Budgeting for work—life balance: the ideology and politics of work and family policy in Australia

Australian Bulletin of Labour, June, 2007 by Eliazabeth Hill

Abstract

Since its election in 1996 the Howard Government has invested billions of dollars in Australian families with children. Much of this money has been delivered through policies the Government claims will 'support families in the choices they wish to make' about how they combine paid work and family life (Howard 2005). This paper evaluates three areas of Commonwealth budget expenditure on work and family policy: the Family Tax Benefit; the Maternity Payment," and the Child Care Benefit and Tax Rebate. Analysis of the structure of these benefits highlights how a traditional ideology of gender and gender relations is embedded within the policy framework and delivers greater financial support to households in which women prioritise staying at home to care overpaid employment. The policy bias toward traditional gender relations makes government rhetoric about choice problematic and shows that the work and family tensions that exist at the level of the household also exist at the policy level, with negative implications for women's labour market participation.

Introduction

The nexus between the public sphere of work life and the private sphere of family life has always been of interest to feminist scholars (see for example Crompton 1999, 2006; Folbre 1994, 2004; Pocock 2003; Rich 1976; and Waring 1988). But in these early years of the twenty-first century the question of how families manage their multiple responsibilities, and how women in particular engage in the labour market, bear, and care for children, has finally found its way to the top of the policy agenda. Governments, business and international policy institutions around the globe are engaged in public debate about what kind of policy measures best support working families. This new-found interest has culminated in the development of innovative social policies such as the 'Right to Request' legislation in the United Kingdom (DTI 2003); the extension of universal public child care in Quebec, Canada; and reform of the tax/benefit scheme in Canada (Tsounta 2006). In Australia, policy developments in the area have not always been well received by social policy experts, economists and welfare advocates (Hill 2004; Apps 2001,2006a) and the findings of two public inquiries into work and family issues show that Australian families face a number of obstacles in their efforts to fulfil work and care responsibilities.

Submissions to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission inquiry 'Striking the Balance: Women, Men, Work and Family' (HREOC 2007), and a parliamentary inquiry, Balancing Work and Family (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Family and Human Services 2006) provide evidence that the work-life experience of many Australian families is compromised by limited access to paid maternity leave, inadequate parental leave provisions, difficulties in accessing affordable high-quality child care, inadequate flexibility in the workplace, job insecurity, irregular work hours and low pay. The difficulties faced by households trying to reconcile the public sphere of work with the private sphere of family life were found by both inquiries to pose major obstacles to family formation and parents' capacity to return to and maintain paid employment.

These findings stand in stark contrast to the Howard Government's long-standing commitment to support working families. On regaining the Liberal leadership in January 1995 John Howard committed his party to the establishment of a 'new compact' for Australian families. The aim of this new compact was to recognise and address the difficulties faced by households wanting to better integrate their paid work and family responsibilities 'to support families in the choices they wish to make' (Howard 2005). Since winning government in March 1996 the Howard Government has pursued a number of policy initiatives explicitly aimed at families with children, and Commonwealth funding to families with children has grown rapidly. But have these billions--currently almost $29 billion dollars per year (Commonwealth Budget 2007)--helped Australian families reconcile the competing demands of paid work and family responsibilities? In this paper I review three areas of Commonwealth Government budget expenditure that have a direct impact on families and the choices they have about how to combine paid work with care responsibilities: the Family Tax Benefit, the Maternity Payment, and the Child Care Benefit and Child Care Tax Rebate. A critical evaluation of these policies highlights how particular ideologies and theories about gender and gender relations are prioritised within the policy framework and deliver greater financial support to particular family types.

There are a number of models that seek to capture women's labour market participation or work-family balance. Some models such as that developed by Catherine Hakim emphasise the notion of individual choice (Hakim 2000). In her recent work on women's employment in Britain, Hakim argues that the heterogeneous character of women's employment patterns is due to the choices made by different types of women. She argues that women's behaviour can be divided into three 'preference groupings': home and family centred; work centred; and 'adaptives', that is, women who shift their priorities between work and family depending on where they are in the life cycle. Women are presumed to be free to choose how they balance work and care, and any differences between women and men's labour market participation is argued to be a reflection of innate or essential gender differences rather than externally imposed constraints (Hakim 2000). Other social theorists focus on how normative and moral frameworks shape individual preferences around work and care (Duncan et al. 2003). This approach emphasises how 'moral rationalities' or ideas about what defines a mother, a father, and a worker are socially constituted. As they are negotiated in reference to others, moral rationalities about the gender division of work and care can vary across race and class. An alternative view is that institutional conditions structure behaviour as much as normative or moral frameworks because they provide the context within which individual preferences are developed and choices made (Crompton 2006). Using an institutional analysis to evaluate the Family Tax Benefit scheme, the Maternity Payment and the Child Care Benefit and Tax Rebate, I demonstrate how a 'modified male-breadwinner' family model has become embedded within work and family policies in Australia. While this model of the household acknowledges that many women do some part-time work, it maintains the traditional notion of men as the primary earner and women as the primary carer in the one-and-a-half earner family. In detailing the ideology and politics that has shaped the development of Commonwealth expenditure on work and family policy over the past decade I argue that the institutional context within which families work and care can influence how 'preferences' are developed and which 'choices' are made.