It's About Time - Chapter 2

It's About Time

Chapter 2: It's about time

2.1 Introduction

At the heart of efforts to "strike the balance" between paid work and family and carer responsibilities is the issue of time. How we manage the time we spend on paid work and unpaid work in daily life and throughout the various life stages is a key concern of contemporary Australian life. In the stories that the Australian community has told HREOC over the past twenty months, time pressures, conflicting demands on time and a desire for more time to enjoy family and friends all feature strongly.5 Many Australians clearly hunger for the capacity to share simple daily rituals such as family meals or significant school or sporting events, to provide care to family members with illness or disability and to commit to paid work without always struggling against time constraints.

Managing time is not just about individual choices and concerns, but also the support that exists within families and communities for those choices. Further, government policy, workplace policies and practices, and social values all play a large part in either reinforcing or constraining the choices of individuals and families.

This chapter provides an overview of the Australian community's views on balancing paid work and care. It maps the way that paid work and caring roles may change across the various life stages and points out the role that equality between men and women plays in balancing paid work and family/carer responsibilities. HREOC proposes a new framework which incorporates the principle of shared work - valued care as a way of best responding to current paid work and care conflicts. Finally, this chapter puts the paid work and family/carer responsibilities issues raised in consultations and submissions into the context of the national interest.

2.2 What the Australian community told us

The Australian community has told us that

• Despite a decade or more of economic growth and prosperity many Australians are not living the lives they want and they feel pressured, stressed and overly constrained in the choices they can make. Many expressed dissatisfaction that their improved living standards have not appeared to bring them greater quality of life or better family relationships.

• They are struggling to meet the time demands of paid work and care, particularly at key points in the life cycle such as early years parenting and caring mid-life for elderly relatives.

• They are also struggling to meet these time demands at key points in the daily and yearly cycle, such as after school hours and during school holidays or periods of demand in paid employment.

• External support for families managing paid work and care is patchy at best and counter productive at worst.

• Governments are supporting people to manage these difficulties well in some areas but poorly in others, with some groups of people experiencing acute difficulty accessing the support they need to combine paid work and care.12

• Employers are also doing better in some industries, occupations and types of employment than in others, with many employees finding it difficult to meet their caring responsibilities due to inflexible workplace structures and cultures.14

• Not all Australian families feel that their choices are supported, and some feel particularly unsupported and pressured into unsatisfactory arrangements.

• Australian men and women do not want to be forced into paid work and care arrangements that do not suit them or their families.

• The paid work and care arrangements that many Australians rely upon feel fragile and strained to them, particularly for those who have poor quality or lower paid work, those who experience lack of control over their working hours and those who work long hours.20

• Family relationships are suffering where there is a poor balance between paid work and caring work.

• When paid work and care arrangements are balanced and stable, and unpaid work is shared within families in a way that seems fair to them, Australians report a high degree of satisfaction with work and family relationships, and a general sense of wellbeing.

2.3 Responding to conflicts in paid work and caring responsibilities

Given the complexity of paid work and family/carer responsibility issues, developing a comprehensive and practical response to the concerns that Australians raise can seem an overwhelming challenge. In HREOC's view, an important starting point is to consider and articulate a general framework on which more detailed responses can be based. Drawing on material from consultations and submissions, HREOC has concluded that a paid work and family/carer responsibilities framework must:

• allow for changes in caring needs and responsibilities across the life cycle;
• address equality between men and women; and
• support a shared work - valued care approach.

Paid work and care across the life cycle

Caring needs and responsibilities clearly change over the course of a lifetime. Key transition points, such as childbirth, onset of a disability or ageing can intensify these needs and responsibilities. In addition, paid working patterns, particularly for women and people with disability, are not necessarily consistent, with many individuals entering and exiting the paid workforce as their needs or responsibilities change.

The significant social and demographic change of the past decades has meant that Australian men and women are increasingly experiencing life as both workers and carers at various points in the life course. Women are in paid work in unprecedented numbers, an increasing number of men are embracing nurturing roles within families, workforce participation of people with disability, sole parents and mature aged workers has become an Australian Government priority and the so-called "baby boomer" cohort is ageing at a time when women are giving birth later in life, thus increasing the likelihood of dual caring responsibilities for both children and ageing parents.27

The stories that HREOC has heard during the course of this project indicate that while Australia has a history based on the sole breadwinner family model,28 this is clearly an arrangement which no longer applies to the majority of families either in the paid workforce or families with caring responsibilities more broadly.

Despite these changes, Australia does not yet have a new social vision that supports these dual roles for both men and women. The most appropriate vision for Australia must be one that is flexible enough to support families throughout the life course as caring responsibilities and care needs change.

