School of Social and Political Sciences - Research Publications
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableDual-Parent Joblessness, Household Work and Its Moderating Role on Children's Joblessness as Young Adults(SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC, 2020-01-10)Using data from the Household, Income, and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey, we examine whether living in jobless families where parents devote more time to household work shields children against their own joblessness in the future. We draw on a representative sample of young adults who were aged between 4 and 17 years in 2001 and lived with both parents through to 2007 (N = 1,852). A series of mixed-effect regression models suggest that dual-parent joblessness is associated with an increase in families’ overall household production...
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ItemCoronavirus, domestic labour and care: Gendered roles locked down(SAGE Publications, 2020-07-24)The Covid-19 pandemic turned daily lives upside down. Lockdowns and physical distancing meant hundreds of thousands of people switched to working from home, significantly blurring the temporal and spatial boundaries between paid work, domestic labour and caring for others. This article explores gender relations, and the division of employment, domestic labour and care, drawing on early results from an online survey, Work and Care in the Time of Covid-19, carried out between 7 May and 4 June 2020.
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ItemWorking and Caring at Home: Gender Differences in the Effects of Covid-19 on Paid and Unpaid Labor in Australia(Informa UK Limited, 2020)The COVID-19 pandemic caused working from home to spike abruptly. This had implications for those with caring responsibilities, particularly women, who shoulder most unpaid domestic work. But what about men? This paper reports early results from a survey of Australian men and women, conducted during state-imposed lockdown in May 2020 (N=2772). Respondents were asked their average daily time in housework, household management, and care (active and supervisory), and about time pressure, spare time and satisfaction with balance of paid and unpaid labor, before and during the pandemic. Unpaid work rose significantly. Women still did most, but men’s childcare time increased more in relative terms, so average gender gaps narrowed. The relative gap in housework remained. For many, the lockdown generated lower subjective time pressure, but dissatisfaction with balance of paid and unpaid work rose markedly, and from a much higher base for women. Gender gaps in this measure remained wide.
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ItemFatherhood, Motherhood and Time Pressure in Australia, Korea, and Finland(OXFORD UNIV PRESS, 2020-06-01)Using nationally representative Time Use Surveys from Australia, Korea, and Finland (n = 19,127 diaries) we examine how parenthood and the age of the youngest child are associated with the recuperative activities of leisure and sleep, the productive activities of market and nonmarket work, and with subjective time stress. Time stress differences by fatherhood are greatest for Finns and least for Koreans; time stress differences by motherhood are absent for Finns and high for Australians and Koreans. Results of the comparative analysis suggest that social policy and average national working hours produce different gendered gaps in both objective and subjective time stress among parents.
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ItemGendered Shares of the Family Rush Hour in Fulltime Dual Earner Families. A Cross National Comparison(SPRINGER, 2020-09-24)There are recognised cross-national differences in the average amount and gender division of paid work and unpaid domestic work and care, but country differences between men and women in the timing and intensity of this daily workload remain under-investigated. Using couple-level time-use data from Australia, the UK, Finland, Korea and Spain (n = 1838), we probe cross-national differences in gendered time availability and constraint, focusing particularly on the early evening ‘family rush hour’. We identify daily time periods during which one partner in a fulltime dual-earner parent couple performs routine time-critical household labor and care, whilst the other partner is simultaneously at leisure. In all five countries fathers in dual fulltime earner couples are more likely than mothers to be at leisure whilst their partner does unpaid work, and this disparity occurs most in the early evening. Multivariate analyses reveal the unpaid work-leisure gap is widest in Korea and narrowest in the UK, confounding expectations that social democratic Finland would be most equitable in this measure.
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ItemDual-earner parent couples' work and care during COVID-19(WILEY, 2021-01)COVID-19 and the associated lockdowns meant many working parents were faced with doing paid work and family care at home simultaneously. To investigate how they managed, this article draws a subsample of parents in dual-earner couples (n = 1536) from a national survey of 2722 Australian men and women conducted during lockdown in May 2020. It asked how much time respondents spent in paid and unpaid labour, including both active and supervisory care, and about their satisfaction with work-family balance and how their partner shared the load. Overall, paid work time was slightly lower and unpaid work time was very much higher during lockdown than before it. These time changes were most for mothers, but gender gaps somewhat narrowed because the relative increase in childcare was higher for fathers. More mothers than fathers were dissatisfied with their work-family balance and partner's share before COVID-19. For some the pandemic improved satisfaction levels, but for most they became worse. Again, some gender differences narrowed, mainly because more fathers also felt negatively during lockdown than they had before.