Structural and cultural issues need addressing to provide better balance.
INTERNATIONAL Women’s Day is held each year on March 8 to celebrate the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women.
Such was the level of interest this year that events were held for the better part of the month.
I attended functions with planners, lawyers, engineers and other professionals working in government and the private sector.
Similar themes emerged across a number of conversations, with particular emphasis on the difficulties women face balancing their work and caring responsibilities, and the importance of flexibility and access to quality, affordable childcare.
These issues were highlighted in the Committee for Perth’s 2015 report on gender equality ‘Filling the Pool’, with flexible working arrangements identified as critical to managing the juggling act.
The report also identified that Western Australia had the lowest number of childcare places per capita in the country.
More recently, the cost of day care was a flashpoint in the federal election, with website Care for Kids reporting the daily average expense for Perth (postcode 6000) was $153.75 before subsidies.
Early in my career I took almost three years’ maternity leave.
After 10 months at home with my first child, economic circumstances forced me back to work.
I looked for weeks and finally secured a place, having received word of a new facility being set up by two ex-teachers.
Every day I ran the gauntlet, dropping my daughter at day care and being at my desk on time (and doing the reverse at the end of the day).
She was often the first child to arrive and the last to leave, which, on many occasions, had us both in tears.
I took two years out with my second child and, upon returning to work, utilised family day care and negotiated a shorter working day.
However, the older the children got, the more complicated the caring arrangements became, including before- and after-school arrangements and holiday care.
Three decades on, the juggling act is real and best illustrated through anecdotes.
One woman told me her preferred day care had a long waitlist, so second-best was her only choice.
One friend has her mother stay from regional WA two days each week, which is particularly generous but in her own words ‘unsustainable’.
Another, more-elaborate arrangement I was told about was a woman working in the north-west who flew her children to Geraldton via Perth each school holidays so they could be cared for by their grandparents, given local arrangements are next to non-existent.
During the pandemic, we were able to stress-test the concept of productively working away from the office for those who were not essential or frontline workers.
The success of that exercise has created a tension between employees and employers about how many and on which days people should be in the office.
Some parents now have the flexibility to work and care, which is a newfound freedom they will not readily give up.
To my mind there is too much emphasis on mothering as opposed to parenting, which plays out in the statistics: website Statista reports that women are the primary caregivers at a ratio of about three to one.
According to the Committee for Economic Development, a peak gender difference in the workforce shows up between the ages of 35-39, when 23 per cent of women are not in the labour force compared to 7 per cent of men.
A staggering 48 per cent of women – compared to just 3 per cent of men – cited caring for children as the key reason for not working.
We are in the midst of a skills crisis and removing the barriers to women’s participation was a key focus of last year’s national Jobs & Skills Summit.
Senator Katy Gallagher, who has federal responsibility for the women’s portfolio, acknowledged in her opening address: “As a country, we simply can’t afford to leave women’s talent on the shelf – if the women’s workforce participation rate matched men, we would increase GDP by 8.7 per cent or $353 billion by 2050.”
As the Filling the Pool report found, there are structural and cultural reasons why women are not fully participating in the labour market.
Both need to be worked on with equal fervour to increase opportunity for women, which will also benefit the economy, creating that all important win-win.
• Marion Fulker is an adjunct associate professor at UWA.