Equality between men and women is central to resolving conflict between paid work and family/carer responsibilities

Australia has progressed well in terms of promoting gender equality across many important areas of contemporary life.29 However there are also areas where Australia is not progressing so well and balancing paid work with care responsibilities is chief among them. Increased paid work opportunities for women in the past twenty years have not produced a corresponding change in the division of unpaid responsibilities between men and women. The total work effort has risen; the time available for social responsibilities has dropped. Women in paid work experience the additional pressure of managing family life, while men in full time work lack access to family life.30

While discussions about the time pressures experienced by families often focus on parents and children, other working carers, particularly primary carers, also experience these pressures.31 For example, the Working Carers Support Gateway records the experiences of Cathy, a 56 year old woman who has cared for her husband (who has Parkinson's Disease) for over 10 years and more recently also for her father. Cathy says "[C]aring became virtually full time in tandem with full time work; I moved at top speed all day, whizzed home from work three times a day to wash, shower, feed, dress, toilet one or both men, and worked till late at night so my students were not disadvantaged".32

As noted through the Striking the Balance discussion paper, women with caring responsibilities carry a disproportionate share of unpaid work, including child care, elder care and associated housework.33 Research shows that women are more likely than men to experience time pressures resulting from their high paid and unpaid workloads, with attendant health and wellbeing effects.34 Other research shows that men's time use patterns also affect their health and wellbeing in negative ways.35 HREOC's consultations and focus groups with parents lend weight and urgency to these research findings.

The consequences of this time pressure for men and women are clear. Women find it more difficult to continue in paid work, and so frequently lack economic independence or the capacity to adequately provide for their families - an economic state which becomes particularly difficult in the event of relationship breakdown. Sole parent families, usually headed by a woman, frequently live in poverty. Other specific groups of women also feel these consequences in different ways. Women with disability who have caring responsibilities often find that the many pressures on their time can make gaining and retaining employment extremely difficult.36 Further, in an era of self-funded retirement, women find themselves disadvantaged in their later years, with recent figures showing that half of all women aged 45-60 have $8 000 or less in superannuation, while 70 per cent have $25 000 or less.37

Women who devote many years to unpaid care of children and other family members are making a significant economic contribution to the Australian community, and shouldering responsibilities that would otherwise have to be taken up by tax payers through government services. Yet their experience of caring is likely to leave them financially vulnerable and with more limited employment opportunities.

Australian men find their work and occupational choices confined in different ways: they are less likely than women to provide residential care for their children after relationship breakdown, are more likely to suffer work-related injury and death and live, on average, five years less than women.38 Australian wellbeing indices also confirm that men are less likely to be happy than women.39 One explanation for these differences in men's lives is their longer hours in paid work and the pressures many men experience as breadwinners. Less time spent in care work may also restrict opportunities for developing close family relationships and community connections. For both men and women then, the imbalance of paid work and family/carer responsibilities has a direct impact on their life outcomes.

Aiming for gender equality in paid and unpaid work is therefore not simply about empowering women. As the World Economic Forum has noted: "Gender is not synonymous with women, nor is it a zero-sum game implying loss for men; rather, is refers to both women and men, and to their status, relative to each other".40 We cannot have balance between paid work and care while the onus of care is on women because of the negative effects for both women and men. Gender equality, in terms of balancing paid work with care, means assisting women and men to balance the total paid and unpaid work effort better within families. It also means a better sharing of the costs - in the broadest sense of this word - across all of the social partners in the paid work and care debate.

A shared work - valued care approach

A guiding principle for approaching paid work and caring issues, across the life cycle and supporting equality between men and women, is what has been described as a shared work - valued care approach.41 In HREOC's view, shared work - valued care means sharing unpaid and paid work better across the labour market and the community, in addition to better sharing between individual men and women. It means sharing the work of caring between families, the community and public institutions, and it requires governments to take a primary role in sharing the costs of care through the provision of accessible, affordable and high quality care and support services for both children and adults who need them.42 These include child care services, aged care services, specialist disability services and programs which provide personal and domestic care for older people and people with disability living in the community. It also means valuing the caring work of employees, ensuring quality employment for those who provide care and sharing the responsibility for care between individuals and quality service providers. It is a guiding principle for a policy response to paid work and family that recognises that the traditional breadwinner-full time home carer model is no longer the most common work and care arrangement in Australia.

A shared work - valued care approach is not a single model for dealing with paid work and care, but a flexible approach that recognises that preferred arrangements will change over time as family/carer responsibilities and family circumstances change. The framework is above all an integrated approach that considers balancing paid work and care as a task which requires a collective and ongoing response from a range of social participants.

To move towards this we must consider in what ways governments, employers, policy makers, non-government organisations and individual families create both barriers and supports for a model of shared work and care, and ways in which different family types can negotiate these. Government has a major role in establishing and supporting this framework, as well as a responsibility to ensure that it is implemented across the relevant portfolios.

Recent research into the policy frameworks which best facilitate a balance between paid work and family/carer responsibilities suggests that there are three key components of these frameworks: public family leave policies, working time regulations, and public systems of early childhood education and care.43

Further, what is required is an approach based on a universal caregiver idea which encourages both men and women to share care and paid work and which would include a combination of shorter or more flexible working hours with informal care and locally organised but publicly supported care services.44

This model also fits well with recommendations from HREOC's National Inquiry into Employment and Disability that advocate guidelines and campaigns to encourage workplace flexibilities to meet the needs of people with disability, as well as responding to the needs of other employees such as carers and older workers.45

Australian research supports this approach by suggesting that not only do we need to respond to the peak loads at particular points in the life course, but that the policy measures that are adopted in relation to family allowances or tax concessions for parents, access to care services and employment based measures will be most effective when men are encouraged to reduce their paid work and participate in caring.46 Encouraging and supporting equality between men and women, as noted throughout the Striking the Balance discussion paper, is a key part of this process.

