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Striking the Balance: Carers and the Future

Sex Discrimination

Striking the Balance: Carers and the Future

Speech by Pru Goward Federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Focus on Carers Conference Family Carers – The Next Generation, Carers Association of SA First Floor, The Next Generation Memorial Drive, Memorial Drive, North Adelaide 5006 Tuesday, 18 October 2005


The debate about balancing work and family life goes beyond parental caring for children.   In light of our ageing population, care for older family members and family members with an illness or disability is the next frontier in the work and family debate.   Seen in the context of caring for family members across the lifecycle, the work and family ‘barbeque stopper’ emerges as a policy issue with far-reaching demographic, social and economic implications.

Far from being just a ‘women’s issue’, and specifically, as it is often assumed, one for women caring for small children, the question of who will provide care – for children, ageing parents and other family members – requires serious consideration by policy makers as well as families themselves.

My Striking the Balance project aims to reconcile the competing economic and social aspects of combining paid work and caring responsibilities into a policy framework that will support families now and into the future.

The timing could not be more appropriate.   We are living in a time when Australians on average are working longer than ever before.   Almost a quarter of the workforce works an average of 50 hours a week or more, and many of these workers are men with families.

Children are dependent for longer, with many young adults staying in the family home well into their 20s, or walking in and out through a revolving door as they manage their own work commitments with higher education.1

Women are still carrying a disproportionate load of caring and domestic work.   Considering the broadest definition of household work, which includes ‘outdoor’ and traditionally ‘male’ tasks such as car maintenance, women’s unpaid work accounts for 70 per cent of all household work in Australian households.

For the majority of women who combine paid work with a greater share of childcare and domestic work, this ‘double shift’ is likely to become a ‘triple shift’ in the future.

This is because women are having children later in life; the median age for mothers in Australia is 30.5 years, continuing a consistent increase since 1972.2   With this increase, the likelihood of overlap between caring for children and caring for ageing parents will also increase.  

Already we are hearing of women with the so-called sandwich problem – being squeezed between the demands of care for children and care for elders.  

As the population ages – whether we see this as the looming ‘crisis’ that some predict or as one demographic challenge among others – the question of who will provide the care for these people is a critical one for all of us, and not just those concerned with gender equality.  

How we incorporate future demands for care into Australian society is a social and economic issue for government, business, employer groups, unions, communities, families, and individuals.  

Many women and men are struggling to balance the current demands of paid employment with their caring responsibilities.   Unless we make some changes now, the pressures experienced by families are likely to increase in future.  

If people need to cut back on their paid work in their older years in order to provide informal elder care, what will this mean for superannuation levels, or for the nation’s continuing economic growth?   And will this necessarily reduce the productive capacity of the Australian economy, or could it in fact, by averaging the effort more fairly and over a longer time, actually provide the potential for a larger workforce?  

There are competing pressures on Australians to engage more, rather than less, in paid work, arguably at the expense of family life.   Changes to the welfare role of government, particularly in aged care, economic globalisation and the need for Australia to expand both its work effort and its productivity in order to compete in the international economy, have all encouraged Australians to work longer and harder.  

Australian families get caught between the demands of the workplace and the demands of the home, and the implications of this bind are considerable.

There are many national interest issues at stake in the work and family debate, encompassing macroeconomic, intergenerational and equality concerns.

The cost and provision of care, especially elder care, is one example.   Of parents currently receiving informal primary care, an astounding 91 per cent are cared for by their daughters.3  

With a generation of women raised to expect many years of education, a rewarding career, an equitable partnership, and children, if they choose, it is not clear whether they will be willing to continue this level of informal care, in effect to save their brothers the effort of caring.4  

The economic and social value of informal care for older people, not to mention those with a disability, is enormous.   Without it, the costs of formal care for government and for individuals in their later years will be greatly increased. Without it, humanity is diminished.

Without people caring for those they love, those they made or those who made them, not for money but because they want and ought to, society is meaningless.

We know that by 2044-45, one in four people in Australia will be 65 years or over, double what it is today.5   Formal aged care needs alone are projected to increase from around 180 per cent to 250 per cent between now and 2044-45.6   Over this time the costs of formal aged care are expected to increase by about 2.5 times more than GDP growth.7  

The Productivity Commission estimates that health expenditure will almost double to 11 ½ percent of GDP - basically because older people take a great toll on health services.   The Head of Treasury, Ken Henry, estimates the GST will need to rise to 24 cents in the dollar to fund the increased expenditure on aged care!                                                                                                                        

While responses to the ageing of the population such as encouraging people to work longer - as suggested in the Intergenerational Report8 - will help, if we are serious about assisting people to stay in the paid workforce for longer then we need to make sure these people are able to balance their paid work with their caring obligations.  

