Work and Family Life - Term Paper Example

Running Head: Work and family life Sociology Name Institute Date Introduction The workplace is very fundamental when discussing about balancing paid work and unpaid work, which takes place mainly in the family environment. There is a significant relationship between the workplace and family life. Families depend on the paid work for economic sustenance while, workplaces depend on the paid work that occurs in the family to sustain the labor force. In the workplace, an individual worker is expected to meet the demands of paid work without any disruption from family life. Therefore, workers who have caring responsibilities may be required to work extra hard. The key features of the pressure cooker that affect the ability of contemporary Australian women to successfully balance their paid work and family life and care responsibilities include longer working hours, work intensification, unequal pay, job insecurity and high rates of maternal employment and an increase in causal and part time work (Alexander and Baxter 2005). To enable women to balance their work and family life, the government has focused primarily on policies such as accessible childcare arrangements, parental leave and other family-friendly workplace agreements while ignoring gender inequalities in housework and leisure and their effect on women’s attempt to balance work and family life. It has been observed that regardless of their employment status, Australian women spend more time in housework than even in childcare. Gender inequity in terms of time women spend in housework and leisure directly and negatively influence their accessibility to employment and their work-family balance once they return to the paid workforce (Baird and Seth 2005. The wider culture in which men and women live in can be influenced by workplace arrangements and cultures. Workplace structures and cultures can lead to a culture of inequality through, for instance, gender isolation in employment, unequal pay, unfriendly family policies and male dominated work cultures with unfriendly approaches towards employees with family responsibilities. Most workplaces exist outside the social context and hence do not acknowledge that family responsibilities are necessary support for workplaces and for the entire economy. Most employers view care as a choice rather than an unavoidable and essential part of working life. Most employers do not cater for the bills, mortgage and child care making women to return to paid employment before even their maternity leave has ended in order to meet these needs. This has contributed to a harmful impact on the health of the mother. Paid and unpaid works are inter-reliant as those with caring responsibilities depend on the care of those with paid work (Gunthorpe and Bloomfield 2004). The workplace culture of long, inflexible and unpredictable working hours has led to unmet diverse range of paid and care needs. It has made it impossible for women with caring responsibilities to join paid employment. The difficulties women face when trying to arrange their working hours, a loss their skills because of being out of the labor force and a lack of alternative care arrangements has made it impossible for women to reenter workforce. They are therefore left with no option than to join part time work. Unpredictable working hours combined with job insecurity in part time work have made it very difficulty for women to balance work and family life. Insecure and unpredictable informal employment is destructive to family life. The culture of long working hours in the workplace has also made women to adjust their expectations and therefore they don’t seek senior positions as it impact on their ability to manage their family/care responsibilities. Long working hours are not necessary associated with improved performance or greater productivity. Long working hours lead to an increase in employer and colleagues anticipations and a family-unfriendly work culture (Williams 2000). Part time work has played a significant role in women’s responses to balancing their family/care responsibilities. Most Australian women are in part time employment. Research studies have shown that the hours of part time work often do not meet individual preferences, with many women wanting to work for more hours. According to ABS statistics, half of 66% of the women who were in part time employment in 2005 were looking for more hours of work (Preston et al. 2006). This option of part time employment for women with family/care responsibilities is not ideal in terms of preferred hours and job quality. Most employers do not buy the idea of part time work for senior positions, such as managers. As a result, most women are turning to low-grade jobs positions to cater for their family and care responsibilities. Professional women, such as teachers, nurses, legal workers, take a cut in status and move into shop assistant as part time workers so as to fit around family responsibilities. This leads to loose of talent and skills for the labor market as a whole and is a waste of both public and private investment in education and development. Although part time work arrangements are common among Australian women with family and care responsibilities, this does not reflect a preference for part time work. Research studies have found out that most women have a preference for paid work while as some have a preference for part time work since they are exclusively responsible for unpaid work at home. Most women spend more time each day in domestic work than in paid work (ABS 1997). Part time work has harmful effect on constant earnings and supports a women’s subordinate role in labor market and the family. The limited number of hours worked plus the kind of part-time jobs that are available are responsible for the lower earning. Permanent part time work is disadvantaged since it does not present the opportunities for higher earnings, promotion and training. There are other earning penalties associated with part time work apart from low income. For example, a woman who moves to part time work after giving birth earns less per week compared to when she was in full time work. Even if she returns to full time work, she does not experience any salary increase that she would have experienced if she remained working full time. The lower earnings linked to part time work act as barriers to career advancement. Moreover, part time work is frequently casual work which is associated with job insecurity, lack of leave entitlements of permanent employment and is poorly remunerated. The lack access to flexible working hours and quality part time work have made women to be locked into a pattern of employment inequalities, with low salaries and limited opportunities (Bittman 2003). In Australia, marriage and parenthood means an increase in women’s domestic work, while for men, this means a decrease in housework. Therefore, most Australian women, especially the employed married mothers, use their weekend to catch up on domestic responsibility (Baxter 1993). The time women use in domestic work influences the time they spend in paid work. However, for men, the less time they spend on paid work, the more time they spend on leisure and vice versa. While Australian men can choose between paid work and leisure since they are independent of domestic duties, Australian women choose between paid and unpaid work. The time women use in paid work and domestic duties reduces their time for leisure. This in turn contributes to time pressure for women, where as men are not affected (Bloomfield 2004b). Time pressure is linked to poor mental and physical health, increased heart diseases and reduced life