Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Facts and figures: On Australian working mothers feeling "pressed for time"

Here's a counterpoint to yesterday's Notes item "There's no harm done being a working mum"--supposedly 'no harm done' to the child, but what about the working mum? In today's Herald:

Despite a 7 per cent decline in total hours worked by Australians between 2008 and 2009, researchers from the University of South Australia have found the proportion of workers dissatisfied with their work-life balance is growing.

The survey of about 2800 workers, which has been taken annually since 2007, found about a quarter of women working full time and a fifth of full-time men to be unhappy with the balance.

''We see no letting up … and we see quite a significant deterioration for full-time women,'' said Barbara Pocock, the director of the university's Centre for Work and Life.

The survey found seven in 10 working mothers felt ''often'' or ''almost always'' pressed for time. ...
[my emphasis,
http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/stop-the-work-i-want-to-get-off-20100803-115g9.html?skin=text-only]

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Dominic, Confessor, A.D. 2010

1 comment:

Cardinal Pole said...

No edition of Notes today; the only thing I want to highlight is something which belongs as a postscript to this post anyway. It is this, which I was interested to hear coming from a New Atheist:

"First Tuesday Book Club presenter Jennifer Byrne interviews Christopher Hitchens on ABC1, July 13:

"HITCHENS: No, I'm not having any woman of mine go to work.

"Byrne: You know you're going to get into trouble if you go down there.

"Hitchens: No, they don't need to work. They can if they like, they don't have to.

"Byrne: Is this you being ironic?

"Hitchens: No. What's so difficult about it.

"Byrne: It's just wrong. It's just absolutely wrong."
[bold type in the original,
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/kidnapped-on-the-campaign-trail-by-tony-abbott-the-stockholm-syndrome-takes-hold/story-e6frg6zo-1225901334816]

Read more at the web-page for the full transcript:

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/firsttuesday/s2898631.htm