A large proportion of women in the labour force provide care not only for children but for people with disabilities and older people, so there is a need to consider employed carers.9  

In 1998 employed women made up 34 per cent of all primary carers of people with disabilities and the frail aged.10   Fifty nine per cent of carers combine caring with paid employment, with most carers located in older working age groups.11   And almost a quarter of people aged 55-64 provide some level of care.12  

Informal carers are projected to increase by about 57 per cent by 2031 to meet the needs of those who cannot access or do not wish to receive formal care.13  

As labour force projections indicate a sustained increase in the workforce participation of women workers aged 45-64, and as women in this age group are almost half of all female primary carers,14 the tension between paid work and caring commitments is likely to become an issue for more women who take on this role in future.  

Caring for older people is of course not only an issue for women, even though most care overall is provided by women – women are nearly three times more likely than men to provide primary care to an older person or person with a disability.15  

Much informal care for older people is provided by both female and male spouses.   A significant number of male carers provide primary care for their partners, with men’s caring responsibilities increasing after the age of 45 to about half the level of women’s caring.16   The number of male carers is likely to increase in order to maintain current levels of care as the population ages.  

Workplaces will need to be flexible enough to accommodate the family responsibilities of both female and male older workers if they are to continue their labour force participation.  

Putting aside the willingness of younger generations to care, if we are all working until we are 70, we may not have the ability or the time to provide care.   Without workplace flexibilities and quality part time work options for older workers, balancing paid work with caring for family members such as spouses, ageing parents and/or grandchildren will be a difficult task.  

At the other end of the spectrum we have a fertility rate well below replacement level.   Despite a recent small rise in births, the fertility rate has remained steady at around 1.75 babies per woman for the last few years and has dropped significantly over the last few decades.17  

Looking further into the future of elder care, it remains to be seen whether fewer children per family (and thus fewer daughters) will reduce the pool of willing elder carers.18  

We have heard a great deal about the ageing population, with the Intergenerational Report and a Productivity Commission Report into the economic implications of an ageing Australia, but these tell only part of the story.  

We are yet to fully investigate the gendered impacts of this demographic change and the impact on future caring arrangements.   We have had an inquiry into parenting after separation but again, this is one side of the story.  

What about inquiring into parenting arrangements in intact families, and men’s role in parenting prior to relationship breakdown?   We are yet to reconcile men’s desire to parent actively with our heavily gendered paid and unpaid work arrangements.  

Understanding the connections between the paid workforce and the family arrangements which support labour force participation, and understanding how men and women manage their time in the home is central to understanding the ways in which Australian families manage the combination of paid work and family commitments.    

While we might expect that women’s greater share of unpaid work is related to their lower level of labour force participation and their greater responsibility for the care of children, women spend more time on unpaid work regardless of time spent in paid work.  

Across all labour force status, whether part time or full time, on average women perform more child care than their male partners.19  

While it has been suggested that part time work is a way for women to balance paid work with a heavy unpaid workload, part time work does not reduce total paid and unpaid workload for women; rather, it appears that women who work part time attempt the full job of childcare in a shorter amount of time by doing more things at once.20  

And while attitudinal surveys show that men and women in Australia have egalitarian attitudes towards parenting – in that they believe that housework should be shared – these attitudes are not reflected in practice.   Time use patterns demonstrate that transitions such as marriage and parenting exaggerate the gender differences in unpaid work. 21   Not surprisingly these gender differences extend to other forms of caring.

Sitting alongside the time use statistics is the growing number of men expressing the desire to be more involved with family life.  

Men clearly value and want to spend more time with family, yet the pressures of combining a breadwinner role with caring work are considerable.   For example, Graeme Russell’s survey of 1,000 Australian fathers showed that 68 per cent felt they did not spend enough time with their children, and 53 per cent felt that their job and family lives interfered with each other.22  

In the same survey, more than half believed that the major barrier to being the kind of father they wanted to be was the commitment to paid work, in particular, barriers associated with paid work such as expectations of working long hours and inflexibility.23   We’re not talking about the 40 hour week, we’re talking 50, 60, 70 hour weeks.

And let’s not forget that underlying the choices that couple families make about who will participate the most in caring work is the continuing gender pay gap; women still only earn around 85 percent of the male dollar for full time ordinary time earnings.24  

We can speculate that greater gender equality in the workplace and in the home would reduce much of the tension in balancing paid work with caring work.   This does not necessarily mean lower workforce participation or having men withdraw from the workforce in order to take on more family tasks.   If we can all share the care well, then nobody has to leave the workforce, and everyone gets a fair crack at economic security and providing for our own retirements.

This is a major issue for women, who are two and a half times more likely to live in poverty during retirement because of the gender pay gap and caring responsibilities.

