School of Social and Political Sciences - Research Publications
Permanent URI for this collection
Search Results
1 - 10 of 38
-
ItemNo Preview AvailablePolicies for Active Aging and Their Family-Related Assumptions and Consequences(Oxford University Press, 2023-03-30)Abstract Active aging—encouraging greater economic and social productivity of older adults—has become the dominant paradigm in public policies concerning older people in the Western world. This chapter identifies contradictions within the paradigm, and a failure to adequately situate it within the family lives of older people, drawing attention to the relational circumstances that shape opportunities to age actively. The chapter suggests that the active aging paradigm does not adequately recognize the intersections—and contradictions—between active aging policies, family policies, and national work/care regimes. The authors focus on the (lack of) alignment in aspirations pertaining to employment and unpaid work, and their gendered implications. Comparing Australia and Sweden, they conclude that the current employment and family policy settings generally serve to support the active aging agenda of improving labor market participation in later life in Sweden. The Australian case illustrates that encouraging greater economic and social productivity of older adults is problematic if it is inadequately situated within the family lives and life courses of older people. Successfully and sustainably encouraging older people into paid work requires recognition of family contributions as forms of social and economic productivity. Gender equality in economic participation in later life necessitates investment in gender equality earlier in women’s lives, when gendered patterns of economic participation emerge. Lack of alignment in aspirations pertaining to aging policy and family policy has gendered implications, which can undermine the success of active aging policies and cause economic disadvantage to women as they age over the life course.
-
ItemNo Preview AvailableThe Care Crisis: a research priority for the pandemic era and beyond(Edward Elgar Publishing, 2022-08-28)With contributions from leading experts in the fields of anthropology, communications, disaster studies, economics, epidemiology, Indigenous studies, philosophy and sociology, this expansive book offers a diverse range of social science ...
-
ItemNo Preview AvailableOn Digital Reproductive Labor and the “Mother Commodity”(SAGE Publications, 2023-09-01)Reproductive domestic labor is shifting from its old norm of invisibly creating and maintaining labor power in the highly private and ostensibly non-economic zone of the household. This paper asks whether new forms of complex motherhood, and the means presented to mothers for coping with them in the digital age, should be conceived of as further unpaid labor that sits on top of old forms of exploitation. As mothers increasingly become digital reproductive laborers, the family home is becoming a public and highly economized zone: a workhouse for both standard employers and emerging parties who designate themselves as merely providing online services. In contrast to the frequently posited thesis that mothers are only indirectly drawn into the circuit of capital, this paper argues that the current situation creates the “mother commodity”: a being whose social reproductive labor time is supercommodified via the normative addition of “audience commodity” labor duties.
-
ItemNo Preview AvailableHow Employed Mothers in Australia Find Time for Both Market Work and Childcare(Springer International Publishing, 2022)This book aims to examine how labour institutions, both in developed and developing countries, have responded to the challenges faced over the last 30 years.
-
ItemA matter of time? Institutional timescapes and gendered inequalities in the transition from education to employment in Australia(SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD, 2024-03)This article explores why women miss out in the transition from the educational system to the labour market. Using nationally representative longitudinal data (2001–18) from the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey, we compare how long after graduation it takes men and women with tertiary qualifications (n = 2030) to achieve key labour market milestones: (1) getting a full-time job; (2) getting a permanent contract; (3) earning an average wage; (4) finding a job that matches their skill level. We find significant gender differences in reaching these milestones, confirming that time is a critical dimension for understanding gendered inequalities in the returns to education. We attribute findings to incompatible ‘timescapes’ across the institutions of education, family and employment. The more flexible timescape of education allows women to succeed, but the inflexible timescape of employment (particularly when combined with family responsibilities) impedes them from turning educational achievement into labour market progress.
