ジェンダー研究 第12号 2009

〈特別寄稿〉

Work‑life ʻBalanceʼ in Australia: The State of Play
Barbara Pocock, Natalie Skinner and Philippa Williams

This paper considers some conceptual issues around ʻwork‑lifeʼ analysis (especially ʻwork/care regimesʼ and ʻwork/care chainsʼ before reviewing some empiricaloutcomes of existing arrangements for Australian workers, along with their households. The paper explores factors that underpin work‑life outcomes and, building on
empirical ﬁndings, oﬀers a model depicting some of the key contributors to work‑
life outcomes. I argue that an ethic of care needs to accompany Australiaʼs welldeveloped ethic of work, and that new arrangements are necessary to govern theirsimultaneous realisation in Australia if negative interaction between the spheresof work and the rest of life are to be minimised. The paper is in three parts: ﬁrst
a discussion of the conceptualisation of work and life issues; secondly the state ofwork and life in Australia; and thirdly some brief reﬂections on policy implications.
The paper draws on the 2007 Australian Work and Life Index (AWALI) (Pocock et
al. 2007a). I acknowledge the contributions of my colleagues Dr Natalie Skinner and
Dr Philippa Williams to the paper.

Key Words:

Work‑life Balance, Gender and Work Pattern, Work and Care, Work‑life Interaction,Work Life Policy

Introduction: ʻWork/Care Regimeʼs and ʻWork/Care Chainsʼ
Australiaʼs labour market has undergone signiﬁcant change over the past thirty years, withsignificant change in the gender composition of the labour force, as well as much change in
the nature of households (Charlesworth et al. 2002; HREOC 2007; Pocock (2003). Our labour
market is small by international comparison: there are just over 10 million workers in Australia,
compared to over 66 million in Japan and 798 million in China.
Resource demands from China in particular, have led to very low rates of oﬃcial unemployment (less than 5 percent). While underemployment aﬀects many, oﬃcial unemployment is very
low on historical trends and by international comparison, although it is currently increasing inlight of the global ﬁnancial crisis. The rate of participation in employment has been increasing
steadily for the past 30 years, on the back of womenʼs increased participation as menʼs has fallen.
The current rate of womenʼs employment participation (58.1 per cent) compares to 48.5 percent in Japan. This rate is close to that of the US and higher than the OECD average. However,1

Barbara Pocock, Natalie Skinner and Philippa Williams. Work‑life ʻBalanceʼ in Australia: The State of Play

womenʼs employment participation is often interrupted for extended periods after childbearing,and much of it is part‑time ̶ much more than in most OECD countries. In 2006 over 46 percent of women were employed part‑time (26 per cent in the OECD), a third of them for lessthan 16 hours a week. Most of these part‑timers are employed casually rather than permanently.
Non‑standard employment has grown signiﬁcantly in Australia in the past 30 years, especiallythrough ʻcasualʼ work: that is, work that lacks protection from unfair dismissal and is exempt
from most rights and beneﬁts attached to permanent work including paid sick and holiday leave(although some casual workers receive a loading to compensate for some of these losses). Casual
work rose from around 13 per cent of the workforce in 1984 to 23.2 per cent in 2006 (Campbell
2007, p 20, ﬁgure 4).
Many Australians think very positively about their work: 60 per cent say they would go towork even if they did not need the money (HILDA 2001). This does not mean, however, thatthey like all aspects of their existing jobs.
For full‑time workers, hours of work have increased on average over the past 30 years, andmany ﬁnd their jobs more intensive and demanding. Most of the hours of overtime worked byAustralians are unpaid and many are involuntary. While there has been a great deal of change
in patterns of paid work, there has been all too little change in patterns of unpaid work withthe latest data showing that women do twice as much as men and men have not increased theircontribution to housework in the past decade, while women have actually decreased theirs marginally. These changes in patterns of work and care have led to a very lively public conversation
about work and family issues in Australia over the past decade.
Modelling work and care regimes
Work and life outcomes in Australia are governed by a range of factors, which can beunderstood as a type of ʻwork/care regimeʼ. Work and care are combined within complex social,
cultural and institutional situations, and these shape work‑life outcomes and whether ʻwork‑lifebalanceʼ is possible, and for whom. These work/care regimes are located within speciﬁc nationaland historical gender orders (Connell 1987, p. 116). Several factors construct work and careregimes including: dominant values and norms (e.g. appropriate forms of care, the ʻproperʼ role ofmothers and fathers); work/care institutions (like labour regulation, childcare provisions, leave arrangements, working time and welfare systems) and the behaviours and preferences of individuals(Pocock 2005), as set out in Fig. 1.