These issues are part of the public debate we will have to have if we are to meet not only our current caring demands but our future ones.   There is an array of benefits to be gained from greater sharing of domestic and caring responsibilities, and better support for men and women within the workplace to meet their caring obligations would be a good start.

Sharing the care well at home is another way forward.  

As I have said, the intergenerational concerns are significant and poised to become more so.   Along with older workers, women’s labour force participation must increase if we are to meet increased aged care and health costs, and meet other national goals such as increasing productivity and economic growth.  

Gender equality is itself as an important goal, regardless of the other benefits of good work and family balance to Australian society.  

With my current Striking the Balance project I aim to shed some light on these and other issues.   In doing so, I hope that researchers, policy makers, service providers and the broader community will join me in helping to make sure that the millions of Australians providing care are properly supported now and into the future.

Thank you


  1. David de Vaus, Diversity and change in Australian families: Statistical profiles, Australian Institute of Family Studies July 2004 p 144.
  2. ABS 3301.0 Births, Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2003, p 11.
  3. David de Vaus, Diversity and change in Australian families: Statistical profiles, Australian Institute of Family Studies, July 2004, p 252.
  4. AIHW, Carers in Australia: Assisting frail older people and people with a disability, Aged Care Series, No. 8 Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Canberra, October 2004, p 35.
  5. Productivity Commission, Economic Implications of an Ageing Australia, Draft Research Report, Productivity Commission, Canberra, November 2004, p 1.1.
  6. Productivity Commission, Economic Implications of an Ageing Australia, Draft Research Report, Productivity Commission, Canberra, November 2004, p xxxix.
  7. Productivity Commission, Economic Implications of an Ageing Australia, Draft Research Report, Productivity Commission, Canberra, November 2004, p xxxix.
  8. Treasury, Intergenerational Report 2002-03, 2002-03 Budget Paper No. 5, Commonwealth of Australia, 14 May 2002.
  9. AIHW, Carers in Australia: Assisting frail older people and people with a disability, Aged Care Series, No. 8 Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Canberra, October 2004, p 59.
  10. AIHW, Carers in Australia: Assisting frail older people and people with a disability, Aged Care Series, No. 8 Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Canberra, October 2004, p 59.
  11. Seniors and Means Test Branch, Australian Government Department of Family and Community Services, “The role of families in an ageing Australia” in Family Matters No. 66, Australian Institute of Family Studies, Spring/Summer 2003, pp 46-53 at p 49.
  12. David de Vaus, Diversity and change in Australian families: Statistical profiles, Australian Institute of Family Studies, July 2004, p 251.
  13. Richard Percival and Simon Kelly, Who’s going to care? Informal care and an ageing population, Report prepared for Carers Australia, National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling, NATSEM, University of Canberra, June 2004, p 28.
  14. AIHW, Carers in Australia: Assisting frail older people and people with a disability, Aged Care Series, No. 8 Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Canberra, October 2004, p 35.
  15. David de Vaus, Diversity and change in Australian families: Statistical profiles, Australian Institute of Family Studies, July 2004, p 251.
  16. David de Vaus, Diversity and change in Australian families: Statistical profiles, Australian Institute of Family Studies, July 2004, p 251.
  17. ABS, Cat. No. 3301.0 Births, Australia, Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2004.   There was only a slight increase in births in 2003 – 200 more births than 2002.
  18. Richard Percival and Simon Kelly, Who’s going to care? Informal care and an ageing population, Report prepared for Carers Australia, National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling, NATSEM, University of Canberra, June 2004, p 10.
  19. Lyn Craig, “The Time Cost of Parenthood: An Analysis of Daily Workload”, SPRC Discussion Paper No. 117, Social Policy Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney October 2002,   p 17.
  20. Lyn Craig, “The Time Cost of Parenthood: An Analysis of Daily Workload”, SPRC Discussion Paper No. 117, Social Policy Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney October 2002, p 18.
  21. Michael Bittman and Jocelyn Pixley, The Double Life of the Family, Allen and Unwin, St Leonards, 1997, p 145.
  22. Graeme Russell, Lesley Barclay, Gay Edgecombe, Jenny Donovan, George Habib, Helen Callaghan, and Quinn Pawson, Fitting Fathers into Families: Men and the Fatherhood Role in Contemporary Australia, Report prepared for the Department of Family and Community Services, Canberra, 1999, pp 40, 36.
  23. Lyndy Bowman and Graeme RussellWork and Family: Current thinking, research and practice, Macquarie Research Limited, Sydney, 2000.
  24. Based on full time ordinary time earnings in August 2004.   If both full and part time work is included, women only earn 66.1 per cent of what men earn. (ABS 6302.0 Average Weekly Earnings, Australia November 2004).