Budgeting for work--life balance: the ideology and politics of work and family policy in Australia.

Abstract

Since its election in 1996 the Howard Government has invested billions of dollars in Australian families with children. Much of this money has been delivered through policies the Government claims will 'support families in the choices they wish to make' about how they combine paid work and family life (Howard 2005). This paper evaluates three areas of Commonwealth budget expenditure on work and family policy: the Family Tax Benefit; the Maternity Payment," and the Child Care Benefit and Tax Rebate. Analysis of the structure of these benefits highlights how a traditional ideology of gender and gender relations is embedded within the policy framework and delivers greater financial support to households in which women prioritise staying at home to care overpaid employment. The policy bias toward traditional gender relations makes government rhetoric about choice problematic and shows that the work and family tensions that exist at the level of the household also exist at the policy level, with negative implications for women's labour market participation.

Introduction

The nexus between the public sphere of work life and the private sphere of family life has always been of interest to feminist scholars (see for example Crompton 1999, 2006; Folbre 1994, 2004; Pocock 2003; Rich 1976; and Waring 1988). But in these early years of the twenty-first century the question of how families manage their multiple responsibilities, and how women in particular engage in the labour market, bear, and care for children, has finally found its way to the top of the policy agenda. Governments, business and international policy institutions around the globe are engaged in public debate about what kind of policy measures best support working families. This new-found interest has culminated in the development of innovative social policies such as the 'Right to Request' legislation in the United Kingdom (DTI 2003); the extension of universal public child care in Quebec, Canada; and reform of the tax/benefit scheme in Canada (Tsounta 2006). In Australia, policy developments in the area have not always been well received by social policy experts, economists and welfare advocates (Hill 2004; Apps 2001,2006a) and the findings of two public inquiries into work and family issues show that Australian families face a number of obstacles in their efforts to fulfil work and care responsibilities.

Submissions to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission inquiry 'Striking the Balance: Women, Men, Work and Family' (HREOC 2007), and a parliamentary inquiry, Balancing Work and Family (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Family and Human Services 2006) provide evidence that the work-life experience of many Australian families is compromised by limited access to paid maternity leave, inadequate parental leave provisions, difficulties in accessing affordable high-quality child care, inadequate flexibility in the workplace, job insecurity, irregular work hours and low pay. The difficulties faced by households trying to reconcile the public sphere of work with the private sphere of family life were found by both inquiries to pose major obstacles to family formation and parents' capacity to return to and maintain paid employment.

These findings stand in stark contrast to the Howard Government's long-standing commitment to support working families. On regaining the Liberal leadership in January 1995 John Howard committed his party to the establishment of a 'new compact' for Australian families. The aim of this new compact was to recognise and address the difficulties faced by households wanting to better integrate their paid work and family responsibilities 'to support families in the choices they wish to make' (Howard 2005). Since winning government in March 1996 the Howard Government has pursued a number of policy initiatives explicitly aimed at families with children, and Commonwealth funding to families with children has grown rapidly. But have these billions--currently almost $29 billion dollars per year (Commonwealth Budget 2007)--helped Australian families reconcile the competing demands of paid work and family responsibilities? In this paper I review three areas of Commonwealth Government budget expenditure that have a direct impact on families and the choices they have about how to combine paid work with care responsibilities: the Family Tax Benefit, the Maternity Payment, and the Child Care Benefit and Child Care Tax Rebate. A critical evaluation of these policies highlights how particular ideologies and theories about gender and gender relations are prioritised within the policy framework and deliver greater financial support to particular family types.

