Mothers and Waged Work Following Equal Opportunity Legislation in Australia, 1986–2006

Grimshaw, Patricia

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-20267-5_17

Patricia Grimshaw³

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Abstract

How Australian mothers have in recent decades straddled the gap between the competing demands of family and workplace is a complex story. The federal Australian Labor Party’s landmark Sex Discrimination Act (1984) and Affirmative Action (Equal Opportunity in Employment Act, 1986) provided the impetus for notable transformations in the gendered profile of the Australian workforce. Women who were mothers of young children, however, continued to face multiple obstacles in accessing waged work, as successive governments supported only with reluctance their participation in the formal workforce. This chapter draws on insights into women’s strategies drawn from accounts of participants in a collaborative oral history project that focused on the experiences of Victorian urban and rural women engaged in professional, white-collar, farming and factory work.

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Notes

1.
I acknowledge the assistance in the development of this chapter of Shurlee Swain and Ellen Warne through our collaboration on the Australian Research Council-funded project, ‘The History of Working Mothers in Twentieth Century Australia’; and thank Claire Higgins for her invaluable research assistance. I am grateful to Shurlee, Claire, Jackie Dickenson, Maila Stivens and Carla Pascoe Leahy for reading and commenting on the paper.
2.
Anna, interview with Claire Higgins, Melbourne, 4 November 2005. Note that we have not revealed the full names of interviewees.
3.
See Lyn Craig and K. Mullan, ‘Parenthood, Gender and Work-Family Time in the United States, Australia, Italy, France and Denmark,’ Journal of Marriage and Family 72, no. 5 (2011): 1344–1361.
4.
Deborah Brennan, ‘Babies, Budgets, and Birthrates: Work/Family Policy in Australia 1996–2006,’ Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society 14, no. 1 (2007): 32; Barbara Pocock, The Labour Market Ate My Babies: Work, Children and a Sustainable Future (Annandale: Federation Press, 2006) Lyn Craig, K. Mullan and M. Blaxland, ‘Parenthood, Policy and Work-Family Time in Australia, 1992–2006,’ Work, Employment and Society 24, no.1 (2010): 27–45; see also Patricia Grimshaw, John Murphy and Belinda Probert eds., Double Shift: Working Mothers and Social Change (Melbourne: Circa Press, 2005).
5.
See Ute Frevert, Emotions in History: Lost and Found (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2011).
6.
See Patricia Grimshaw, Shurlee Swain and Ellen Warne, ‘Whose Problem? Experts and the Working Mother in 1960s Melbourne,’ in Go! Melbourne in the Sixties, eds. S. Hanlon and T. Luckins (Melbourne: Circa Press, 2005), 131–148.
7.
Statistics compiled by Claire Higgins. Source: Australian Censuses.
8.
Patricia Grimshaw, Nell Musgrove and Shurlee Swain, ‘The Australian Labour Movement, the Eight Hour Day and Working Mothers in the United Nations Decade for Women, 1975 to 1985,’ in The Time of Their Lives: The Eight Hour Day and Working Life, eds. Julie Kimber and Peter Love (Melbourne: Australian Society for the Study of Labour History, 2007), 137–152.
9.
National Agenda for Women: Implementation Report, Office of the Status of Women, Dept. of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, August 1991), 66.
10.
National Agenda for Women, 67.
11.
Half Way to Equal: Report of the Inquiry into Equal Opportunity and Equal Status for Women in Australia, House of Representatives Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs (Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, April 1992), 78–79.
12.
Half Way to Equal, 69.
13.
Half Way to Equal, 64.
14.
Half Way to Equal, 69.
15.
National Agenda for Women, 17.
16.
Half Way to Equal, 68.
17.
Half Way to Equal, 62.
18.
Pocock, The Labour Market Ate My Babies.
19.
HREOC, It’s About Time: Women, Men, Work and Family, Final Paper 2007, 153.
20.
HREOC, It’s About Time: Women, Men, Work and Family, Final Paper 2007, 75–76, 82–85.
21.
Natasha Campo, ‘Feminism Failed Me: Childcare, Maternity Leave and the Denigration of Motherhood,’ Australian Feminist Studies 24, no. 16 (September 2009): 327.
22.
Brennan, ‘Babies, Budgets, and Birthrates.’
23.
Pocock, The Labour Market Ate My Babies, 171.
24.
Gabrielle Meagher, ‘Contested, Corporatised and Confused? Australian Attitudes to Child Care,’ in Kids Count: Better Early Childhood Education and Care in Australia, eds. Elizabeth Hill, Barbara Pocock and Alison Elliott (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 2007), 137.
