Working Australian female professionals with children are going for more part-time roles as workplace flexibility and childcare costs accelerate. Something must give, and it seems the Danes have cracked the code on getting the best of both worlds front and centre.
Denmark the Benchmark
British-born dual Aussie citizen Rebecca Matthews, the director of ARoS in Denmark has seen revolutionary steps in introducing more inclusive workplace culture and balance.
“In Denmark, there is an innate trust… people regularly leave work by 3pm to pick up their kids from school, and no one blinks an eye,” she says.
Looking at Australia, while many employers are on board with the flexibility, many still aren’t, and when you couple that with rising costs in school aftercare programs and childcare, things get sticky. Also, what if both parents need to work full-time?
Don’t Punish the Kids
NSW MP Jordan Lane suggests school hours be extended to 6pm to match working hours, but that’s also unfair to the kids. For Danes, this solution is an easy one: why not just work less, but more effectively?
Sure, pick up your kids at 3pm but have the understanding between employer and employee that you’ll make up the last few hours – either that night, or come in earlier the next day. If deadlines are met, then it’s really no skin off anyone’s nose.
Also, the WFH success during the pandemic taught us that we can operate anywhere, anytime, yet the managing director at Workplace Culture Institute, Kirstin Skinner still hears archaic messaging.
Gender Pay Discrepancy
“Despite caretaking roles becoming more equal between men and women, men asking for time to look after their children is still not entirely accepted,” she says, adding that bosses still ask why “the wife” can’t do it.” No comment.
It’s this sort of pressure and the fact that gender pay gaps mean the Australian male works full-time hours and the woman of young children accepts part-time positions to accommodate, and it’s happening here way more than our OECD counterparts.
But Australia is not the only country where this takes place with OECD data showing part-time work is trending in Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, where more than half of all employed mothers don’t work full-time.
In a recent Agency Iceberg blog we reported that the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) released Australia’s Gender Equality Scorecard on 27 February 2024.
According to the stats, more women work part-time (42.7%) or casually (29.7%) than men (part-time 10.8%) and (casually 22.3%), while more men (66.9%) work full-time compared to women (42.7%), which is not surprising.
Soaring Childcare Costs
A poll conducted by Women’s Agenda earlier in 2024 found that 6 in 10 parents with children under 6 were drowning under the rising costs, and that they, or their partner, would work different hours if childcare wasn’t so expensive.
If Australia’s largest for-profit childcare provider G8 has had five consecutive fee hikes since January 2022 (23.8% increase in just over two years) the battle to work full-time, particularly for lesser-paid working female parents is real. And scary.
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