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ジェンダー研究 第12号 2009

Table 1 sets out a list of the components of work/care regimes, which diﬀer widely fromcountry to country.
Table 1 :At this point in time or place, work and care outcomes are the consequences of the gender
order and its specific embodiment in a work/care regime (Pocock 2003). Recent analysis ofAustralian Social Survey Attitudes data against this model finds that traditional breadwinner

3

Barbara Pocock, Natalie Skinner and Philippa Williams. Work‑life ʻBalanceʼ in Australia: The State of Playhouseholds and ʻnew traditionalʼ households (where women work part‑time) are better accommodated in Australiaʼs current work/care regime, than dual earner households and sole parent/earnerhouseholds who seek less time at work, more time for leisure and feel the pressures of a time‑squeeze (Western, Baxter and Chesters 2007).

Work/care regimes shape the lived experience of workers and their dependents and theyoften embed ʻwork/care chainsʼ which aﬀect the work and care outcomes of care providers ̶whether nannies, childcare workers, or other service providers. In many cases, the standards ofcare for those who depend on care providers (like the children of immigrant nannies), deteriorates
down a ʻwork/careʼ chain. In the absence of universal quality public care supports and decent
wages for paid carers in some countries, increasing participation rates can result in growing inequality and deteriorating care chains. At the end of these chains are the cognitive, emotional andsocial deﬁcits of children who the literature suggests may be damaged by their poor care (Norrie
and Mustard Fraser 2002). In recent years, researchers have begun applying theories of global
commodity chain (or ʻvalue chainʼ) analysis to the international care economy, paying attention
to its intersection with immigration systems (Kurian 2004) and to its gendered character (Durano2005). A ʻcare deﬁcitʼ is emerging in many locations (Hochschild 2003) as female participationin paid work grows, especially where patterns of work are changing very rapidly as in China andIndia (Chowdhury, Carson, and Carson 2007, Hill 2007). This care deﬁcit is met in various ways:
over‑work by working women; decline in the quality of care; the employment of cheap carers
who immigrate to cities from rural and regional locations or other countries, or a shift of careonto other family or community members. The latter mechanisms have been conceptualised as a
ʻwork‑care chainʼ (Salazar Parrenas 2001, Hochschild 2003, Pocock 2006). Williams (2008) has
described these mechanisms ̶ of meeting care through the immigration of low paid workers‑asa ʻprofoundly asymmetricalʼ solution to the problem of work and care.
Existing literature suggests that a ʻglobal care economyʼ exists, underpinning labour markets
in every country. OECD countries are entering new international trades of care with poorer
countries (Durano 2005). Rapid population growth in poorer countries accompanied by high levelsof national poverty is accelerating immigration to countries facing a shortage of carers. This has
important implications for global care and work flows, especially around the Pacific Rim. For
example, 6.5 million Filipino immigrants now reside in over 130 countries. These international
circuits of care are gendered and racialised (Salazar Parrenas 2001; Ehrenreich and Hochschild2002). Rich white nations and individuals draw on mostly women of colour from Asia and Africa
to do their care work, usually at very low pay. While such immigration creates many positive
beneﬁts, existing literature also points to an international distributional care injustice, as care isdrawn ʻupwardʼ and away from the country (or region or household) of origin where a local care4