There are a number of models that seek to capture women's labour market participation or work-family balance. Some models such as that developed by Catherine Hakim emphasise the notion of individual choice (Hakim 2000). In her recent work on women's employment in Britain, Hakim argues that the heterogeneous character of women's employment patterns is due to the choices made by different types of women. She argues that women's behaviour can be divided into three 'preference groupings': home and family centred; work centred; and 'adaptives', that is, women who shift their priorities between work and family depending on where they are in the life cycle. Women are presumed to be free to choose how they balance work and care, and any differences between women and men's labour market participation is argued to be a reflection of innate or essential gender differences rather than externally imposed constraints (Hakim 2000). Other social theorists focus on how normative and moral frameworks shape individual preferences around work and care (Duncan et al. 2003). This approach emphasises how 'moral rationalities' or ideas about what defines a mother, a father, and a worker are socially constituted. As they are negotiated in reference to others, moral rationalities about the gender division of work and care can vary across race and class. An alternative view is that institutional conditions structure behaviour as much as normative or moral frameworks because they provide the context within which individual preferences are developed and choices made (Crompton 2006). Using an institutional analysis to evaluate the Family Tax Benefit scheme, the Maternity Payment and the Child Care Benefit and Tax Rebate, I demonstrate how a 'modified male-breadwinner' family model has become embedded within work and family policies in Australia. While this model of the household acknowledges that many women do some part-time work, it maintains the traditional notion of men as the primary earner and women as the primary carer in the one-and-a-half earner family. In detailing the ideology and politics that has shaped the development of Commonwealth expenditure on work and family policy over the past decade I argue that the institutional context within which families work and care can influence how 'preferences' are developed and which 'choices' are made.

Australian Working Mothers Compared

Over the past decade Australian women with dependent children have increased their labour market participation. Between 1997 and 2006, the participation rate for Australian women in couple families with dependent children rose from 62.9 per cent to 68 per cent (ABS cat. 1301.0). This five percentage point increase in the participation of women with children is significant and exceeds the 3.4 percentage point increase in the participation rate of all Australian women during the same period. (1) Of particular interest is the rise in participation rates among women in their peak childbearing years. Between 1990 and 2005 the participation rate of women aged 25-34 in couple families with dependent children increased from 53 to 56.9 per cent. The increase in participation rates for women aged 35-44 in couple families with children was lower, rising from 70 per cent in 1990 to only 71.4 per cent in 2005 (ABS cat. 6202.0). (2) In spite of this sustained growth in the labour force participation of women with dependent children, Australia lags behind other comparable OECD economies.

A comparison of the participation rates of women in Australia, the USA, the UK, Canada and New Zealand, according to age, is provided in Figure 1. The data show that the participation rates for Australian women during the childbearing years of 25-44 are significantly lower than the rates for women in the other countries. The divergence is most extreme for women in the 35-39 age group, with Australian women experiencing much lower participation rates than all the other countries. Australian women record the sharpest decline in participation through the peak childbearing years, a trend that is not demonstrated for the USA, the UK or Canada. In Australia, the lower participation rate for women aged 25-44 leads to a lower participation rate for all age groups up to 65 years. (3)

This trend in the female participation rate is further reflected in OECD data on the employment rate for women with a youngest child under 6 years (see Table 1). (4) In 2002, Australian women with a youngest child under six years old had an employment rate of 45 per cent. This is well below the OECD average of 59.2 per cent. It is also well below the employment rates for women with young children in the USA, Canada, and the United Kingdom, and slightly below New Zealand. While Australia's employment rate was lower than the other OECD countries in 2002, it had increased from a rate of only 42.4 per cent in 1990. But this modest increase lagged well behind the much greater rates of change that were registered in the OECD average, the USA, Canada, the United Kingdom and New Zealand between 1990 and 2002. In this 12-year period the employment rate for Australian women with a child under six years increased by only 2.6 percentage points. This compares poorly with an average increase of 10.7 percentage points across the OECD. New Zealand and the United Kingdom both registered a much higher rate of improvement. With almost the same employment rate as Australia in 1990, The United Kingdom posted an increase of 14.5 percentage points in women's employment over the twelve-year period and New Zealand's rate rose 13.2 percentage points from a 1990 low of 36 per cent. These OECD figures find resonance in Australian figures that report the participation rate for women with children aged 0-4 remained static between 1994 and 2004 at approximately 47.5per cent (ABS 2005).

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

While the employment rate of Australian women with young children did improve between 1990 and 2002, Australia's performance does not compare well with the positive trends demonstrated in comparable OECD economies. Australian women with children do not enter into employment as readily as many of their OECD sisters. Furthermore, the rate at which Australian women with children are increasing their attachment to the labour market is slower than many comparable countries, and well below the average rate at which women with young children across the OECD are moving into paid employment. So why is it that Australian women with young children demonstrate a less robust attachment to the labour market than their peers in other OECD countries? Could it be that Australian women with children have a stronger preference for caring than their OECD sisters, or are there other dynamics at work?

