Charlesworth, Sara --- "Law’s Response to the Reconciliation of Work and Care: The Australian Case" [2011] ELECD 866; in Busby, Nicole; James, Grace (eds), "Families, Care-giving and Paid Work" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011)

Book Title: Families, Care-giving and Paid Work

Editor(s): Busby, Nicole; James, Grace

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781849802628

Section: Chapter 5

Section Title: Law’s Response to the Reconciliation of Work and Care: The Australian Case

Author(s): Charlesworth, Sara

Number of pages: 18

Extract:

5. Law's response to the reconciliation
of work and care: the Australian
case
Sara Charlesworth

INTRODUCTION
The focus in this chapter is on law's response to the reconciliation of work,
care and family in Australia. As Smith claims, law has a significant role in
reflecting, constituting and reinforcing assumptions about the characteris-
tics of `ideal workers' and the separation of work and care but it also has
the power to challenge and change such assumptions (2006: 701). A key
argument in this chapter is that job quality matters to the gender-equitable
reconciliation of work and care. Today, employment and anti-
discrimination regulation offer some carer-friendly conditions and protec-
tion to workers with caring responsibilities. In practice, however, law's
engagement with work and care has been highly gendered and remains
peripheral to the mainstream industrial regulation of employment condi-
tions. As a consequence the part-time work `solution' to managing both
work and care has come at the price of poor quality jobs for many women.
The interaction of work and care occurs within the context of a specific
and dynamic work­care regime that incorporates not only institutional
arrangements that shape labour relations and the welfare state, but also the
gender order or gender culture with its assumptions about `normal' gender
relations, including the division of labour between men and women
(Pocock 2005). Work­care regimes sit within a national context and as
Lewis (2001) has argued in relation to gender institutional frameworks,
they can ...