected.
- Similarly paid maternity leave recognizes the job working mums do, and provides a special benefit for their children ....the benefit of time, 24/7 time with that new baby.
- Recent statistics from Queensland show that women average no more than half a year on paid maternity leave before the majority of them return to work. Paid maternity leave will enable most of them to stay home for longer, avoiding the need for costly child care subsidies and all the other difficulties that often attend returning to work with a little baby.
- The point about paid maternity leave is there is a condition attached to it- you have to stay at home with your baby. You cannot get the payment and go back to work. You have to be a full time mother.
- This is good for the baby and good for the mother.
- I can't think of a single other discussion paper issued by the Human Rights & Equal Opportunity Commission that has relied so heavily on the views of gynaecologists, obstetricians, paediatricians, child development specialists and breast-feeding lobbyists.
- Why then this issue should be so divisive, so hard, remains a mystery to me.
- Perhaps it is because the discussion around the introduction of a national scheme of paid maternity leave has become more than just a public debate about a social policy measure.
- It has become representative of one of the biggest challenges facing Australia today - the challenge of making it possible for people to combine work and family in a way that works for families, for society and for economic growth. The challenge even of who will have our children in future, and whether there will be sufficient numbers to sustain the Australian nation.
- The clash of work and family seems impossible to avoid. We can do bits but we still end up in a muddle. Why, with so much good will, have we gained so little.??
- " There is one large piece of the puzzle is missing - men and their role at work and in the family.
- For the moment we have had enough conversations, forums and debates focused on how and what women can do to balance work and family.
- While these discussions have their place, we have to wonder how effective they can ever be in achieving our goal of making it possible for all (men and women) to combine work and family responsibilities.
- Women have gone as far as they can alone in addressing this issue. Sure, as the physiological bearers of children they must be guaranteed paid leave, but parental leave has to come next.
- The truth is that work and family is not just our issue.
- The term work and family includes men as well as women.
- Most women want and expect to work; most men want to be involved in family life. No one lies on his death bed, wishing he had spent more time at the office.
- Returning to a time when women had no role in the public world of work and men were mere onlookers on the private world of nurturing children is not an option. The cost of living, especially home ownership, the ageing of Australia and the need for sustained economic growth have seen to that. An Australia without working mothers is a poorer, smaller place.
- But if the economy today needs both parents, children also need both their parents- that's the bit that hasn't changed. The general message I have heard from men in the consultations, submissions and letters I received from them in writing my proposal for a national scheme for paid maternity leave was that they also wanted opportunities to raise their children.
- Men want to care for them, feed them, read to them and be involved in their schooling.
- This isn't just sensitive new age guys in suits with degrees in psychology- one of the most passionate presentations I had was from members of the Australian Workers Union, shearers and shed hands, who wanted to do their bit.
- They also want rewarding jobs.
- Just like women, they want work and children.
- And as long as we keep framing issues such as flexible work practices as women's issues we will never achieve the overarching structural changes needed to enable women and men to work and parent.
- At the moment we have women adapting more and more to try and make their life experience fit into the existing world.
- Just ask the 'superwomen' of the nineties ....the super mums with the double shifts.
- Or the childless, if not partnerless female CEOs, senior managers and board members.
- But where does this leave us mere mortals?
- And where does it leave men?
- It leaves them not accessing the 52 weeks unpaid parental leave entitlements available to them.
- And not ulitising their rights to flexible work practices or other workplace benefits designed to make caring for a child easier.
- Despite a desire to be more involved in their child's life, the reality is that at the time of the birth of his child a man will take on average, one week of paid paternity leave, a few weeks annual paid leave and then it's back to work as usual.
- In this environment the only indication that he just had a child may be his initial 'proud new father beam' which is fast replaced by 'bleary eye glow' as the reality of life with a sporadically sleeping, always hungry, screaming machine sets in for him and his partner.
- Further down the track evidence of fatherhood may become further eroded - reduced to an array of photos on his desk - from baby photos to first day at school snaps.
- With modern technology, even this cluttering of office space may not be necessary - the photos can be scanned, updated regularly and stored as a screensaver!
- Looked at this way, there is a yawning gulf between what men say they want and what they do.
- So, given that for men having a child barely registers a 'blip' in their working arrangements, has anything really changed?
- It does not appear so.
- We still all notice that man at the city bus stop at 5pm wearing a suit and hold the hand of the child he's just picked up from daycare. Because he remains an anomaly.
- Women be warned! Sending your partner out into the world like this can be dangerous. Men walking with dogs and babies are regarded as ten times more desirable and likely to spark a successful meeting with the opposite sex!
- We can all count the number of dads we see looking after children during the week; and we probably all know by name the one man at play group.
- This isn't because men are selfish or insensitive.
- It's because that's the way family economic imperatives work today.
- The greatest amount of overtime is worked by men in their prime young parenting years.
- I am not cynical enough to believe they are escaping feeding and bathing times! Men are saying they want to be involved in these activities, let's believe them.
- They're working harder to make up for the income lost by mother being at home, unpaid.
- The reality is however that men are the primary earners in most families. While there remains in place a gendered pay gap, while women's full time earnings are still only 85 per cent of men's, families' choices over caring arrangements will continue to be undermined.
- They will also continue to be undermined as long as society sees men who adopt flexible working arrangements as less ambitious, soft or slack.
- While paid maternity leave obviously addresses issues directly related to a woman's child bearing role, return to work issues are not just about mothers.
- They are about parenting and how we accommodate this at work.
- As long as they are seen as options for women and more specifically mothers - women will remain outside of the normal practices of the workforce. They will be the problem, not the norm.
- We need to change our attitude and practices.
- Let superwoman retire.
- 'Mere mortal' can take her place.
- Super heroes need no longer apply.
Thank you.
Last updated 8 May 2003