ジェンダー研究 第12号 2009

deﬁcit is created (Hochschild 2003).
ʻWork/careʼ chains can be observed both within countries (as workers employ lower paid
workers to make up the ʻcare gapʼ or leave their rural home to take up work in cities leaving
the care of families to others) and between countries (as immigrant workers from poor countries
increasingly step into the care gap). Kittay et al. argue for a global ethic of care to meet the
problem of unfair care trades. Such an ethic creates obligations for those who draw on the care of
the poor immigrant and drain the quality of care in the country and family network of origin (2005,
p 454).
Around the Paciﬁc Rim, both labour ﬂows, work patterns and care arrangements are evolving
rapidly at a time when in many locations the welfare state is in retreat (or under‑developed), thelabour force is being feminised, and care deﬁcits in developed countries are increasingly met or
created by immigration.
Conceptualising work and life balance
Understandings about the interaction between work and life have become more sophisticatedover the course of the past 20 years. Analysts increasingly apply a life‑course approach and betterdata are being collected in a range of countries. However, the discussion is marked by someconceptual grey areas.
Firstly, it is helpful to deﬁne what we mean by ʻworkʼ and by ʻlifeʼ and consider their relationship with work and family. We deﬁne work as paid work and life beyond work as the activities
outside paid work including household activities and those activities with family, friends and community, including care activities and voluntary activity. We do not assume that ʻworkʼ is distinct
from ʻlifeʼ: given the growing reach of work into the lives of Australians, this distinction would
be absurd, but in order to better understand how work aﬀects the rest of life, it is important toanalytically distinguish the activities of paid work from the rest of life beyond the workplace.
This deﬁnition subsumes ʻfamilyʼ activities within the deﬁnition of ʻlifeʼ activities beyond work, sothat in our deﬁnition work‑life policy discussion subsumes the very signiﬁcant ﬁeld of ʻwork andfamilyʼ policy.
Secondly, how should we think about work‑life interaction? Are they distinct spheres that canbe held in balance? This is an important question. It lies at the heart of the common question:
how can I get the balance right ̶ as a mother, a worker, a manager? The concept of balance
is not helpful given its implication that at the centre of such balance exists a clever or lucky
individual who manages to keep things ʻin balanceʼ. This denies the complex range of actors andforces at work in constructing work‑life outcomes. The metaphor of ʻbalanceʼ over‑states theplace of the individual in the work‑life picture. Instead, we believe we should be talking about
thenature of work and life and the porous boundaries between them.
Popular public discussion often implies that ﬁnding the ʻbalanceʼ is a matter of clever self‑

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Barbara Pocock, Natalie Skinner and Philippa Williams. Work‑life ʻBalanceʼ in Australia: The State of Play

organisation. This perspective denies the gendered, class and ethic diﬀerences that shape work‑
life outcomes for individuals. Wealthy individuals can buy a wide range of helpful work‑liferesources that are not available to the poor. Professional workers often rely on low paid workers
to undertake long commutes, daily juggles around multiple jobs and to live on their low pay tosustain the work‑life ʻbalanceʼ of professional and better paid workers. The latter often require
a much more complex juggle by those they rely on than they undertake themselves, given theirmaterial diﬀerences in resources. Such gaps in ʻwork‑lifeʼ circumstances raise issues about what
Tronto (1993) and Williams (2001) have highlighted as an ʻethic of careʼ which is necessary tocomplement our over‑developed ʻwork ethicʼ. This ethic of care has its international and racialdimensions as many social scientists have discussed (see Salazar Parrenas 2001). Clearly, thediscussion around work‑life outcomes is also highly gendered.
Work-life interaction in Australia
What is the state of work‑life outcomes in Australia? We recently conducted a survey about
work‑life interaction in Australia. The AWALI 2007 sample is a national stratiﬁed random sample
of 1435 Australian workers conducted through computer‑assisted telephone interviews over two
weekends in early 2007.3 The survey provides a good representation of the Australian labour
force and the analysis is weighted by age, schooling, sex and geographic area to reﬂect population
distributions. We consider four main ﬁndings which have signiﬁcant policy implications in theAustralian context: overall patterns of work‑life interaction, outcomes in relation to hours, andhours preferences and the eﬀect of poor quality jobs on work‑life outcomes.

We asked people about the frequency with which work interferes with activities outside
work, with time for family and friends, with community connections. We also asked respondents
how frequently the reverse occurs: how often personal life interferes with work activities andrestricts time spent at work. Conﬁrming international ﬁndings, we ﬁnd that work interferes withlife much more than the other way around. For example, 70.0 per cent of both women and men
felt that personal life never or rarely interferes with work activities, compared to the 45.1 per centof men and 50.2 per cent of women who felt that work never or rarely interferes with activities
outside work. It is interesting to note that workers often try to protect their workmates from theeﬀects of stress on the home front: they talk of keeping it to themselves. However, they are notalways so able to protect those with whom they live with from stress arising from work.