25.
Brennan, ‘Babies, Budgets, and Birthrates,’ 45.
26.
Brennan, ‘Babies, Budgets, and Birthrates,’ 32.
27.
Meagher, ‘Contested, Corporatised and Confused,’ 141.
28.
Meagher, ‘Contested, Corporatised and Confused,’ 145.
29.
Brennan, ‘Babies, Budgets, and Birthrates,’ 49.
30.
Lyn Craig, ‘How Do They Do It? A Time-diary Analysis of How Working Mothers Find Time for the Kids,’ SPRC Discussion Paper 136 (January 2005): 6.
31.
Brennan, ‘Babies, Budgets, and Birthrates,’ 47.
32.
Belinda Probert, ‘Mothers in the Labour Force: A Step Forward and Two Back?,’ Family Matters, no. 54 (1999): 60.
33.
Gill Tasker and Don Siemon, Is Child Care Affordable? Pressures on Families and Their Use of Formal Long Day Care (Melbourne: Brotherhood of St Laurence, Community Child Care, 1998): ii.
34.
Tasker and Siemon, Is Child Care Affordable?
35.
Janet C. Gornick, Marcia K. Meyers, and Katherin E. Ross, ‘Public Employment and the Employment of Mothers: A Cross-national Study,’ Social Science Quarterly 79, no. 1 (March 1998): 35–54.
36.
Belinda Probert, ‘“Grateful Slaves” or “Self-Made Women”: A Matter of Choice or Policy?,’ Australian Feminist Studies 17, no. 37 (2002): 14.
37.
Anna, interview with Claire Higgins.
38.
Ibid.
39.
Kelly Hand, ‘Mothers’ Views on Using Formal Child Care,’ Family Matters, no. 70 (2005): 16.
40.
Sophia, interview with Claire Higgins, Melbourne, Victoria, 13 September 2007.
41.
Joan, interview with Claire Higgins, Nunawading, Victoria, 11 September 2007.
42.
Joan, interview with Claire Higgins.
43.
Brennan, ‘Babies, Budgets, and Birthrates,’ 49–50; Craig, ‘How Do They Do It?’ 6.
44.
Hand, ‘Mothers’ Views on Using Formal Child Care,’ 13.
45.
Harriet, interview with Claire Higgins, Melbourne, 5 September 2007.
46.
Harriet, interview with Claire Higgins.
47.
Ibid.
48.
Ibid.
49.
Jane, interview with Claire Higgins, Melbourne, Victoria, 4 September 2007.
50.
Meagher, ‘Contested, Corporatised and Confused?,’ 138; Probert, ‘“Grateful Slaves” or “Self-Made Women,”’ 15; Craig, ‘How Do They Do It?,’ 8; Hand, ‘Mothers’ Views on Using Formal Child Care,’ 15.
51.
Sharon, interview with Claire Higgins, Melbourne, Victoria, 7 September 2007.
52.
Sharon, interview with Claire Higgins.
53.
See Allon J. Uhlmann, Family, Gender and Kinship in Australia: The Social and Cultural Logic of Practice and Subjectivity (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2002).
54.
Yan, interview with Claire Higgins, Nunawading, Victoria, 11 September 2007.
55.
Thanh, interview with Claire Higgins, Melbourne, 11 September 2007.
56.
See for details: Christina Cregan, Tales of Despair: Outworker Narratives, Department of Management Working Paper, University of Melbourne, 2002.
57.
Renate Howe, Christina Cregan and Patricia Grimshaw, ‘Migrant Women Workers and Their Families: Two Social Surveys, 1975 and 2000,’ in Double Shift: Working Mothers and Social Change in Australia, eds. Patricia Grimshaw, John Murphy and Belinda Probert (Melbourne: Circa Publishing, 2005), 70–85.
58.
Fiona Haslam-McKenzie, ‘Farm Women and the “F” word,’ in Australian Rural Women Towards 2000, ed. Alston Margaret (Centre for Rural Social Research, Charles Sturt University, 1998), 23.
59.
Fiona, interview with Claire Higgins, 21 November 2007, Cowwarr, Victoria.
60.
Harold Bear, Frances Lovejoy and Ann Daniel, ‘How Working Parents Cope with the Care of Sick Young Children,’ Australian Journal of Early Childhood 28, no. 4 (2003): 55.
61.
Craig, ‘How Do They Do It?’ 16.
62.
J. Peck, ‘Outwork and Restructuring Processes in the Australian Clothing Industry,’ Labour and Industry 3, no. 2 (1990): 302–329.
63.
Peck, ‘Outwork and Restructuring Processes.’
64.
Pocock, The Labour Market Ate My Babies; see also Lyn Craig, Contemporary Motherhood: The Impact of Children on Adult Time (London: Routledge, 2016).

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University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia
Patricia Grimshaw

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University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia
Carla Pascoe Leahy
University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia
Petra Bueskens

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Grimshaw, P. (2019). Mothers and Waged Work Following Equal Opportunity Legislation in Australia, 1986–2006. In: Pascoe Leahy, C., Bueskens, P. (eds) Australian Mothering. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20267-5_17

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20267-5_17
Published: 29 January 2020
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-20266-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-20267-5
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