Individual views on the shared work - valued care approach may differ according to the variety of choices that Australian families want to make about managing their competing responsibilities. However, as the following chapters make clear, HREOC's public consultation process has revealed widespread agreement on the principles embodied by this model. The question of how to implement these principles is therefore the focus of the remainder of this report.

2.4 Paid and unpaid work and the national interest: Prosperity and social wellbeing

The time pressures that many Australian families experience in relation to balancing paid work and care indicate that despite more than a decade of unbroken economic growth, including increases in real incomes and national wealth and improved productivity growth,47 further consideration has to be given to the measure of our social wellbeing. While productivity and prosperity are important goals, they are not enough in themselves to create a healthy and cohesive community which values the wellbeing of its citizens, supports strong relationships and values both paid and unpaid work.

Prosperity: Making Australians time-rich

While prosperity is easily understood and appreciated as the outcome of good economic management, our national and social wellbeing is a more complex construction with a number of components such as mental and physical health and a sense of connectedness to others.

A truly prosperous society is one that values time as well as money, whether this be time spent with children or other relatives in leisure activities, time spent working voluntarily within community or, as noted throughout the paper, time spent meeting day-to-day care needs.

Criticism of financial measures of success emerged as a strong theme within submissions and in HREOC focus groups and consultations. Many people identified "keeping up with the Jones's" as a barrier to a good balance between paid work and family/carer responsibilities because of the financial burden it places on family budgets.48 Recent discussions about "affluenza" also evidence a growing concern about quality of life and a desire for individual and community values that emphasise social prosperity as well as economic prosperity.49

As the Treasurer has argued, the three "P"s - the three factors that contribute to prosperity - are population, participation and productivity.50 These factors are all influenced by how well we balance our paid work and care arrangements. Greater equality in both how families manage these responsibilities and how our society bears responsibility for them will be the key challenge for our continuing economic prosperity as well as the wellbeing of our communities and our citizens.

Social wellbeing

While many Australians appreciate the productivity and prosperity that have resulted from the social and economic changes of the past decades, the lack of time for care and community activities is one effect that they do not enjoy. Social wellbeing can be assessed through examining such objective measures as access to economic resources, adequate housing, health services, education and freedom from discrimination and violence. Social wellbeing can also be measured by examining more subjective measures such as social inclusion and connectedness and individuals' feelings of happiness and personal wellbeing. Some of the possible determinants of social wellbeing include

• Gender equality
• Family care of older people requiring care
• Maximising children's health and welfare
• Support for families and people in vulnerable situations
• Alleviating poverty and disadvantage
• Supportive working conditions and productive and harmonious workplaces
• Community connectedness.51

Each of these social determinants of wellbeing is enhanced by a commitment to sharing work and valuing care. They require investment and sound management and are thus as much the responsibility of government as economic management.

Research confirms the substantial cost to both employers and governments of not responding to conflicts between paid work and family/carer responsibilities, with a recent large scale Canadian study finding that high levels of conflict had a negative impact on employers' bottom lines and increased demands on Canada's health care system by billions of dollars each year.52

Not only do poor levels of wellbeing immediately impact on individual quality of life, they also incur costs for society as a whole through the additional taxation required to raise them to more acceptable levels and indeed through the cost of low levels of wellbeing of some citizens being borne by others (the relationship between poor levels of wellbeing and crime being one obvious example). In other words, wellbeing is an important part of the national interest and in this sense Australia's overall prosperity is as much the outcome of investment in wellbeing as it is economic management. In any case it is pointless to pursue prosperity and wellbeing outcomes as if these were independent of each other. The national interest is best served by integrating social and economic policy.

2.5 Conclusion

Reconciling paid work and family/carer responsibilities is central to the social and economic progress of the nation. The balance between paid and unpaid responsibilities directly affects many aspects of family and individual wellbeing and in order to ensure the best national outcome we clearly need to start taking the need for balance into greater account. This will not be possible unless we make unpaid caring responsibilities a greater priority and incorporate them into a social vision that will help us meet our paid work and care responsibilities across the life course. In order to develop a workable model for balancing paid work and family/carer responsibilities we need to develop a new framework centred around a guiding principle of shared work - valued care that will collectively and individually meet the social and demographic challenges currently facing Australia.

The interaction between the factors that affect the balance of paid work and family/carer responsibilities is complex and multi-layered. A central aim of this paper is to propose a series of actions to address these factors. As indicated by our list of recommendations, some of the areas that HREOC believes require change can be addressed relatively easily, by the shared efforts of various social participants in the paid work and family debate. In other areas however, there is a pressing need for more information and for review and consolidation of current policy and activities. The recommendations in this paper address the key areas that have been raised consistently with HREOC as blockages to adequate balance between paid work and family/carer responsibilities.

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Footnotes