IT’S all about the work-life balance these days. It is tough enough doing one or the other – when it comes to family and work – but put the two together and sometimes you feel like you have to be superhuman.
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Now a new report is suggesting working hours should be capped at 38 hours a week – with the exception of agreed overtime – to make it easier for men and women to share the load of raising a family and to make it easier for women to get involved in the workplace.
The Work and Family Policy Roundtable is a collection of 34 researchers from 16 universities and research institutions who specialise in work care and family policy.
The suggestion is that more change is needed to ensure “greater workforce participation”, while still “supporting social and family relations”.
The group is proposing a set of “benchmarks” against which proposals for improving work, care and family outcomes in Australia can be assessed.
The release of the report this week, timed ahead of the federal election, will at least give our pollies something to think about.
It claims “Australia is moving backwards on work and family issues”, and proposes key policy areas that need to be addressed, including, but not limited to, accessible, affordable, quality early childhood education; improved paid parental leave; gender pay equality and superannuation and retirement savings, which, according to the group, could include significantly reducing the tax benefits of superannuation that favour higher income earners and therefore men, more than women, and removing the $450 per month minimum earning requirement for payment of employer superannuation contributions.
It’s not about influencing the election – then again, maybe it is – but certainly the conversation needs to be had if we’re going to go forward as a society that embraces the work-life balance.
Or at least as a society that claims we do!
