Is paid maternity leave enough?

Men's Rights Agency - whose main aim is to "promote equal rights and a level playing field for all men..."; who acknowledge the right of all women to equality, but state that "over- reaction is causing an imbalance leading to discrimination against men"; and who are prominent campaigners against the family court and the payment of child maintenance;

The Festival of Light - a fundamentalist Christian organisation who lists the purpose of papers such as Mr Maley's "to provide a Christian perspective on current issues that relate to the family"; and

The HR Nicholls Society - a conservative industrial relations think-tank, one of whose founders was Peter Costello.

As you all know, but Mr Maley appears not to, the majority of women workers are found in the services sector, which has a high concentration of casuals and part-time employment and is, generally speaking, a low wage sector. A government report this week reveals that the proportion of enterprise agreements which provide for casual labour has rocketed from 43 per cent to 71 per cent in the past two years. Women hold 72 per cent of part-time jobs (59 per cent of which are casual) and, as many women will testify, these jobs are often less than ideal. Casual workers are often denied benefits such as superannuation, allowances for skills, bonuses, loadings and over-award payments.

Much of this work is not structured to meet families' needs, but rather to suit the employer. The most recent data on collective agreements actually show deceases in the percentage with flexible starting and finishing times, provisions for family and carer's leave, maternity leave and home-based work. We're going backwards under the current regime.

Many women's working lives are also characterised by broken patterns of workforce participation due to child bearing/rearing, underutilisation of their skills, and residual wage discrimination. It is also obvious that work that women do is still not valued as highly as that of men. These characteristics of women's work mean that we need to devise labour market policies that provide for the upgrading of skills and ensure that financial and service supports are available to promote continuity of employment across a woman's working life. We also need to address the undervaluation of work which is predominantly undertaken by women.

The policy mix to ameliorate these problems should include measures to reduce the gender pay gap, paid maternity leave, more affordable and accessible childcare, strategies to ensure that part-time work is a solution and not a trap and more family-friendly working environments across all industry sectors, not just in large corporations employing professional women. It means ensuring that Australia's workplace relations system works for women by preventing inequitable outcomes.

However, the Howard government's award simplification legislation has limited allowable award conditions, the two major results being:

That elimination of women-unfriendly working conditions is harder to achieve, especially in industries classified as highly feminised; and

That elimination of the gender pay gap has stalled.

I was astounded to learn this week that the Employment Advocate has admitted he has stopped collecting information on family-friendly measures in the workplace agreements favoured by the Howard government, even though he is required in law to report annually on progress in the extent to which agreements facilitate better work and family balances.

Australia needs a sea change in the policies and attitudes that are hindering the capacity of families, and particularly women, to take on and survive the complex responsibilities of work and family. And we must oppose the message that those in the government send that these policies are for the corporate high flyers with nannies and housekeepers, as they are really for the millions of Australian mothers whose jobs are the safety net in their family's economic survival who work to pay the bills and to support their families. These families simply can't afford to have one parent at home full-time for five years, and many of these women can't afford to lose their connection to paid work, and the skills and confidence that are so important to ensuring their security in our rapidly changing world.

To do this requires require the development of more responsive models of parental leave and income support, improved access to high quality, affordable childcare, and a modern industrial relations agenda with options like longer unpaid leave with guaranteed job security, part-time work, working from home, and job sharing.

This is what women want.