A long way to go
By Kath Gelber
In these days of "post-feminism", you hear many people declare that women are no longer oppressed. That's all old hat after the second wave of feminism, they say, and if you still hold to those old beliefs, you're just out of date.
Women have caught up now and, so the logic of this argument goes, we therefore have no grounds to complain.
One of the most fundamental critiques of women's oppression that has emerged in the women's liberation movement has been an understanding that the role that women play in the family institution severely limits and curtails their democratic rights and contributes to their oppression.
Women provide unpaid labour in the home — they cook, clean, shop, wash, take care of the young, take care of the old, take care of any who are unable to take care of themselves, and reproduce the next generation. Yet economically they are dependent on the family to provide the income that maintains them.
This labour contributes to the economic stability of society. It means that women are performing free tasks that in a fairer society would be performed collectively and as paid work.
Well, is this still true? Haven't things changed now that women have made it into the paid job market, we have some child-care facilities and men are being encouraged to share the work in the home?
Not according to a recent Bureau of Statistics paper which analyses the results of a 1992 survey of how people use their time at home. Called Unpaid Work and the Australian Economy, the paper presents an interesting case:
1. Most unpaid housework is still done by women.
2. The value of unpaid house and community work has risen by more than $90 billion over five years.
3. This work is worth the equivalent of 58% of GDP.
Even though women have moved into the work force in great numbers, they still fill the social roles expected of them in the home. This work is still performed for free. And women who are providing this labour in the home are spending a huge amount of time on it. This means their capacity to live independent lives is necessarily limited.
Many women who do have paid jobs carry a double burden — the paid work during the day and the unpaid work at home that doesn't go away simply because they are out of the house for most of the day. Women make up the overwhelming majority of part-time and casual employees.
More and more of women's unpaid work is in the community sector — filling in on necessary social welfare programs that aren't getting the government funding they need.
And it means we still have a long way to go.