Recent OECD research on the differences in women's labour force participation between member countries shows that work and family policy settings have a significant impact on women's labour market participation. In particular, government policies that promote flexible working-time arrangements, the neutral tax treatment of second earners in a household, child care subsidies and paid parental leave have been found to improve the participation rates of women (Jaumotte 2004). This positive relationship between policy settings and women's employment is demonstrated in the recent Canadian experience. In Canada progressive changes to the tax regime imposed on secondary workers, along with increased government funding for public child care, has been credited with producing an increase in the labour force participation rate for Canadian women from 67.7 per cent in 1995, to 73.5 per cent in 2004 (Tsounta 2006). In the remainder of this paper I review the development of Australian Government expenditure of work and family policies over the past decade and evaluate its impact on the institutional environment within which families choose how they integrate paid work and family responsibilities.

Budgeting for Families with Children

The Commonwealth Budget papers of the last decade reveal the budgetary priority the Government has given to providing financial support to families with children (see Figure 2). (5) Family payments initiated by Labor had been on the rise in the years prior to 1996. Since then, the trend has continued with the Commonwealth Budget for assistance to families with children doubling since the Howard Government was elected. These increases have benefited many low-income households: between 1997 and 2004 the average income for low-income families rose by 18 per cent (AIHW 2005, p. 75). Much of this growth in household incomes was underwritten by the significant increase in payments to families made through the Family Tax Benefit that was introduced in the 2000 Budget, and then followed up with another steep increase in 2003-04 as part of the More Help for Families package. But low-income families have not been the only beneficiaries of an expanded family payments system. In 2003 family payments to a single income family with two children where the breadwinner earned average weekly earnings were equal to 20.4 per cent of those earnings (Kelly, Bolton and Harding 2005, p. 15). Growth in Commonwealth payments to families with children has continued throughout the decade and Treasury forecasts estimate the annual budget for payments to families with children will equal almost $30 billion by 2008-09 (Department of the Treasury 2007).

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

Behind the Billions

The budget category of 'assistance to families with children' covers a range of different types of payments, but more than half of this money is delivered to families through the Family Tax Benefit, the Maternity Payment and the Child Care Benefit (see Figure 3). (6) As the mainstay of government financial support for working families, these three policy instruments define the conceptual framework within which the Government addresses work and family issues. They also establish the institutional context and financial incentive structures within which families make choices about how they might best manage work with family life.

[FIGURE 3 OMITTED]

The budget data presented in Figure 3 raises three points of interest. The first is the $2 billion increase in the Family Tax Benefit scheme presented in the 2004-05 Commonwealth Budget. This money was allocated to families as part of the More Help for Families tax package, a policy specifically designed to assist families better integrate their work and family responsibilities. The second is the tripling of the payment provided to mothers on the birth or adoption of a child in the 2004-05 Budget. And third is the relatively fixed amount of assistance provided for families through the Child Care Benefit (CCB). In the following discussion, I assess the extent to which each of these policies and the billions of dollars attached to them support Australian families and their choices about how best to integrate paid work and caring responsibilities.

The Family Tax Benefit: Entrenching Women's 'Choice' as Secondary Earner

Australia has a complicated system for delivering family benefits. This was not, however, always the case. In the early 1980s Australian family tax policy was relatively simple. Individual incomes were taxed, and families received a universal child payment, paid to the mother according to the number of children in the family (Cass 1988). Family support since then has become increasingly complex as successive governments have focused on combining targeted family benefits with reductions in personal income tax. On coming to office, the Howard Government introduced the Family Tax Initiative (FTI) in January 1997. This increased the tax-free threshold for families with dependent children, but treated single income families (single parents and couples) more favourably than dual income families. In July 2000 the FTI was enhanced and a new Family Tax Benefit (FTB) system launched. Under this new scheme twelve pre-existing family assistance benefits were rolled into three: Family Tax Benefit Part A, Family Tax Benefit Part B, and the Child Care Benefit (CCB). Part A and Part B of the FTB are calculated differently: FTB Part A is a means-tested allowance calculated according to the combined household income of parents. Its purpose is to help families with the cost of raising children. Part B delivers extra financial assistance to families with one main income and is calculated according to the income of the 'secondary earner' who holds primary responsibility for child care. The maximum amount of FTB Part B is paid to mothers who care full-time.