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ジェンダー研究 第12号 2009‑‑

Public policy and academic debate about the relationship between work and life outside work
tend to focus on the reconciliation of work and family. However, the impact of work on workersʼ
capacity to develop and maintain connections in their community is generally overlooked. Theseeﬀects include the impact of work on social networks and social cohesion. We asked respondents
how often work interferes with their capacity to develop or maintain connections and friendships
in their community as a broad indicator of the spillover of work onto the broader community
fabric. Our ﬁndings on this issue indicate that workʼs interference with community connections
is surprisingly widespread (see Table 2). Just under half the respondents (47.3 per cent) felt thatwork interferes with their capacity to build and maintain community connections and friendships
to some extent.

Table 2 : Work interferes with community connections by gender and work
status, employees, AWALI 2007 (%)

Men
Full-timePart-time

47.3
74.7

30.0

Total

51.2

17.1*
28.1

Women
Full-timePart-time

48.9
61.5

26.2
30.9

Total

54.6

28.4

All
Full-timePart-time

47.8
65.2

28.7
27.0

Total

52.7

28.3

22.7
8.2*

100
100

20.7

100

24.9

100
100

7.5
17.0

23.5

7.7
19.0

100

100
100

100

: Data weighted by Australian Bureau of Statistics data on age, highest level of schoolingcompleted, sex and area. *Estimate not reliable. Hours usually worked per week used to categorise
full‑time (35 or more hours) and part‑time (34 or less) work status. Table excludes self‑employedpersons.

Over half the respondents report frequently (often or almost always) feeling rushed or7

Barbara Pocock, Natalie Skinner and Philippa Williams. Work‑life ʻBalanceʼ in Australia: The State of Playpressed for time (52.5 per cent, see Table 3). Women report more frequent feelings of time pressure (55.6 per cent) than men (49.9 per cent). Given that women are more likely to work part‑time and that part‑timers overall are less often rushed or pressed for time, this eﬀect for womenis pronounced. Working part‑time oﬀers men more relief from time pressure than it does women.
Overall, women working full‑time are most likely to experience high levels of time pressure in
their daily lives.

Most respondents (75.4 per cent) are satisﬁed with their work‑life balance. There are small
statistically significant associations with gender and part‑time/ full‑time work status. Women(77.2 per cent) were more likely to report feeling satisﬁed than men (74 per cent) and part‑time
employees (84.6 per cent) more frequently report satisfaction than full‑timers (71.8 per cent).
Overall, women working part‑time are most likely to be satisﬁed with their work‑life balance.

Table 3 : Rushed or pressed for time by gender and work status,
employees, AWALI 2007 (%)

Men

17.0

29.8

53.2

100

34.0

35.4

30.6

100

19.4

30.6

49.9

100

32.4

59.4

100

8.2
15.8

33.1

51.0

100

11.6

32.7

55.6

100

14.0

30.7

55.3

100

21.0

33.8

45.3

100

15.9

31.6

52.5

100

Full-timePart-time
Total
Women
Full-timePart-time
Total
All

Full-timePart-time
Total: Data weighted by Australian Bureau of Statistics data on age, highest level of schoolingcompleted, sex and area. Hours usually worked per week used to categorise full‑time (35 or more
hours) and part‑time (34 or less) work status. Table excludes self‑employed persons.

8ジェンダー研究 第12号 2009

In the past 30 years the patterns of working hours in Australia have changed signiﬁcantly,
with growth in both part‑time and extended full‑time working hours. In our survey, 33.4 per centworked more than 45 hours a week. Diﬀerent working hours are associated with sizeable andsigniﬁcant diﬀerences in work‑life outcomes.
The most striking ﬁnding is the consistent association for both women and men between long(45‒59) hours and very long hours (60+) and poorer work‑life outcomes.
Table 4 : Satisfaction with work-life balance by gender and work status,
AWALI 2007 (%)

Men

27.4

72.6

100

Part-time
employees

17.7*

82.3

100

Total
Women

26.0

74.0

100

Full-time

29.7

70.3

100

14.4

85.6

100

Total

22.8

77.2

100

All
Full-time

28.2

71.8

100

employees
Part-time

15.4

84.6

100

24.6

75.4

100

Full-time

employees

employees

Part-time

employees

employees

Total: Data weighted by Australian Bureau of Statistics data on age, highest level of schoolingcompleted, sex and area. *Estimate not reliable. Hours usually worked per week used to categorise
full‑time (35 or more hours) and part‑time (34 or less) work status. Table excludes self‑employedpersons. Response range on satisfied with work‑life balance: 1 ʻnot at all satisfiedʼ 2 ʻnot verysatisﬁedʼ, 3 ʻsomewhat satisﬁedʼ, 4 ʻvery satisﬁedʼ. Responses 1 and 2 categorised as ʻnot satisﬁedʼ,
responses 3 and 4 categorised as ʻsatisﬁedʼ.