satisfaction (Brown et al 2001; Gupta 2002). As a result, women are unlikely to find healthy work-life that balances with the current gender division of unpaid work and leisure. Women therefore experience substantial strain when attempting to balance paid work and unpaid work (Preston et al. 2006). Australian women also sacrifice their sleep to get their domestic duties done in order to have more time for leisure (Bloomfield 2005a). They therefore tend to spend more time in domestic work and sleep less as compared to men. Time pressure also makes women to experience sleep problems. Clinical research has shown that sleeping for less than seven hours in a night is linked to a wide range of accidents. Pre-mature mortality risk and physical and mental disorders (Bloomfield 2005a). Hence, the objective demands linked to trying to balance work and family and the strain that result put women at a higher risk of sleep disorders, premature death, poor health and chronic disease. There employment segregation in Australian employment system. Women are over-represented in certain sectors of employment. They are mostly employed in industries such as hotels and accommodation, coffee shop, artistic and recreational services, health and community organizations and retail trade. These are industries which have minimum conditions which favor women, that is, part time work and low working hours. Employment segregation has led to pay gaps among men and women. Pay inequity reinforces the social expectations of women to give birth and then stay at home caring for children. Though people with disability face greater obstacles to paid work than other groups in Australia, women with disability are also lowly represented in paid employment as compared to their counterpart with disability. Disabled women who have caring responsibilities face specific obstacles when moving from welfare to paid work. For example, inflexible disability services and they undergo extra costs necessary for employment and ceasing eligibility for associated welfare entitlements. This makes it more difficulty for women with disability to balance their work and family life (Bittman 2003). Australia does not have a legal paid maternity leave system and flexible leave arrangements. Leave options are not widely available and are only limited to the public service and large companies employing highly trained workers. Women in the private employment do not benefit from such leaves entitlements. Paid leave entitlements are more likely to be given to people with white collar job. As a result, father have shunned away from taking leave, leaving the whole responsibilities of child care to the mother. There is a significant correlation between paid maternity leave and neonatal death rates. The lack of other paid leave entitlements, for example personal leave and annual leave, has also made it difficult for women to balance their work and family life as fathers are unlikely to take such leave to help mother in family responsibilities. Inflexible leave arrangement do not allow for planned and unplanned contingencies making it difficult for women to balance work and family life (Whitehouse et al 2006). Conclusion and recommendations Workplace structures and cultures, such as longer working hours, an intensified work culture, women employment segregation, job insecurity and lack of a legal system for paid maternity leave, play a significant role in influencing the employer responses to the idea of balancing work and family life. It is therefore important for employers to come up with family-friendly policies, flexible working arrangements and paid maternity leave systems, as well as promote gender equality in employment. Gender inequalities, such as domestic work and leisure time availability, also put women at a significant social disadvantage to men in the contemporary Australian society. These gender inequalities act as major obstacles to women’s achievement of a healthy balance between work and family life. Although many of government policies, for example funding of formal childcare arrangements and family-friendly workplace strategies, support parents who desire to go back to the labor force and make it easier to balance work and family, the problems facing women in their attempt to balance work and family go beyond what is dealt with in current policy (Baird and Seth 2005). It is therefore vital to come up with further initiatives to help women who would like to decrease their time commitment to domestic work. Such strategies should also be used to raise women’s prospects of equally taking part in the labor market, enhance gender equity in terms of housework and leisure time and satisfy some of the anxieties women face when trying to balance work and family life. To solve the problems that women experience when attempting to balance work and family life and the consequential health implications, it is important to come up with policies aimed at encouraging men to sacrifice some of their leisure time and take part in family and domestic responsibilities. Work and family debates has engaged in persistent argument as regards increasing men’s involvement in family and domestic responsibilities, but only little change that has been observed (Pocock 2003). Raising men’s awareness about the health negative impact of their leisure time might accelerate such change. References Alexander M. and Baxter J. 2005. "Impacts of Work on Family Life Among Partnered Parents of Young Children" Family Matters, 72:18-25. Australian Bureau of Statistics (1997). How Australians spend their time, ABS Catalogue No. 4153.0. Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics. Baird M. and Seth A. 2005. Litwin "Rethinking Work and Family Policy: The making and taking of parental leave" in Australia International Review of Psychiatry, 385-400. Baxter, J. (1993). Work in the house: The household division of labor. St Lucia: UQP. Bittman M. et al. 2003. Father’s implementation of Family Friendly Employment requirements. Final report arranged for the Sector of Family and Community Services, Canberra. Bloomfield, L. J. (2004a). A month of Sundays: The gendered distribution of domestic work and its impacts on leisure and time pressure as per the day of the week. OSW Research Discussion Paper No. 2003/2/3. Canberra: Headquarters of the Position of Women, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. Bloomfield, L. J. (2004b). Gender variations in the impact of managing paid work, domestic work, and leisure on time pressure. OSW Research Discussion Paper No. 2003/2/2. Canberra: Headquarters of the Status of Women, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. Brown, P. R., Brown, W. J., & Powers, J. R. (2001). Time pressure, contentment with leisure and wellbeing among Australian women. Annals of Leisure Research, 4, 1-16. Gunthorpe, W. & Bloomfield, L. J. (2004). Pressure cooker: Why women are more time pressured than men. OSW Research Discussion Paper No. 2003/1/1. Canberra: Headquarters of the Status of Women, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet Gupta, S. (2002). A hurry-up way of life can harm the young. Time, December 2. Pocock, B. (2003). The work/life collision. Sydney: The Federation Press Preston A. et al. 2006. Women in Social & Economic Research Women's Pay and Conditions in an Era of Changing Workplace Regulations: Towards a "Women's Employment Status Key Indicators" (WESKI) database Curtin University of Technology September. Williams J. 2000. Inflexible Gender: Why work and family disagreement and what to do about it. Oxford University Press New York. Whitehouse G. et al 2006. The Parental Leave in Australia Survey: November 2006 report December 2006. Read More