An analysis of the More Help for Families tax package introduced in the 2004-05 Budget provides a concrete example of the work and family dynamics embedded within Australia's system of family payments and tax benefits. The More Help for Families tax package was the centrepiece of the 2004-05 Budget and pitched to the electorate as 'a further major instalment in the ongoing reform of the Australian family assistance and tax system to help families raise their children, help them to balance their work and family responsibilities and improve the rewards from work' (Department of the Treasury 2004). However, in the accompanying tables it was made clear that the kind of 'balance' between work and family the Government was prepared to support assumed a particular gender division of labour between paid employment and family care work. Maximum financial benefits delivered through the new family tax package (7) were paid to dual income families with children in which the 'primary earner' (male) contributed 80 per cent of the household income and the 'secondary earner' (female) the other 20 per cent. Families in which both parents contributed more equally to household income received less financial support.

In Table 2 the figures for a dual income family with two children under 12 years of age in which both parents contributed equally to a household income of $60,000 are presented. With the introduction of More Help for Families this family was eligible to receive an extra $34.62 per week. This assistance increased when the division of paid labour was restructured so that the 'secondary earner' (mother) contributed only 33 per cent of household income and the primary earner (father) contributed the other 67 per cent. When paid work was divided in this way the household was eligible for an increased benefit of $40.89 per week. But when the secondary earner reduced her contribution to household income to only 20 per cent of the total, with the primary earner providing the other 80 per cent, the family became eligible for the maximum extra weekly payment of $58.08. The same trend in family payments applies to a similar family with a household income of $100,000, and across every other income category for families with one, two and three children.

Claiming to support families in their efforts to balance work and family life, the family tax package provided maximum support to families that subscribed to a division of labour in which women were the designated primary carer and men the primary earner. Part of the problem is with the structure of FTB Part B. Family payments are income-tested against both total household income (FTB Part A) and the secondary earner's income (FTB Part B). This means that the proportion of household income being earned by each worker becomes a significant variable in calculating the total amount of FTB payable. So while total household income might remain stable, when a couple chooses to share the responsibility for paid work equally, the amount of FTB Part B paid to the secondary earner decreases, leading to an overall reduction in the total amount of FTB paid to the family. This poses a strong disincentive to the secondary earner, who may wish to increase their participation in the labour market. The 'choice' for women to return to or increase their paid work is therefore highly circumscribed by a system of financial incentives that rewards partnered women with children who do less paid work rather than more.

This disincentive, or cost, that secondary earners (women) face when they move between work and family is calculated as the effective marginal tax rate (EMTR). High EMTRs are a problem endemic to Australia's system of family payments, and can influence women's choice to participate (or not) in the labour force (Apps 2006a). As a result, EMTRs have generated significant public debate and the Government has made a number of reforms to the FTB to reduce them. Changes to the Family Tax Benefit scheme introduced through the New Tax System in 2000 included specific reforms that reduced the EMTR experienced by some households by more than 20 percentage points. The reduction of EMTRs from levels as high 85 per cent under the original Family Tax Initiative did not, however, resolve the issue, and EMTRs of up to 61.5 per cent remained a strong disincentive to mothers wanting to increase their participation in the labour market (White-ford 2000, p. 91). Further incremental changes designed to reduce high EMTRs were made to the structure of the Family Tax Benefit in the 2004-05, the 2005-06 and 2006-07 budgets. Notwithstanding these changes, high EMTRs continue to compromise the capacity of the FTB to support women's choice to work and care (Apps 2004, 2006a).