This effect is most clearly seen in relation to an index of work‑life interaction which weconstruct by averaging responses across ﬁve measures of work‑life interaction: the frequency thatwork interferes with activities outside work, with time for family and friends, with community
connections; the frequency of feeling rushed or pressed for time and the overall work‑life9

Barbara Pocock, Natalie Skinner and Philippa Williams. Work‑life ʻBalanceʼ in Australia: The State of Playsatisfaction.4 The average score is set at 100 with a standard deviation of 15 (very similar to thetreatment of standard IQ scores). A score higher than 100 indicates a worse than average work‑
life outcome and a score lower than 100 indicates a better than average work‑life outcome.
When we look at this index in relation to working hours there is a consistent statisticallysigniﬁcant association between longer work hours and poorer work‑life outcomes (< 0.001) for

both men and women (Figure 2.1).

With the exception of employees working short part‑time hours (< 16 hours) or standard
full‑time hours (35‑44 hours), women consistently have signiﬁcantly worse work‑life outcomesthan men as they work longer hours.
The picture is interesting when we turn to part‑time work. Much more than in most OECD
countries, many Australian women attempt to reconcile work and family through part‑time work.
Most of them work long part‑time hours (two‑thirds of all female part‑timers in our sample).
Overall, part‑time hours (< 35 hours per week) are associated with better work‑life outcomes.
But part‑time work hours have diﬀerent eﬀects for men and women (< 0.001), suggesting thatpart‑time work is not a very eﬀective protector against negative work‑life spillover for women.
Long part‑time hours are associated with signiﬁcantly worse work‑life outcomes for women compared to short part‑time hours. Further, there is no diﬀerence in work‑life outcomes for women
working long part‑time or standard full‑time (35‒44) hours. In contrast, work‑life outcomes formen do not differ between short and long part‑time hours, and men working long part‑timehours have better work‑life outcomes than men working standard full‑time hours (35 ‑44 hours).
This ﬁnding might be explained by a range of factors including the possibility that part‑time jobs

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ジェンダー研究 第12号 2009

are low quality jobs (a relationship explored below) or that part‑timers have less external support(from partners, the market or the extended family) than full‑timers enjoy ̶ which might in turnreﬂect their internalised belief that as part‑timers they should need less support.

Table 5 : Working hours preferences and work‒life outcomes, AWALI 2007 (%)

Never/

Sometimes

Often/almost always

Total

rarelyWork interferes withactivities outside work
Actual and preferred hours match

55.7

31.5

12.8

100

Prefer more hours

54.5

30.0

15.5

100

Prefer fewer hours

36.9

35.7

27.5

100

All

47.3

33.1

19.6

100

Actual and preferred hours match

49.1

36.0

14.9

100

Prefer more hours

44.2

34.6

21.1

100

Prefer fewer hours

27.8

38.3

33.9

100

All

39.1

36.8

24.1

100

Actual and preferred hours match

64.1

24.2

11.7

100

Prefer more hours

56.2

32.3

11.5

100

Prefer fewer hours

40.8

30.6

28.6

100

All

52.7

28.3

19.0

100

Actual and preferred hours match

20.8

33.9

45.4

100

Prefer more hours

17.6

38.4

43.9

100

Prefer fewer hours

10.9

26.4

62.8

100

All

16.0

31.3

52.7

100

Work interferes with enoughtime with family or friends

Work interferes with
community connections

Feel rushed orpressed for time

Satisfaction with

Not satisfied

Satisfiedwork–life balance
Actual and preferred hours match

15.1

84.9

100

Prefer more hours

25.1

74.9

100

Prefer fewer hours

33.1

66.9

100

All

24.5

75.5

100

: Data weighted by Australian Bureau of Statistics data on age, highest level of schooling completed, sex and area. Hours
match defined as 1 hour or less difference between actual and preferred hours per week. Table excludes self-employedpersons.

