Share the mother load

[Badshah Mamun]

Share the mother load

By Kim Kind

More men are lending a hand at home and some employers are open to the idea.

Men who work part-time, from home, or have flexible hours spend most time on housework and caring for their children, research by the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations shows.

And - women rejoice - modern men want a greater share of the domestic workload, with a quarter wanting to do more housework and almost a third wanting to be more involved in parenting.

The study, undertaken by the University of Queensland Social Research Centre, was commissioned to help men take on more unpaid work, a responsibility still shouldered mostly by women despite their increased participation in the workforce.

The sex discrimination commissioner, Elizabeth Broderick, says that for women to achieve true equality in the workplace, men must change the way they work and embrace part-time hours or flexibility, just as women have.

"Men make the rules around work and in most workplaces men hold the power," she says. "When men decide to work differently, it sends a strong cultural message that you can be a serious player at work and also an engaged father or son or whatever it is that your caring responsibility is."

A high-school teacher and father of one, Robbie Boland, is clearly a modern man. Boland, 31, reduced his teaching week to four days this year to help care for eight-month-old son Dashiel when his wife returned to work.

It was an opportunity to bond with his baby, support his wife and pursue his passion as a writer, tweeter and blogger. Boland's Star Wars-themed Death Star PR was recently included in US website Mashable's top 10 fictional twitter accounts and has 130,000 followers.

"I had this foolish idea that perhaps if I took a day off I could look after the baby and simultaneously get some writing done," laughs Boland, who admits that juggling a baby with writing, housework and a demanding Jack Russell "can be very stressful".

Boland's employers were accommodating of his desire to cut back, as were colleagues, many of whom were casuals grateful for the extra work that came their way.

"I'm very lucky in my workplace in that the vast majority of people that I work with are women. They all know what it's like to have a little baby," he says.

Boland is indeed lucky. Despite changing attitudes, there is still an entrenched culture in Australia that real men don't work part-time.

Associate professor Sara Charlesworth from the Centre for Work + Life at the University of South Australia says research shows a great reluctance to let men work part-time in jobs that have been constructed as full time. The Australian Bureau of

Statistics reports that, of those in the workforce, just 16 per cent of men work part-time, compared with 45 per cent of women.

"As a country we're very tolerant of that kind of discrimination. We've tolerated it against women for years," she says.

A startling international study found men preferred to lie about starting a business to admitting they worked part-time to be more involved with their families.

"It's a marker of not being serious if you're taking time out for care, whereas if you're doing something manly like setting up your own business or studying, it's OK," Charlesworth says.

In an effort to change the situation, the Federal Sex Discrimination Act was recently amended to protect men, as well as women, from direct discrimination on the grounds of family responsibilities.

It's a positive step, but working less is about more than housework and childcare.

"We need to be taking this life-course approach throughout our lives for study, for care, for well-being, for outside interests, for sport," Charlesworth says. "We're not whole and rounded people unless we are developing those interests and sometimes those interests or responsibilities will mean that we have to decrease our working time."

One company that values whole, rounded people is Probuild, the winner of the federal government's work-life balance award last year.

To retain talent, the construction company offers extra leave, part-time employment or flexibility for workers to care for family, study, pursue hobbies or even travel.

"In today's market you have to have some point of difference," says the group human resources manager for Probuild, Geoff Thomas.

The company heavily promotes its policy but, more importantly, managers lead by example and take time off too.

This is seen as vital in bringing about societal change, though men usually cut back temporarily and, unlike women, without ongoing damage to their careers.

"There is a real fear that if [businesses] allow part-time work, then everyone will want it, but the reality is, a lot of people can't afford it," Charlesworth says.

"Part-time work means a part-time wage."

Published: 27 August 2011

Source: http://content.mycareer.com.au/advice-research/salary/share-mother-load.aspx