All change, still gendered: The Australian labour market in the 1990s

Abstract

ments uncritically endorse the globalising and so-called deregulation of the labour market, suggesting that it offers a boon for women. This paper reviews aspects of women’s current labour market experience by referring to characteristics that range across the boundaries of home and waged work and suggest continuing interdependencies between the spheres. These include work patterns; sex segregation; wages, conditions and bargaining; quality of working life and ’family-friendliness ’ in the workplace. The article summarises current literature and offers some new analysis and data. There are few signs that women’s employment status is improving relative to men’s, and instead some indicators suggest an increasing divide in tbe labour markets—both between the sexes and between women. The analysis is relevant to theory, policy and the practical business of combining paid work and home life. Amid some fundamental structural changes, the gendered character of the Australian labour market has slipped out of view over the past decade. This reflects several factors: the dominance-in discourse and practice-of workplaces and industrial reform over analysis of labour market ’disadvantage’