An FTB scheme that provides maximum support for households in which the gender division of labour is tailored along mostly traditional lines assumes an 'ideal' gender division of labour and creates a disincentive for households wishing to pursue a more equitable division of paid and unpaid work. Moreover, a system that formalises the notion of 'primary' and 'secondary' earner within its structure underwrites weak labour force attachment by women with children and effectively entrenches the status of mothers as secondary earners and primary carers. This has an ongoing and negative impact on women's wages, conditions and career prospects, further institutionalising their secondary status as workers. So significant is the disincentive to women's increased participation in paid employment that the FTB, has been characterised as the 'new discrimination' against Australian women (Apps 2006b).

The choices single parents have about how to manage work and care have also been affected by reform of the family payments system. Welfare-to-work legislation introduced in the 2005-06 Budget made it mandatory for single parents to participate in paid employment once their youngest child turned six years old. Under the new rules, family payments for single parents are conditional upon parents looking for or undertaking at least 15 hours of work or study per week. The part-time participation requirement imposed upon single parents who receive the parenting payment stands in stark contrast to the choices supported by FTB Part B for non-working but partnered parents in a single income family. Embedded within the family payments system is an expectation that single mothers who receive family payments must combine work and family duties once their youngest child turns six, while partnered mothers retain the right to choose not to work at all and still be eligible for the maximum FTB Part B until their youngest child is eighteen. This is inequitable and discriminatory. But it is not surprising. The evolution of the family payments system through the FTB and the welfare-to-work reforms over the past decade have consistently resulted in financial incentive structures that reward some family choices about how to manage work and care more than others.

The Baby Bonus and Maternity Payment: No Bonus for Workers

The politics that surrounded the introduction of the Baby Bonus and its replacement, the Maternity Payment, highlight the tension within government about how women should be conceptualised and an anxiety about providing financial support for women who choose to combine paid work with the care of their young children. In early 2002 public debate about the need for government support for women as they move between work and childbearing began to exert some pressure on the Government. This political pressure led to the introduction of the First Child Tax Rebate or 'Baby Bonus' as it became more popularly known. The Baby Bonus was a contradictory policy aimed at providing a tax rebate to working women who withdrew from the labour market on the birth of their child. The maximum payment was only available to women who stayed out of the workforce for five years after the birth of their child. Women who returned to the workforce after the birth of their child were ineligible for the payment. The policy was also inequitable, with women on high pre-birth incomes receiving a larger tax rebate than those on low incomes. Rather than supporting women as they moved between work and family responsibilities, the policy supported women's transition out of the workforce altogether (Apps 2001).

In the 2004-05 Budget the Baby Bonus was shelved and replaced with the Maternity Payment. This universal payment, initially of $3000, was made available to all new mothers irrespective of their work arrangements and is not subject to either an income or assets test. The introduction of the payment immediately tripled Commonwealth support for parents at the birth of a child. Further increases in the payment, first to $4000 in July 2006 and then to $5000 in July 2008, account for further expansion in the budget for this measure.

On first glance the Maternity Payment is a generous payment, signifying an almost five-fold increase in the budget for government support paid to new mothers since 2001. It is not, however, the universal system of paid maternity leave women's advocacy groups and the then Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Pru Goward, had been campaigning for. The decision to introduce a universal maternity payment, payable to all women irrespective of their labour market status, rather than a publicly funded paid maternity leave scheme, demonstrates an ambivalence within the Government about supporting women's attachment to the labour force during childbearing years. A universal Maternity Payment prioritises women's role as carer over worker and leaves the critical issue of a period of paid leave at the birth of a child to be negotiated by individual women with their individual employers. For only a minority of women workers improvements in the private provision of paid maternity leave have been forthcoming (Baird 2004), and for the majority of working women, access to a universal paid maternity leave scheme remains a critical 'gap' in the Government's current approach to work and family policy (Whitehouse et al. 2007).

Child Care Benefit: Too Little for Too Few

Analysis of Commonwealth expenditure on policies that provide financial support for parents using child care is critical to an evaluation of government support for working families. For most of the past decade working parents have received a government subsidy for the cost of child care called the Child Care Benefit (CCB). The CCB is means-tested against total household income down to a minimum payment and varies according to the number of children in care and whether they are school going or non-school going. The CCB is not, however, available to all parents with children in child care. Only child care provided by approved centres that comply with Commonwealth quality assurance programs is covered by the CCB. This includes most long day care centres, family day care, before and after school centres and vacation care. Parents with children attending many state-funded pre-schools, children cared for by nannies or children using other types of non-approved care services are not eligible to receive CCB.

