Women and hidden unemployment

Men and women do have different life and work experiences: we can surely agree that without getting into inter-planetary explanations.

Moreover, the world in which we all co-exist has changed dramatically in my life-time, let alone over the past 100 years. That is important for the shape of the social institutions and social policies which impact our life and work experiences - although it remains the case that women bear children, and then raise them in most cases.

The recent Australia Institute report, The impact of the recession on women, highlights the disturbing implications for women, for their life-long economic security, and some of the “along the way” consequences for younger school children, of the present state of public policy.

Women’s work-life experience reflects their main responsibility for child bearing and child raising.

Official statistics do not. In fact, they conceal more than they reveal.

The official ABS definition of unemployment is a case in point in that it does not accurately reflect the unemployment experience of many women.

A better indication is the so-called “hidden” unemployment figures. These show that real unemployment is often about twice the official unemployment figures. Annual surveys by the ABS identify those with marginal attachment to the labour market - the hidden unemployed - making up about 6 per cent of the labour force before the recession struck. In critical age groups, for example, ages 25-34 years, women account for 80 per cent of the hidden unemployed.

There is also the category which the ABS describes as outside-the-labour-market. On the face of it this category is irrelevant to the labour market experience of women. However, each month about 2.5 per cent of all employed women leave and go right outside-the-labour-market. About the same number each month come from outside-the-labour-market into employment. So these women are not outside the labour market in any real sense.

The ABS figures tell us even less about those women who disappear right out of the labour market and reappear again. However, as with the hidden unemployed, child care duties are a major influence on women’s behaviour.

The budget papers project an increase in unemployment and a fall in the participation rate. The latter is likely to mean an increase in hidden unemployment as well as the anticipated increase in official unemployment.

When out of work these women do not conform to the expected pattern and many are tied up with household and childcare responsibilities. For policy purposes it is difficult to understand their behaviour and to design labour market and other assistance programs.

The disadvantage women face in the labour market is reflected in their financial resources. Superannuation balances on retirement are much higher for men. However, women’s needs in retirement are objectively greater given their longer life span. The current economic downturn will make it even harder for women to accumulate sufficient resources for a comfortable retirement.

The ABS figures on the labour market reflect an era when full-time male employment was the dominant employment type and downturns meant there may be a temporary period of unemployment during which men sought alternative employment. Female employment for older age groups was a curiosity and inconsequential for policy purposes.

This stereotype is no longer relevant when almost half the labour market is female, hidden unemployment is predominantly female and larger than official unemployment.

Moreover, the fact that a lack of child caring services is such a big issue related to women’s work-force attachment is completely inconsistent with current Commonwealth child care policy - which is 150 per cent focused on the under fives.

When will the policy makers realise that children grow up, year on year? There are far more un-supervised young school age children floating around the streets of our towns and cities than we can find places in formal child care. There are women choosing to work, part time, at lesser paid jobs; there are women, often sole parents, desperate to work longer hours; there are women who want to get into the work-place - what stops them is the lack of Commonwealth leadership on policy for care for school age children.

My grandmother was a single parent of four children, one with a developmental problem: she worked. She scrubbed shop floors, she kept a boarding house - she had no retirement savings. My mother worked, as did her husband - she was able to fit work around child rearing. I worked as did my husband - in my generation women married younger, had their children younger than do the current generations. I relied on friends and housekeepers for after school care - just as the current occupants of The Lodge rely on paid housekeepers.

Most women can’t afford that, and they want some decent Commonwealth policy to help them with out of school hours care, changes to retirement incomes policies and better access to re-training options.