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Barbara Pocock, Natalie Skinner and Philippa Williams. Work‑life ʻBalanceʼ in Australia: The State of Play

Many Australian workers work more hours than they want to, while others work less. In ourstudy, 40 per cent of those surveyed had a good ﬁt between their actual and preferred hours,
which we deﬁned as one hour or less diﬀerence between their actual and preferred hours per
week (changing this deﬁnition to two hours or less made little diﬀerence to our analysis). Most of
those who did not have a good ﬁt wanted to work less.
International studies suggest that workers who have a good ﬁt between their working time
regime and their preferences are likely to have better work‑life outcomes (Fagan and Burchell
2002; Messenger 2004). Our data provide good evidence in support of the proposition that a goodﬁt between hours of work and preferences improves work‑life outcomes, reinforcing studies inother countries. Signiﬁcantly better work‑life outcomes occur for those workers who can get abetter ﬁt between the hours they work and their preferences.

In terms of the overall work‑life index, there are significant differences between those
respondents with a good ﬁt and those who seek more or seek less hours (< 0.001; see Figure2.2). Those with a good match of actual and preferred hours have the best work‑life outcomes.
Those who are working less than they want also have better than average outcomes.

12ジェンダー研究 第12号 2009

Table 6 : Job quality outcomes by gender, AWALI 2007 (%)

Strongly or

Strongly orsomewhatsomewhat disagree

agree

Men
Work load (often seem to have too much work todo)
Job security (worry about the future of the job)

43.9

56.1

65.9

34.1

34.6

65.4

48.8

51.2

27.0

73.0

15.7

84.3

47.6

52.4

72.4

27.6

27.7

72.3

50.8

49.2

28.0

72.0

11.9

88.1

45.5

54.5

68.8

31.2

31.6

68.4

49.7

50.3

27.5

72.5

14.0

86.0

Flexible working time (working times can be
flexible to meet own needs)
Freedom when to do work (a lot of freedom todecide when to do work)
Freedom how to do work (a lot of freedom todecide how to do work)
Job satisfaction (satisfied with present job)
Women
Work load (often seem to have too much work todo)
Job security (worry about the future of the job)
Flexible working time (working times can be
flexible to meet own needs)
Freedom when to do work (a lot of freedom todecide when to do work)
Freedom how to do work (a lot of freedom todecide how to do work)
Job satisfaction (satisfied with present job)
All
Work load (often seem to have too much work todo)
Job security (worry about the future of the job)
Flexible working time (working times can be
flexible to meet own needs)
Freedom when to do work (a lot of freedom todecide when to do work)
Freedom how to do work (a lot of freedom todecide how to do work)
Job satisfaction (satisfied with present job)

: Data weighted by Australian Bureau of Statistics data on age, highest level of schooling completed, sex
and area. Table excludes self-employed persons.

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Barbara Pocock, Natalie Skinner and Philippa Williams. Work‑life ʻBalanceʼ in Australia: The State of PlayThose who are working more than they want, however, have the worst outcomes. Thiseﬀect is partly explained by the fact that many who want to work less are working long hours.
However, when we control for diﬀerences in hours this pattern, while moderated, is sustained.
Controlling for hours, the adjusted work‑life index scores are 95.9 for those with a good ﬁt, 100.8
for those who would prefer to work more hours and 103.6 for those who would like to work less.
This pattern is observed for men and women. Figure 2.2 shows the original (unadjusted for hours)
index scores.

