Symposium on Parental Rights and Work/Family Balance

Abstract

This symposium draws together a collection of papers that reflect on the potential to extend parental rights for employees and facilitate the combination of work and family responsibilities. The enduring difficulties of integrating paid work with family commitments, and the significance of this tension for the persistence of employment inequalities between men and women, ensure that these are issues of considerable importance in contemporary society. However, policy development and implementation are frequently contested, while barriers such as the gendered division of domestic labour appear almost impervious to change. Nonetheless, policy advances have been made, and much can be learnt from investigating different approaches and the impediments to change. The symposium seeks to make a contribution to this endeavour. The papers included here were initially presented at a workshop held in April 1999 as part of the gender stream of the Reshaping Australian Institutions Project at the Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University. The workshop was supported by Sociology and Political Science Programs within the Research School, and brought together a range of participants from academia, government and women's organisations. The timing was apposite. It was held a few months prior to the International Labour Conference session at which the Maternity Protection Convention (International Labour Organisation [ILO] Convention no. 103) was to be reviewed. It was also a time when the New Zealand government was faced with a private member's bill proposing paid parental leave--an initiative which, if successful, would have made the absence of paid parental leave in Australia even more conspicuous internationally. Significant changes were also in progress in the United Kingdom, where the Employment Relations Bill 1999 proposed the introduction of parental leave and simplification of existing provisions on maternity rights. In Australia, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission was conducting the National Pregnancy and Work Inquiry, and the Work and Family Unit within the federal Department of Workplace Relations and Small Business was preparing a report on family friendly employment practices. Several of these issues were discussed at the workshop. Visiting British academic Jill Eamshaw spoke on the difficulties of protecting maternity rights under the complex legislative arrangements that have evolved in the United Kingdom, and the potential of the new legislation to simplify the situation. Jennifer Curtin (University of Canberra) analysed the politics of the New Zealand initiative, Jennifer Earle (Women's Legal Centre) spoke on the ILO deliberations and the need to extend provisions in Australia, and Gillian Whitehouse presented the results of collaborative research with Di Zetlin which sought to identify the distribution of work and family measures in Australian workplaces, and some of the impediments to their implementation. A further issue raised was the development of a Draft Code of Practice and Guidelines on Pregnancy and Work in New South Wales. Philippa Hall, Deputy Director of the NSW Department for Women, informed the workshop of progress on this initiative, which was designed to set out and explain legal obligations as they have been defined in statutes and in case law, and provide guidance in ensuring work and workplaces are safe, fair and consistent with the entitlements of pregnant women and new mothers. The Report of the National Pregnancy and Work Inquiry has subsequently recommended that, once adopted in NSW, the code and guidelines be included in the National Occupational Health and Safety Commission database as a source of practical advice on risk control relating to pregnancy at work, and be reviewed with a view to implementing such a Code nationally (Recommendations 22 and 23 of the Report of the National Pregnancy and Work Inquiry, Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission, 1999). …