Backlash, not harmony
Could it be that, after decades of feminist campaigning for gender equality in work, Australian women no longer want to get out of the home, earn their own wages or test and increase their work skills?
Between 1955 and 1990, the overall proportion of women in the work force increased from 15% to 61.5%, but since 1990 that figure has increased by less than 0.5%. The proportion of women in full-time work has actually decreased in the last five years.
For all those who want to turn the feminist clock back, this trend is good news: whether they like it or not, growing numbers of women are returning to their "right and proper" place in society — at home most of the time looking after their husbands and kids.
The fact that many women don't like it hasn't received nearly as much publicity in the capitalist press as the trend itself. Indeed, it has been actively obscured.
Take the feature article by PM John Howard's pet propagandist on women's issues, Bettina Arndt, in the April 21 Sydney Morning Herald, for example.
Arndt says that "a certain harmony has been achieved in many families". To support this assertion, she refers to research which, she says, shows that an "extraordinary balance has been achieved between men's and women's overall work contribution".
Women, according to this research, do an average of 33.9 hours of unpaid work plus 14.7 hours of paid work per week, while men average 17.5 hours of unpaid and 31.38 hours of paid work — a total difference, Arndt emphasises, of "a mere two minutes a day".
Arndt also quotes other studies to argue that "poorer, ill-educated women are most likely to show strong commitment to full-time homemaking" and that "there is a distinct element of choice in women's involvement in part-time [versus full-time] work".
There is no doubt that some women do prefer part-time paid work, or none at all, while they have young children. How could it be otherwise in a society in which women are still assigned (and therefore feel) the primary responsibility for child rearing?
To assert that fewer women with children are entering the labour force principally because of child-rearing preferences, however, or that this trend reflects a return to traditional family values among women generally, grossly misrepresents reality and obfuscates the narrowing opportunities for women as a result of the Howard government's economic and social policies.
For many women today, there is no choice. For others, it is a "choice" which is increasingly constrained by factors beyond their control.
The reality is that women aren't entering the work force because the jobs aren't there. If the drop in women's participation was caused by women not wanting jobs, men would be getting a bigger proportion of them, but that's not happening.
The reality is that while only 8% of mothers working full time would prefer to be out of the work force, 60% of women not working would prefer to have part-time work (Belinda Probert, Centre for Applied Social Research, RMIT, August 1997).
The reality is that many women are forced out of the work force for longer than they might choose because there is very little maternity protection in Australia.
An International Labour Organisation report released last month singled out Australia for its particularly poor maternity leave, employment protection and cash and medical benefits for pregnant workers. It notes that Australia is one of the few industrialised countries in which casual workers — 75% of whom are women — are not covered by maternity provisions at all.
The jobs that are available to women tend to be relatively low paid (since 1995, the gap between men's and women's average wages has grown). Simultaneously, the costs associated with women doing paid work have grown.
Full-time child-care is now prohibitively expensive for many women, and the option of part-time care is not much better, for married mothers at least. According to the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling, unless a second household income is well above average, it is quickly eaten up by child-care costs and the lower family payments and tax incentives paid to two-income households.
Even if women can afford full-time child-care, holding down a full-time job while still taking primary responsibility for domestic chores is becoming increasingly impossible physically. Full-time workers in Australia now work an average of 43 hours a week (30% work 49 hours or more), are more stressed and are doing more intense work. Add this to 20 to 30 hours of domestic work, and it's no wonder that 60% of women working full-time want less hours!
Contrary to Arndt's assertion, there is precious little "harmony" in many Australian families today. And unless the feminist and trade union movements begin to fight seriously against women's narrowing work force choices, emptying bank accounts and increasing economic dependence on men under this government, there will be even less harmony ... but a lot more exploitation, violence and misery for women.
By Lisa Macdonald