What diﬀerence does the quality of the job make to work‑life spillover? Our index assesses
six job characteristics: work overload, job insecurity, time and task autonomy, work schedule ﬂexibility and overall job satisfaction. Our ﬁndings conﬁrm what a large body of literature has alreadyestablished: job security, load and employee control aﬀect work‑life outcomes and the generalwell‑being of workers. On each of the job quality measures, substantial proportions of employees
report low quality working conditions and experiences. Spillover from work into activities outside
work is greater for those in poorer quality jobs, and this ﬁnding holds consistently for all six job
quality measures and across the ﬁve work‑life measures. This eﬀect is particularly strong for workoverload, which accounted for 16 per cent of the variation in work-life outcomes. These eﬀects
are consistent for men and women.
These ﬁndings have implications for the conceptualisation of work‑life issues and the ways inwhich they are researched. While we have investigated only some factors that might be expected
to shape work‑life outcomes (leaving aside other likely contenders, for example, personal care
responsibilities and the overall state of the labour market), we have found that gender, issues
around job quality, hours and the ﬁt between actual and preferred hours are important in constructing work‑life outcomes for individuals. We contend that our conceptualisation of the factors
aﬀecting work‑life outcomes should recognise these factors and their possible moderators. We
set these out in Figure 2.3, giving some prominence to job characteristics, alongside other likely
causal factors.
In this figure we suggest that personal resources and aspirations are relevant to work‑
life outcomes, but that many other factors well beyond the control of the individual are also
inﬂuential, including various dimensions of job quality and especially workersʼ capacity to exercise
voice to aﬀect their jobs and their hours. Some of these factors are not independent of each other.
For example, job security shapes worker voice: workers without secure employment hesitate toask for changes in working time. In another example, long working long hours are often associated with dimensions of job quality like work overload. We also suggest in this model that theresources and demands that individuals deploy or face (whether ﬁnancial, personal or domestic)14

ジェンダー研究 第12号 2009

shape work‑life outcomes, as does gender. A well paid, male worker on a permanent contract andwith a high level of domestic support, minimal care responsibilities, a good boss who responds
to worker requests, exercising control over working time, task and hours will have much better
work‑life outcomes that a casually employed, low paid mother with a boss who does not listen ̶especially if she unwillingly works overtime. This model suggests that greater attention should be
paid to aspects of job quality, working hours and worker voice in researching work‑life issues.
Public policy options in Australia
What do our empirical findings mean for policy in Australia centred on the reconciliationof work and activities outside it? Work and family issues have been particular sites of lively
political debate in recent elections. However, while the 2001 and 2004 Australian federal elections
involved considerable public debate about busy households and stresses on working mothers, very
little changed in their aftermath beyond some increases in ﬁnancial beneﬁts for families and aﬁnancial bonus for those families having babies. While these changes are not insigniﬁcant, they
were oﬀset by labour law changes that made it more diﬃcult for many workers to reconcile workand family, and resulting in a deterioration in the quality of jobs especially among the low paid
(Elton et al. 2007; Elton and Pocock 2007; Peetz and Preston 2007; Pocock 2006).
As the data that we have presented show, issues of control over working time, influence
over working life and job quality have very important eﬀects on the nature and dimensions of15

Barbara Pocock, Natalie Skinner and Philippa Williams. Work‑life ʻBalanceʼ in Australia: The State of Playwork‑life interaction. Changes in unfair dismissal regulation in particular cast a long shadow oversecurity and voice at work (Elton and Pocock 2007; Elton et al. 2007). With the election of a new
Labor Government in November 2007, the prospects for more worker inﬂuence have improved.
The new Government is restoring unfair dismissal rights, strengthening the right of workers torequest ﬂexibility at work (although it is unclear how well these will be enforced), and improving
collective bargaining rights and arrangements.
Australiaʼs working carers need concerted action from all levels of government if they are
to work and care under arrangements that recognise and better reward their dual contributions.
An economy that openly relies on greater contributions out of households to labour supply must
provide decent minimum labour standards and supports. Without them, women and children inparticular are the unsung shock absorbers of the economy and labour market. Labour and social
policy has to be better framed for social justice objectives including a better social settlement
for children, low income earners and women. These new policies require new framings, better
research and more use of the virtuous circle of good research: piloting, review, full implementation and further rounds of new research.
(Barbara Pocock, Natalie Skinner and Philippa Williams,
Centre for Work + Life, University of South Australia)
Notes
１This paper draws in part on a 2008 publication: B Pocock, N Skinner and P Williams (2008) ʻWork‑Life
Outcomes in Australia: Concepts Outcomes and Policiesʼ in Work Less, Live More, Critical Analysis of theWork‑Life Boundary, edited by C Warhurst, D R Eikhof and A Haunschild, Palgrave, London, P 22‑43.

２

The AWALI 2007 survey was conducted by a professional polling company and will be repeated annually. Respondents were selected by means of a stratiﬁed random sample process. The concepts, methods,
literature, measures and pre‑tests underpinning AWALI are outlined in Pocock et al. (2007b).

３

The scale has a satisfactory internal consistency (Cronbachʼs alpha = 0.81).

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