The CCB provides significant fee relief to many low-income families, but restrictions on eligibility have kept the CCB budget relatively contained with less than a 20 per cent increase in funds allocated since 2000. This is in spite of the Government's removal of the cap on the number of CCB-funded outside school hours care and family day care places in the 2006-07 Budget. The small increase in funding allocated to the CCB stands in contrast to the significant increases made to the budget for the FTB and Maternity Payment over successive Commonwealth budgets. However, as the price of child care continued to rise--up 60 per cent between 2001 and 2005 (ABS 2006)--the Government announced additional support for child care expenses with the introduction of the 30 per cent Child Care Tax Rebate (CCTR) in the 2005-06 Budget. The CCTR is linked to the existing CCB scheme and is designed to reimburse 30 per cent of the secondary earner's out-of-pocket child care expenses, that is, fees paid for approved care less Child Care Benefit. The rebate is payable up to a maximum of $4,000 per child per year.

The tax rebate provides a significant boost to the financial support available to working parents and in this sense acts as a modest work incentive, but not all working parents are eligible. (8) Like the CCB, the CCTR is only available to parents with access to child care in an approved centre. This means that, unlike the FTB and Maternity Payment, which are available to all families with children, working parents seeking government support for the costs of child care must first find child care at an approved centre. This is not always possible. In June 2005 some 97,100 of the 711,500 children in formal child care did not claim any CCB. One of the main reasons given by parents for not claiming CCB was that the carer or centre were not eligible (ABS 2006a). Families that are unable to secure a child care place at a Commonwealth approved centre and must use alternative forms of formal or informal care, are ineligible for the CCB and the associated CCTR. In addition to these limitations on access, the modest work incentives provided by the CCTR for some families were undermined by a simultaneous change made to FTB Part B. At the same time as the Government introduced the CCTR, it also announced a $300 increase to FTB Part B as compensation for women who cared for their children at home and were ineligible for the 30 per cent tax rebate on child care. This illogical approach to policy formation highlights the tension within the Government about the role of women with children in the economy and society.

As a rebate delivered through the tax system the CCTR also introduced a number of regressive dynamics into the system of government support for working families. The structure of CCTR delivers the maximum rebate to women on high incomes who use a lot of child care. Low-income women who use small amounts of child care are unable to reach the maximum rebate. (9) Moreover, the CCTR is not as generous as it first appears. Estimated to cost $915 million over the first four years of its operation, it is significantly less than the $1.6 Billion annual budget for the CCB in both 2005-06 and 2006-07 (McIntosh 2005).

The limitations and contradictions embedded within the CCB and associated rebates (CCTR and CCR) underscore the Government's preference to promote and reward mothers in their role as carers while limiting the absolute and relative scope and generosity of benefits designed to facilitate women in their role as workers. Government support for the cost of child care that is uneven and inequitable in its application cannot effectively support parents who want to share the responsibility for work and care.

Conclusion

The low and slow rates of positive change in the employment of Australian women with young children compared with women in other OECD economies suggest that the institutional environment can influence how households develop preferences and make choices about how to integrate work and care. A comparison of policy frameworks across the OECD demonstrates the importance of a supportive policy regime. Policies that ensure the neutral tax treatment of secondary earners, access to paid maternity leave, and universal child care, for example, support women's capacity to work and care and promote women's labour market participation (Jaumotte 2004). These types of policies, however, are absent in Australia. Instead, the Australian policy environment is shaped by a traditional ideology of gender and gender relations that gives rise to financial incentive structures that reward women who remain at home to care, more than women who choose to combine care with a significant engagement in the labour market.

