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Expert opinion
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In the 21st Century part time work is no longer the anomaly it once was. Part time employment now constitutes almost one third of jobs in Australia. It’s everywhere, and it’s growing.
For women who often need access to part time work to help them combine working and caring, this is a real win. Part time work can be an important ‘bridge’ enabling families to manage the competing demands of work and care in contemporary life. I’m thrilled to see how many NSW businesses realise this and have put policies and arrangements in place to make part time work a real possibility.
I have to say that I’m carefully watching suggestions that part time work might become even more prevalent in the current economic climate. While there are exciting prospects to mainstream workplace flexibility and part time work, we need to be really careful to assess the quality – rather than simply the quantity – of part time work opportunities out there in our community.
Real problems come when part time employment is poor in quality. In Australia, it’s not uncommon to find women with professional skills working in casualised lower skilled jobs because they aren’t able to work part time in the jobs they are trained to do. Many women also find that part time work comes with a career and income ‘penalty’ and that their responsibilities, involvement in organisational decision-making, and opportunities for advancement change on moving to part time hours.
Current options for part time work in Australia see female capital drained from our economy in ways that are hard to justify on grounds of equity, productivity and efficiency, and this needs real attention.
To open up a conversation about what we could do in NSW to increase the availability of quality part time work I recently hosted a Round Table forum bringing together stakeholders from businesses, unions, universities and government.
Industry and workplace experts shared their knowledge and raised some critical messages. It was clear that this issue needs to be championed at senior levels, that managers often need more support to make quality part time jobs a reality in workplaces, and that we all need to question established practices and, if necessary, redesign how we organise and think about work.
The NSW Government is now working to find ways to provide support to businesses to address these challenges, and will develop some initiatives over coming months. We also recognise that there are broader issues that stand above employers. These include big policy questions about how we invest in and recognise the skills of women in our workforce, and how governments support women’s workforce participation through other policy measures such as child care, parental leave, and incentives in the taxation and welfare systems. Of course, not all of these can be addressed by the NSW Government alone.
As the Minister for Women I want all women in NSW to have better choices and opportunities in the workforce. As a mother of a young child, I also want this for my daughter in years to come. We all need to do our bit to make sure are have a contemporary workforce for the 21st Century. That means realising that part time workers, like their full time colleagues, have a wide variety of skills, talents and contributions to bring to their workplaces.