- Inequality begins in home
- By Pru Goward
- The Australian
- 11/02/2005 Make a Comment
- Contributed by: admin ( 47 articles in 2005 )
THE national debate over how to balance work and family in 21st-century Australia has become the new barbecue stopper. This national conversation is long overdue.
It's about that quarter of all Australian men who work more than 50 hours a week and don't know what to say when told they need to be mentors to their sons and daughters. It's about teenage children with nobody home, or mothers anxiously sitting on the bus worried about getting to the childcare centre before it shuts, or picking a sick child up from school before they vomit again.
It's about husbands and wives angrily confronting each other over who does what -- or not confronting each other and walking out. It's about the half of marriages that end in divorce over a 30-year period -- with who does what at home often to blame. It's about fathers and custody and male role modelling.
It's about frail, elderly parents ringing their children at work to tell them they've been robbed or need to see a doctor, and middle-aged children unable to come because all hell is also breaking loose at work and it's a 40-minute drive each way. It is about grandfathers who say they have spent more time with their grandchildren than their own children.
It is not about all families all the time. And although it is true that many families manage to avoid these stresses almost entirely, it is the reality for countless others. It is not the fault of women, or of men. Rather, we are at the halfway point of the crossing, the most vulnerable, deepest part of the crossing that is the huge social change Australia started out on 30 years ago, when women first joined the workforce on a permanent and equal basis with men.
However you look at it, relationship breakdown, custody arrangements, the feminisation of poverty, care outcomes for our elderly, the fertility rate and economic growth are directly related to how well we divvy up our unpaid caring work between men and women. It goes without saying that it also has a bearing on equality between the sexes.
There's no debate about who is bearing the lion's share of the unpaid burden (with, of course, honourable exceptions) because government national time use statistics tell the story.
Surveys show Australian men do more with their children than before, but rarely instead of working. For example, Australian men are more likely to take bereavement leave than carer leave -- for either a sick child or a sick parent -- even though both are paid.
There is a strong case for encouraging more men to do more at home; it need not mean they reduce their working hours -- they could instead reduce their leisure hours in the way working mothers have done. It could well mean she increases her working hours, or even takes a promotion.
It is, of course, excellent for children to have both mum and dad around. Hanging around the kitchen or sorting out the washing isn't as exciting as working those extra unpaid hours of overtime, or having a drink after work, or going to the football without the children on Saturdays, but it is much more likely to pay off in the long run for your marriage, your wealth and in particular your children.
According to the Household Income and Labour Dynamics survey, it is men with less than Year 12 education who are the least likely to accept a non-traditional sharing of responsibilities and are most attached to the male breadwinner model, with the woman at home. Among younger men, they are also likely to have fewer children than any other male group -- perhaps because of these beliefs. This suggests that education plays a role in changing male expectations about what they and their partners do.
Of course, there are national public policy questions that need to be at least asked: What can governments do to improve the sharing of unpaid work? Or if they choose not to, how do they plan to deal with its consequences -- divorce, at-risk children, expensive aged care, falling fertility, rising tax rates, slowing economic growth, and so on? Whether they do or do not actively address the challenge, you can be sure it will end up being a matter for governments.
In the same way that special measures were made available to women seeking to enter certain sectors of the paid workforce, perhaps governments have to consider special measures to enable men to enter the unpaid workforce. A number of Scandinavian countries, for example, provide paid paternity leave.
We can no longer afford the cold war going on in private time and what this is doing to so many of our families. We can no longer afford to ignore the need to get right the sharing of responsibilities for our aged, before the baby boomers overwhelm their daughters. We can no longer afford to accept the high divorce rate when its causes are clearly not rocket science. We cannot continue to agitate about inequality between men and women in the workplace when many of its seeds are sown in the home. Unpaid care is priceless; it's time we said so and shared it better.
This is an edited extract from Pru Goward's address to the National Press Club in Canberra on Wednesday.
It's about that quarter of all Australian men who work more than 50 hours a week and don't know what to say when told they need to be mentors to their sons and daughters. It's about teenage children with nobody home, or mothers anxiously sitting on the bus worried about getting to the childcare centre before it shuts, or picking a sick child up from school before they vomit again.
It's about husbands and wives angrily confronting each other over who does what -- or not confronting each other and walking out. It's about the half of marriages that end in divorce over a 30-year period -- with who does what at home often to blame. It's about fathers and custody and male role modelling.
It's about frail, elderly parents ringing their children at work to tell them they've been robbed or need to see a doctor, and middle-aged children unable to come because all hell is also breaking loose at work and it's a 40-minute drive each way. It is about grandfathers who say they have spent more time with their grandchildren than their own children.
It is not about all families all the time. And although it is true that many families manage to avoid these stresses almost entirely, it is the reality for countless others. It is not the fault of women, or of men. Rather, we are at the halfway point of the crossing, the most vulnerable, deepest part of the crossing that is the huge social change Australia started out on 30 years ago, when women first joined the workforce on a permanent and equal basis with men.
However you look at it, relationship breakdown, custody arrangements, the feminisation of poverty, care outcomes for our elderly, the fertility rate and economic growth are directly related to how well we divvy up our unpaid caring work between men and women. It goes without saying that it also has a bearing on equality between the sexes.
There's no debate about who is bearing the lion's share of the unpaid burden (with, of course, honourable exceptions) because government national time use statistics tell the story.
Surveys show Australian men do more with their children than before, but rarely instead of working. For example, Australian men are more likely to take bereavement leave than carer leave -- for either a sick child or a sick parent -- even though both are paid.
There is a strong case for encouraging more men to do more at home; it need not mean they reduce their working hours -- they could instead reduce their leisure hours in the way working mothers have done. It could well mean she increases her working hours, or even takes a promotion.
It is, of course, excellent for children to have both mum and dad around. Hanging around the kitchen or sorting out the washing isn't as exciting as working those extra unpaid hours of overtime, or having a drink after work, or going to the football without the children on Saturdays, but it is much more likely to pay off in the long run for your marriage, your wealth and in particular your children.
According to the Household Income and Labour Dynamics survey, it is men with less than Year 12 education who are the least likely to accept a non-traditional sharing of responsibilities and are most attached to the male breadwinner model, with the woman at home. Among younger men, they are also likely to have fewer children than any other male group -- perhaps because of these beliefs. This suggests that education plays a role in changing male expectations about what they and their partners do.
Of course, there are national public policy questions that need to be at least asked: What can governments do to improve the sharing of unpaid work? Or if they choose not to, how do they plan to deal with its consequences -- divorce, at-risk children, expensive aged care, falling fertility, rising tax rates, slowing economic growth, and so on? Whether they do or do not actively address the challenge, you can be sure it will end up being a matter for governments.
In the same way that special measures were made available to women seeking to enter certain sectors of the paid workforce, perhaps governments have to consider special measures to enable men to enter the unpaid workforce. A number of Scandinavian countries, for example, provide paid paternity leave.
We can no longer afford the cold war going on in private time and what this is doing to so many of our families. We can no longer afford to ignore the need to get right the sharing of responsibilities for our aged, before the baby boomers overwhelm their daughters. We can no longer afford to accept the high divorce rate when its causes are clearly not rocket science. We cannot continue to agitate about inequality between men and women in the workplace when many of its seeds are sown in the home. Unpaid care is priceless; it's time we said so and shared it better.
This is an edited extract from Pru Goward's address to the National Press Club in Canberra on Wednesday.
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