This bias toward traditional gender relations makes the Government rhetoric around the concept of choice problematic. Household 'choices' about who will work and who will care (and in what proportion) are of course constrained by various factors. Analysis of the Family Tax Benefit, the Maternity Payment and the Child Care Benefit show that the ideology of gender that structures the policy environment makes some choices more attractive to households than others. Many women with children have a choice whether they work or not. But the cost of this choice for some women is higher than others. Women who differ from the policy norm and choose to deepen their attachment to the labour force experience significant economic disincentives, including high effective marginal tax rates, limited access to paid maternity leave and inadequate support for the cost of child care. This is not only unfair, but also economically irrational and incompatible with the skills, needs and aspirations of Australian parents, the imperatives of an ageing demography, and moral concerns of equality, equity and gender justice. There is therefore an urgent need to establish an equitable work and care regime in Australia that accommodates new household structures and the current composition of the labour force.

Evaluation of Commonwealth Government expenditure on the Family Tax Benefit, the Maternity Payment, and the Child Care Benefit and Tax Rebate demonstrates that the work-family tensions that exist at the household level also exist at the policy level. While billions of dollars have been forthcoming, work and family policy developments over the past decade have been compromised by tension within the Government about how women who have children should be conceptualised: are they workers, are they carers, or are they both? Electoral politics demands the Government periodically address work and family issues, but the ideology of gender that informs key work and family policies has skewed the capacity of government to support Australian parents who wish to integrate family responsibilities and paid work. Instead of supporting dual-income families, the FTB provides maximum reward to families that conform to the model of a 'modified male breadwinner' household, and imposes significant forms of financial discrimination on women as they deepen their attachment to paid work. In addition, support for child care remains fragmented and inequitable, and paid maternity leave is elusive for most women. These policies entrench women's status as low-income, short-hours, non-career workers, as well as primary carers.

John Howard claimed early in his prime ministership that the role of government is to 'support families in the choices they wish to make'. But for many women the financial incentive structures delivered through the Family Tax Benefit system, the Maternity Payment and the Child Care Benefit and Tax Rebate combine to produce a public policy regime in which the 'choice' to enjoy work and family has become a choice between work or family.

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Notes

(1) In 1997 the female participation rate for Australian women was 53.8 per cent, and rose to 57.2 per cent in 2006 (ABS Catalogue 1301.0).

(2) These figures are calendar year averages.

(3) Differences in participation rates between countries for women in child-bearing ages reflect several variables:; (1) differences in the proportion of women who return to work after having children;, (2) differences in fertility rates;, (3) differences in the availability of paid maternity leave and how it is treated in labour force surveys. Generous maternity leave entitlements available in some countries can result in higher participation rates reported in child-bearing years.

(4) The employment rate is different to the participation rate, showing the percentage of persons people of working age (15-64) who are in employment (not also actively looking for work but unemployed).

(5) Differences in government accounting practicses prior to the introduction of the New new Tax tax System system in July 2000 make it difficult to collate comparative data from 1996-2000. Figures for budget years 2001--02, 2002--03 and 2003--04 are actual expenses. Figures for 2004-05 are final estimates. Figures for 2005-06 and 2006-07 are budget estimates.

(6) Due to differences in both the policy items and government accounting methods, comparable figures are only available from the fiscal year 2002-/03.

(7) This included income tax cuts, family payments and the government superannuation co-contribution also introduced in the 2004-05 Bbudget.

(8) There are administrative problems with the CCTR. The CCTR could only be claimed for expenses incurred during 2004-05 when submitting tax returns for fiscal year 2005-06. The lag in time between when parents incur the cost and receive the rebate is a feature of the CCTR which that was rectified in the 2007-08 budget changes to the administration of the CCTR, now the CCR.

(9) In the 2007-08 budget the CCTR was made a general rebate. This allows very low income women to access the 30 per cent rebate.

Elizabeth Hill, Political Economy, The University of Sydney

Table 1: Employment rate for women with youngest child
aged under six years 1990 and 2002

                 1990   2002

Australia        42.4   45.0
OECD             48.5   59.2
USA              54     59.5
Canada           56.9   62.7
New Zealand      36     49.2
United Kingdom   42.5   57.0

Source: OECD (2005).

Table 2: The gender division of labour and family payments
in More Help for Families (Department of Treasury 2004)

                     The gender division of labour
                         and increased benefits

Income *        50:50             67:33             80:20

$60,000    $34.62 per week   $40.89 per week   $58.08 per week
$100,000   $7.69 per week    $29.71 per week   $42.21 per week

* Family type: Dual-income family with two
children under 12 years of age.