Workplaces: why male power must be cut

Recently the English New Statesman reviewed the situation of women in the UK and found that all is not well. This analysis begins: “Families and firms are at war. It will only be won when parents - fathers as well as mothers - can care for their children without harming their careers. It’s the economy that must change.”

It goes on to proclaim “The Sex War is over. Girls outperform boys at school and are streaming through higher education. Young women are now taking home the same size wage packets as young men. But the celebrations have to wait. A new, tougher battle has to be fought. It is not a duel between men and women, but between families and firms. This family war will be won only when parents - fathers as well as mothers - can care for their children without dumbing down their careers.”

So what’s happening here?

First, the UK seems to have much of what we need. Women are entitled to statutory maternity pay, mostly at 90 per cent of their weekly earnings and men are entitled to two weeks’ paternity leave (pay negotiable). There is a statutory right to ask for part-time work when women have young children. Figures suggest that the pay gap between men and women is relatively low (3 per cent) under the age of 30 but rises rapidly when children appear. This reflects their move to part-time or lower status jobs. The solution offered is more sharing by male and female parents of the downside of time off, lower pay and part-time work, loss of status. This seems very unenterprising, so let us go for some major changes.

We need to catch up on some UK provisions but, more importantly, to change long term underlying prejudices and assumptions that are often unquestioned. Women are emerging into workplaces that reflect very archaic attitudes about both work and place. This is shown by our lack of paid maternity leave. Instead, there is just a one-off cash payment of $5,000. We have been promised the right to ask for part-time work when the new laws come through, but it is a bit vague on details of how it will work. We earn about 84c to every male dollar and, as in the UK, women have many part-time and low paid jobs.

There is also the problem with who does domestic work. The UK article doesn’t cover the issue but, as I write, new local data shows that while more women have moved into paid work, men have not taken up their share of household tasks. The latest time use study shows that men do no more a day on domestic duties than a decade and a half ago, but women have cut their time use by 10 minutes a day. In child care, women put in nearly an hour a day caring for children (not including multi-tasking) versus 22 minutes by men. Their time is also more likely to be play time than chores. Even non-employed fathers spend less time on domestic work than non-employed mothers and full-time working mothers spend almost double the time on household duties than equivalent fathers. And it’s not changing with younger people: females 15-24 still spend 1.7 the time that males of this age do on domestic chores.

It seems unlikely that more men will start to work part-time and so take on more care and domestic work, and/or the lower paid jobs that often mirror the home care tasks. Few men have had the socialisation that encourages women to take on unpaid care and low status, low pay jobs. We need to look at how to shift the basic attitudes to paid and unpaid work, the gender stereotyping of jobs and ridiculous undervaluing of the often more productive part-time worker. This involves questioning the confusion of long hours of being there with productivity and the need to re-evaluate underlying assumptions about skills and job prestige that reflect archaic male definitions of value setting.

Technology has changed both the content of paid and unpaid work and the need to always be present in many jobs. People have basically stopped directly making things by hand and more time is now spent offering services to people, or thinking.

These tasks depend not on arcane skills with tools and widgets but on human capacities to determine needs and communication. Most workers are now no longer labouring but thinking. But these changes are not reflected in revaluing types of workplaces, use of time and diverse hierarchies of skills and knowledge. Pay, status and value have moved somewhat but within parameters still set in the 19th to mid- 20th centuries.

There is a deep gender mindset to these categories which needs reviewing so we can design new ways of working and redefining skills and valuing to solve some of the many problems we face socially and economically.

We need to rebuild our social system so that it values relationships, including unpaid care, community and nurture as highly as paid workplace activities. Then there may be better balance between them. This would allow the revaluing of care-related paid occupations, which are generally paid less than other similarly skilled jobs. Redefining productivity would also allow for the proper valuing of part-time work in areas where services, productivity and creativity are probably highest in early or shorter hours on the job.

It would also make sense to recognise the costs of the present system in the under use of qualified women and the loss of their services, if they move into lower level jobs or out of the paid workforce.

Young women often say feminism is passé because they can choose to do whatever they want with their lives but fail to recognise the gender basis of valuing skills, tasks and even achievements. So choice is illusory. Women do choose to spend time with children more than men. But instead of being a workplace penalty this sort of choice should be integrated into a wider set of criteria so that the good life is more than paid work. And choice should mean a non sexist balance is possible.

A young woman in an online forum summed it up: “I am at the age now where babies seem to be popping up all over the place with colleagues, friends and family all welcoming new additions to their home. But in every single case it has been the mother who has taken a year off for maternity leave with the father taking a few weeks off to help after the birth (which is a great start).”

She goes on to say: “It seems that the problem lies with employers and society deeming it as acceptable for women to remain at home to care for their children while it is almost unheard of for men to do so. The other thing to consider is the difference between the wages of men and women. Of course if the man earns more it would be a lot easier financially for him to remain full time in the work force.” So change is not yet being seen as arriving.

Why not a norm of a 30-hour week for all those with care responsibilities? Or, more radically, work units of three hours but with hourly rates dropping once you pass 30? Shorter hours could be as productive and allow time for other responsibilities as well. Why not have an assumption that we all take time out, part-time or full time in our lives to care, say an allocation of up to four years over one’s working life allowed for all of us? Like a sabbatical or long service leave, it could allow people the dignity of approved care leave and a set pay rate, partly government funded. Income support should supplement low pay areas when others are being cared for and we may move away from the impasse where women were allowed to go so far and no further.

Let us revalue caring skills and change the balance of worth to a more pro-social set of values. Let us keep the creativity and excitement of passion and tensions and recognise that conflict can be creative and makes for change, but let us recognise that nurture is equally to be valued and allow all of us to mix the modes.

It is time to seriously revisit the split that came between factory and home in the industrial revolution. Men went out to work, away from home-based craftwork. The office followed and now it offers the main form of workplace for many. Many workers are already sole traders and types of sub-contractors, so employment is changing and we need to recognise these shifts in arranging our time. The use of high tech equipment means much can be done almost anywhere. Jobs like checkouts and personal care services, that need us to be there, will remain but need to be recognised as best offered in shorter shifts. It is time to undo workplace gender streaming and look at more flexible supported roles for all. It is the 21st century.

Women in the workplace data, reported by Crikey.com.au, April 10, 2008.

• Women continue to be over-represented in clerical, sales and service jobs, holding 87 per cent of advanced clerical jobs. They also tend to be disproportionately employed part-time. - From “Gender differences in occupation and Employment in Australia”, Alison Preston and Elizabeth Whitehouse, Curtin Business School paper.
   
• Women are massively under-represented in the top echelons of employment, with only six female CEOs in the ASX top 200 companies and one in the top 10. Overall, median pay for the top female earners in the ASX200 companies was a mere 58 per cent of the median male pay. Female Chief Financial officers on average earn half the wage of their male counterparts and female CEOs earn two-thirds of what male CEOs earn. It was, however, found that ASX200 companies with more women on the board tend to have more female top-earners. - Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency.
   
• Women on average in 2006 earned $941, only 84 per cent of men’s average weekly income. This is reflected throughout the age groups, with new graduate females in 2007 earning a median salary of $3,000 per annum less than their male counterparts. - Graduate Careers Australia.