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Australian women and men are working as never before. In March 2008, 58.1 per cent of all women were in the labour market, compared to 49.7 per cent 20 years before.* Female participation changes are among the most significant in the Australian labour market over the past two decades – 1.8 million more women than 20 years ago are now headed out of households and off to work on any day, with significant implications for how we live, work and care.
This is occurring against the background of changing family shape, with only 40 per cent now 'traditional' nuclear families of two parents sharing biological children. With a third of marriages in 2001 predicted to end in divorce, and big increases in sole parent households, work and care arrangements have to accommodate many kinds of transitions over the life course. It is against this background that demands for child care have grown.
While much attention focuses on the effects of work on the ability to care for children, combining care and work in the future is increasingly going to be about aged care, with a quarter of our population predicted to be over 65 by 2036.
Changes in work
Women are working for similar reasons to men: they enjoy having a pay packet, and they find meaning, pleasure, efficacy and social life through work. Sixty per cent of Australians would go to work even if they didn't need the money!
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Work is generally associated with positive wellbeing and social inclusion outcomes for both men and women. Having a job is, overall, a good thing – but only in the right circumstances. Giving up more household hours to work affects people's capacity to do other important things – to care for each other; exercise; spend time with neighbours, friends and families; and undertake formal or informal voluntary work.
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Problems with Australia's work habits
Alongside this, poor-quality work is associated with particularly negative effects for workers, their workplaces and their communities. These include jobs that overload workers, involve long hours, lack job security, or give little control over where and when work is done. These days a job is not the sure road out of poverty and into secure housing that it has been in the past: a 2003 survey showed that the same proportion of working and non-working households live in poverty (12.5 per cent) (Australian Government, 2008). Australia now has a real 'working poor' problem, with low-paid workers suffering both income and time poverty. Unfortunately many of them work in care jobs, like child care.
Many Australian households are increasingly caught up in cycles of 'work and spend', contributing more hours to paid work and spending more to hold things together – whether on child care, pre-prepared food or cleaning services. The hungry market is more than happy to step into our time-poor households and soak up pay packets. Workers who work long hours – one in five in Australia now work more than 50 hours a week – often turn to the market for quick solutions or to salve private guilt by spending in place of time for children, and then find themselves caught up in an accelerating cycle of work and spend.
And children are not immune: many young Australians are themselves caught up in early-onset consumption patterns, with many working before they leave school. An aggressive advertising industry is eager to take their money and lever money out of their parents' wallets through underage 'pester power'. It seems that many young people are increasingly reliant upon a sense of self built through work and buying. Such habits of work, consumption and self-actualisation have important implications for the sustainability of society and for the shape of households and families into the future.
Balancing work and life
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How can we make work 'work' better for Australian communities, for social inclusion and for equality? Better childcare systems are an important part of the answer. Inequality in the provision of quality, accessible early childhood education and care programs accelerates inequality over the life course and is a strong argument for universal public provision of care options. We need to create policies that allow people to step back from paid work to provide the care that they want. Better leave provisions are part of the story, including paid parental leave and the option to take time out to care for sick or aged friends and relatives, as well as the chance to work part-time without giving up the prospects of secure, decent work and decent retirement earnings.
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The new Rudd Government offers some significant ways forward on these issues with its consideration of paid parental leave, establishing a right for workers to request to work flexibly when they have care responsibilities, and new commitments on early childhood education and care. There is plenty of work ahead as Australia brings social and work systems into better alignment to support the growing participation of its citizens in paid work – without sacrificing the welfare of children, parents and social life.
Barbara Pocock
Director
Centre for Work + Life, University of South Australia
References and further reading
Australian Government (2008). Australia 2020 Summit: Strengthening communities, supporting families and social inclusion. Background paper. Retrieved 7 May 2008, www.australia2020.gov.au/topics/docs/communities.pdf
Pocock, B. (2006). The labour market ate my babies: Work, children and a sustainable future. Annandale, NSW: Federation Press.
*Unreferenced statistics drawn from the Australian Government Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs' ongoing Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey, conducted by the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research. For more information, visit www.melbourneinstitute.com/hilda
Every Child magazine – vol. 14 no. 2, 2008, pp. 8–9
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