By Fiona West

Australians are working in a “long-hours culture” that is more likely to disadvantage the careers and wellbeing of mothers than fathers, according to new research from the Australian National University (ANU).

Social scientist Dr Lyndall Strazdins, an expert in work-life balance issues from the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health (NCEPH) at ANU, says Australia has some of the longest full-time work hours in the OECD. And because society is expecting longer hours from its full-timers, mothers are often unable to commit to this type of work.

Recent ABS statistics show the average father works 52 hours a week, compared with 34 hours for mothers.

“The criteria for getting ahead in a job is merit, but actually if you’ve got to work 52 hours a week, not 38 hours, it is not just merit,” Dr Strazdins says.

“You’ve got to be able to put in the time to be able to be in a high-level job. But [Mothers] don’t have time.”

Dr Strazdins says mothers are still expected to pick up the lion’s share of tasks to do with raising children and other family commitments. This is exacerbated by the fact that in many instances their partners are working longer and longer hours.

She says 30 years ago about 45 hours a week was devoted by families to work. Now, with two parents often needing to work for financial survival, it is up to 80 hours.

“There is only 24 hours in a day and [families] need a certain amount of time to care for kids and do all the other things that go behind what has to happen in order to keep you at a job and keep the rest of the household running,” Dr Strazdins says.

“Once upon a time they spent 45 hours in paid work and the rest of that time was available to the family. Nowadays that has shifted because there are now two people working, so the rest of that available time has changed as well.

“There are people who say time pressure shouldn’t be a big issue because average work hours haven’t changed that much but, for a families, it’s an enormous change. That’s why we are getting those people saying they are so time stretched, because it really is a big, complete transformation.”

Dr Strazdins says her research has found mothers are changing their work hours according to their children’s needs but, regardless of their children’s age or requirements, fathers work hours are not changing. And those mothers who did work full time often paid a price in terms of their own wellbeing.

Research Dr Strazdins has carried out with the Australian Institute of Family Studies shows mothers in full-time employment have to trade off many more of the things that contribute positively to their wellbeing. These women tend to report more psychological distress and relationship problems.

“Mothers’ wellbeing tends to be best when they were working part-time, but this entails trade-offs around career achievements and income,” Dr Strazdins says.

“This demonstrates that among many other things, gender inequity is also a product of an uneven sharing of time between mothers and fathers, and our increasing expectations of long work hours for many full-time jobs. You could say that women are being held back by an ‘hourglass ceiling’.”

But Dr Strazdins stresses it is our working culture, “not a gender war” that is pushing these decisions.

She says National Families Week 2008 this week is an ideal opportunity to consider the need for a comprehensive policy approach to balancing work and family issues, and fixing some of the inequalities that arise for many mothers because of time pressures.

“I think time is now a new metric of discrimination,” she says.

“The question we have to ask is should we be working longer? Is that what we as a society want? Is that really fair? Is that fair on everybody, including children? Is it a fair society?”
 

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