 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
||
Signs of the Times Australia / NZ edition — lifestyle, health, relationships, culture, spirituality, people — published since 1886 |
||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||
Signs of the Times Australia / NZ edition — lifestyle, health, relationships, culture, spirituality, people — published since 1886 |
||||||||||
. . . a typical American mother would be eligible to receive about $US35,000 a year . . .
Most of the world’s work is not only done by women, it is denied remuneration. According to “Mom’s Market Value,” a typical American mother would be eligible to receive about $US35,000 a year—if a monetary value were attached to her “childcare, transportation, errands, cleaning, laundry, cooking, bill-paying, grocery shopping, and so on” (Newman). While American men do up to 35 per cent of housework, their contribution is typically “infrequent, irregular or optional,” says Newman. That is to say, “they do not launder, clean, or cook, nor do they feed, clothe, bathe or transport children” (R Cowan, in Newman).
Housework is part of what Hazel Henderson calls the “love economy,” that is, “the economy of unpaid work.” Globally speaking, unpaid, cooperative housework together with volunteer community work is estimated at $US16 trillion annually. The love economy comprises 50 per cent of all productive work in industrial societies and 65 per cent in developing economies. In Fiji, for example, where most indigenous homes lack electricity and piped water, and kitchens rely on wood fuel, it falls mostly to women to gather the wood and water. Even on Mother’s Day. Fijian men believe they are hard-wired for what they do (work outside the house) and women for what they do (inside).
This belief is long changed for Aussie men, but not enough for Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Pru Goward. She recently called for debate about housework in order to stall a declining fertility rate, to rationalise government spending on social services, and to avoid more broken relationships. Given the historical change in the occupation-participation rate for women, corresponding changes on the domestic front are called for, she argued. Australian women are doing 90 per cent of child-care tasks and 70 per cent of all family work. They’re working triple shifts between their own families, ageing parents and job. On average, in Australia, women do 12.6 hours of paid and unpaid work daily and men 10.7 (Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission).
Noting that only 40 per cent of women over 55 were in the workforce, and that more than half of mothers did not return to work before their children turned six—rates far lower than comparable countries—Ms Goward said, “It’s no wonder women work less here than they do elsewhere; there’s only so much they can fit in a day!” Maternity allowance and employer-paid maternity leave didn’t encourage men to do more around the home and unless this situation changes, Ms Goward argued, “there has to be a limit on how many children a woman is prepared to have.”
With this pressure, Australia’s already low birth-rate of 1.74 children per woman (down from three, 50 years ago) would suffer a further decrease. The nation needs 2.1 children per woman to maintain its present population, but statistics show that far from wanting more children, an increasing number of people are opting for a one-child policy.
Studies consistently reveal that married women are more likely to suffer from the stresses of married life than men. Some of that stress must be laid at feet of an uneven distribution of domestic labour. The impact of 30 years of feminism aside, married women still do more than twice the housework of their counterparts.
Researcher David DeVaus found that three-quarters of disabled children in the country are cared for by their mother and 85 per cent of parental care is carried out by daughters.
No doubt then, a debate must be had. But that could run the risk of provoking a counter-effect. Far from saving relationships, as a US study found, more housework for men correlates with more domestic conflict and higher incidence of relationship breakdown (Newman). This isn’t an argument for the status quo, but it does caution for mutuality in a debate. After all, there’s no point in talking about housework if by doing so the home isn’t going to work.
Sources: Government internet sites; The Australian; David Newman, Sociology; David de Vaus, Diversity and Change in Australian Families.
Extract from Signs of the Times, May 2005 .
Home - Archive - Topics - Podcast - Subscribe - Special Offers - About Signs - Contact Us - Links
Copyright © 2006 Seventh-day Adventist Church (SPD) Limited ACN 093 117 689
Unassociated
advertisement:
This article comes from a
regular column in
Signs
of the Times.
