Public and Private Parents: The Gendered Division of Labour and Australian Paid Parental Leave Policy

Abstract

Since the 1970s, the gendered division of household labour has been an important issue for both academic disciplines and policy-makers. This thesis considers the gendered division of labour in relation to Australian family policy, arguing that policy has a particular significance to the production of gendered familial relations in liberal societies. Specifically, this thesis considers paid parental leave policy and its implications for the gendered division of childcare labour in Australian heterosexual households. In doing so, it contributes to scholarly discussions about the ways various approaches to family policy might enable or impede progress toward a more equitable division of childcare in Australia. Drawing from critical theory, feminist studies of liberalism and Raewyn Connell’s work on masculinity, I provide analysis of The Coalition’s Policy for Paid Parental Leave (LNP 2013) and of historical Australian family policy, considering the ways this has failed to recognise the shared responsibility of childcare labour. I argue that Australian family policy has worked to enshrine childcare responsibilities onto women and mothers. And that this history and contemporary policy framework implicitly privileges and excludes certain men. I argue that this is exemplary of the way gender hierarchies are reaffirmed by policy and the way paid parental leave policies can work to reinforce the gendered division of childcare labour. Centrally, I am interested in the power relations that are implicit in historical and contemporary Australian family policy’s positioning of women and men, mothers and fathers, and in the broader question of what good policy might look like in this area.