-
ItemUnpaid Work and Care During COVID-19: Subjective Experiences of Same-Sex Couples and Single Mothers in Australia(SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC, 2021-04)This paper draws on data from Work and Care During COVID-19, an online survey of Australians during pandemic lockdown in May 2020 (n = 2,722). It focuses on how subsamples of lesbian, gay, and bisexual mothers and fathers in couples (n = 280) and single mothers (n = 480) subjectively experienced unpaid work and care during lockdown compared with heterosexual mothers and fathers in couples, and with partnered mothers, respectively. During the pandemic, nonheterosexual fathers’ subjective reports were less negative than those of their heterosexual counterparts, but differences between heterosexual and lesbian/bisexual mothers were more mixed. Unlike their partnered counterparts, more single mothers reported feeling satisfied than before with their balance of paid and unpaid work and how they spent their time overall during the pandemic, perhaps because they avoided partnership conflicts and particularly benefited from relaxed commuting and child care deadlines.
-
ItemActive Participation and Well-Being Among the Elderly in Belgium and the USA: A Cross-National Time-Use Perspective(Springer Verlag, 2020-05-28)Active participation of the elderly is a recognized response to address the societal and individual challenges of rising life expectancy such as releasing the pressure of age-related public spending, reducing social isolation and improving well-being. How much time older people devote to active participation and whether their time allocation is associated with well-being remains under-investigated. Using time-use data from Belgium (n = 1384) and the USA (n = 2133), we investigate the time older people (65–80 years) spent on active participation and examine how this relates to their life satisfaction as an indicator of wellbeing. The countries vary in the amount of time spent on paid employment and volunteering, but not on informal help. Belgian older people spend much less time on paid employment than their American counterparts. This implies more are available to volunteer and provide informal help. Yet participation rates in these activities are higher in the USA. Multivariate analyses show that associations between active participation and life satisfaction vary between both countries and within both countries by gender and age. Overall, positive associations between paid work and volunteering and life satisfaction suggest that governments would do well to mobilize elderly into active participation, especially in Belgium. Negative associations between informal help and life satisfaction suggest governments should provide greater support for informal carers.
-
ItemGender patterns in domestic labour among young adults in different living arrangements in Australia(Sage Publications Ltd, 2016-12-01)Most research on gender divisions of housework focuses on couple and family households. This article extends this literature to examine gender differences in domestic labour across living arrangements, with particular focus on young adults. Using time-diary data from the nationally representative Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Time Use Survey (2006) it examines the amount and composition of domestic work performed by 20–34-year-olds (n = 889) living with parents, in a share household, alone, or in a couple, differentiating between routine and non-routine housework tasks, and between housework done for oneself only or for the household. It finds gender differences are strongest in couple households, but pertain across living arrangements, including share houses. Also, women’s domestic labour varies more by household characteristics than men’s. However, there is some evidence of non-conformity to gender stereotypes, with young men living in couple relationships contributing more time on activities for the household than young men in other households.
-
ItemThe Composition of Grandparent Childcare: Gendered Patterns in Cross-national Perspective(Policy Press, 2019-01-01)This exciting collection presents an in-depth, up-to-date analysis of the unprecedented phenomenon of increasing numbers of grandparents worldwide, co-existing and interacting for longer periods of time with their grandchildren.
-
ItemThe composition of parents' and grandparents' child-care time: gender and generational patterns in activity, multi-tasking and co-presence(Cambridge University Press, 2016-04-01)How do grandparents spend their child-care time? We examine how the composition of grandparent child care differs from parent child care, and whether child-care composition is more gender-similar for grandparents than for parents. Using the most recent (2006) Australian Bureau of Statistics Time Use Survey, we investigate along three dimensions: (a) the activities child care consists of (routine versus non-routine), (b) whether it is multi-tasked (and whether it is paired with productive activities or with leisure), and (c) whether it is done solo or with a partner present. We find fathers and grandmothers' active child care is similarly apportioned between routine and non-routine activities, while mothers spend much more, and grandfathers spend much less, of their child-care time in routine care activities. Fathers and grandfathers spend similar proportions of their child-care time multi-tasking with leisure (about 50%) and performing care without their spouse present (about 20%), differing significantly from women on both these measures. Gender differences in the proportion of child care multi-tasked with productive activities (paid work, domestic work or other child care) are the same in both generations, but gender differences in the proportion of child care that is spent in routine activities, and that is done without a partner present, are significantly less for grandparents than for parents. The narrower gender gaps result from grandmothers spending less of their child-care time on these measures than mothers, not from grandfathers spending more of their child-care time on these measures than fathers.