The public nature of the 'private' sphere
Public discussion of family life and women's roles within it used to be mostly confined to the "women's magazines". Article after repetitive article dealt with "how to improve (or save) your marriage", "cheap but nutritious" recipes, Dear Dorothy columns and, in the more "modern" mags, how to juggle motherhood with getting the next promotion.
The family, and women's lives inside it, became the subject of mainstream media attention and government policy largely as the result of the 1970s women's liberation movement. This turned the spotlight on the other side of family life: economic dependence, domestic violence and the many limitations foisted on women by the role of principal care-giver in the home.
However, even this advance was rapidly ghettoised — in government via "women's" departments and advisers and in the press via women's columns and articles about those exceptional women who made it in "men's" domain. On the whole, the "private" sphere of the family remained just that for opinion-shapers and policy makers — of little importance in a world of trade wars, high finance and political intrigue.
Lately there has been a change. Family life and women's role within it have become pet issues of the media and politicians. Passionate references to "the family" now litter the parliamentary and campaigning speeches of politicians of all stripes.
The daily papers are full of features on how marriage break-up causes poverty; why female corporate high fliers are giving up their careers to become "ordinary housewives"; why Germaine Greer now praises motherhood; how Janette Howard copes with stress by cleaning the house; why Pauline Hanson feels incomplete without a man in her life; "Why we can't get by without our dad"; ad nauseam.
This sudden interest is not some new-found concern about women's lot. It is the expression of a social and economic project that's in trouble: a project which has always rested on the division of society into men's and women's roles and which needs to shore up and deepen that division in order to survive.
Married women in Australia entered the labour force in unprecedentedly large numbers between 1980 and 1995. The real value of wages declined by 15-25% over the same period as employers strove to cut costs, so the income women brought home was the principal buffer against increasing poverty in a growing number of households.
Because women accepted part-time, casual and lower paid jobs, they were welcomed by employers. By the mid-1990s, however, the drive to cut wages and jobs escalated. Two years and thousands more job cuts later, women's prospects for employment are dramatically reduced.
Adele Horin, in the October 1 Sydney Morning Herald, quotes Jeff Borland from the Centre for Economic Policy Research at the Australian National University, who says that jobs growth for women, which in 1980-95 outstripped that of men, has now dropped back to the same level as men's. Between November 1995 and May 1997, married women's employment decreased by 200,000.
Borland points out that official unemployment would be 25% higher if women were entering the labour force at the same rate as they were in the 1980s.
The recent trend of increasing female unemployment has been exacerbated by the government's funding cuts to community based child-care. A survey completed last month by the National Association of Community Based Children's Services reveals that between July and September more than 4000 families reduced their hours or withdrew from care; three-quarters of these said it was because of the fee increases.
The sharp decline in women's entry into the labour force poses some big problems for the government. The removal of women's wages from many households will escalate poverty.
If the government is to further cut social supports without paying too high a political price, it must also roll back the sentiment that women have the right to equal educational, workplace and personal choices and opportunities, and convince a majority that strengthening the family and women's traditional role within it is the best antidote to social ills.
The employers and their governments don't want a full return to the 1950s, when women married young and then stayed home while their husbands went to work. Women are still the main source of cheaper labour, and women's lower pay (most have no choice) exerts a permanent downward pressure on male wages.
Nevertheless, if the funding cuts and sackings are to continue without fuelling widespread dissatisfaction, women's expectations must be substantially lowered.
The many more articles we'll see and speeches we'll hear about the advantages of stable, two-parent family life will be written with precisely that aim.
By Lisa Macdonald