In 2010, a group of researchers conducted a study of nearly 25,000 IBM employees from seventy-five different countries. Looking at the hours that people worked and the other responsibilities in their lives, the researchers established what they called their ‘break point’, which they defined as the number of work hours at which ‘work/life interference’ began having a negative impact on an employee’s effectiveness. (I would identify ‘break point’ as the point at which the employee communicates with his or her family exclusively in shrieks, and can only work while drunk, but let’s go with the eggheads here.)
Anyway, it turned out that when men were given the opportunity both to work from home and to choose their own hours, their ‘break point’ rose by twenty hours. That is to say, they could perform an additional twenty hours every week before losing their minds. And for men with children under five, the ‘break point’ rose by a staggering thirty hours when they were allowed to work flexibly.12
And yet, flexible work for parents is still deeply associated with women. More particularly, it’s associated with mothers. Where will you find the flexible work scheme in the annual report? Right there in the ‘Workplace Diversity’ section, in all likelihood. (‘Workplace Diversity’, in case you are unfamiliar with corporate-speak, commonly means ‘Women’, because for some reason, even in 2014, just having women around is sufficient to qualify one as ‘diverse’.)
Graeme Russell says that workplace flexibility is almost exclusively viewed as an initiative for women. ‘Of the organisations that I’ve worked with, I can’t say any of them are really serious about extending this to men as well as women,’ he says. ‘If it’s extended at all, it’s from women with children to women with other caring responsibilities.’
According to Daniel Petre, whose book Father Time was written about his active decision – as a senior Microsoft executive – to change the way he worked and put his family and children first, there is a certain degree of coded messaging going on in workplaces.
‘If you want to point the finger, it’s the board who appoints the CEO, and the CEO who says, “Yep, work–life balance, fantastic,” but he’s at his desk by six and others know that means they’ve got to be there by seven,’ Petre says. ‘If you offer people flexibility of choice in an environment where it’s clear that promotions are a function of time spent and hours worked, what are they going to choose?
‘I do a lot of advisory work. I see a lot of CEOs, of senior executives. They’re all the same – mainly made up of older men who are obsessed by work. Who make token gestures both in terms of their own families, and the women who work for them.
‘It’s very difficult for men who are serious about being fathers, in that culture, to be promoted and seen.
‘The men who really do want to do it – they lie. They pretend that they’re off to root canal surgery when really it’s their daughter’s swimming carnival.
‘Why don’t fathers take paternity leave? Because in many environments it’s seen as the wrong thing to do. What should happen? The CEO should take it. That would make a difference. If you really believe work–life balance is important, say “No one has to be here before nine. No meetings will occur after five.”’
Both men and women commonly feel overworked. We know this because the Centre for Work and Life at the University of South Australia asked nearly 3000 Australians exactly this question, and full-time workers of both sexes said they would ideally like to work about half a day less every week. But women were more likely to act on this desire by requesting flexible work arrangements for family reasons than men were. Men were more likely to ask for flexibility so that they could study, or take on a different and more challenging role. And men, in the cases where they asked for flexibility, were twice as likely as women to have their requests declined.13
The ability to work when it suits you, and to do it from home if that’s what steams your beans, has potential for all sorts of people, not just parents. In all the excitement of the argument about how people organise themselves after having children, it should always be remembered that it’s good for all people to do things differently every now and again.
Many people do not have children. But that doesn’t stop them from needing flexibility in their lives, whether it’s to make room for interests, self-improvement, or looking after another family member.
But there is one kind of leave that really is designed only to be used by people who have just taken delivery of a squealing infant, and that’s parental leave. In Australia, we didn’t have a national paid parental leave system for an extremely long time, but in 2009 Kevin Rudd introduced one scheme, only for a subsequent election to be won by Tony Abbott, promising another. In this way, prospective parents have had something approaching the experience of waiting for a bus in Adelaide: nothing for 109 years, and then suddenly two turn up at once.
The Rudd scheme plumped for eighteen weeks’ leave at the minimum wage. Paid out by the state under the prudently neutral contemporary banner of ‘parental leave’, it was claimable by either Mum or Dad, though very few of the recipients had any trouble working out who was really supposed to be getting it. In the first two and a half years of the scheme, bureaucrats told a Senate estimates hearing in 2013, paid parental leave was taken by 10,000 women a month, and just a shade under twenty men. Yes: that is about a 500 to one ratio.14
Men, possibly because they are specifically mentioned in the title, proved to be a bit more interested in the adjunct policy called ‘Dad and Partner Pay’, which offered an additional two weeks’ leave, also paid at the minimum wage. An acceptably brief period of leave, with a blokey name to boot, Dad and Partner Pay walked off the shelves like it came with a free slab: 20,000 claimants in its first three months of operation.
Tony Abbott’s proposal for a paid parental leave scheme is much more controversial, and not just because of his memorable 2002 request to the gods of the Liberal Party to render him a eunuch forthwith should he ever be foolish enough to contemplate such a thing. Or words to that general effect.15
The scheme Tony Abbott took to the 2013 election, part-funded by a levy on big business, plans to pay mothers for twenty-six weeks at their actual wage, up to a cap of $75,000 (since moderated to $50,000 in the Coalition’s first budget). Fathers can choose to take the leave instead, but in those circumstances would have to settle for their wife’s wage, if she has one, or the minimum wage, if she doesn’t. To economists, this looks like a sensible precaution. It precludes the Palmer family, for instance – who would be eligible for paid parental leave under the Abbott scheme – from claiming six months at Clive’s salary, which would sink the federal budget faster than another six months of the Rudd administration. To ordinary eyes, however, it carries another subtle yet unmistakeable coded message: chaps, if you’re thinking of becoming the primary caregiver, you might as well put on a frilly apron while you’re doing it. (At the time of writing, Mr Abbott’s paid parental leave scheme was caught up in a murderous snarl of opposition from Senate cross-benchers and his own colleagues; its survival in any form is far from assured.)
But even men who took the existing Dad and Partner Pay leave – and the vast majority of them took fewer than four weeks – found that the decision was not without controversy at work.
When Sex Discrimination Commissioner Liz Broderick staged her inquiry into pregnancy and return to work, she surveyed 1000 fathers who had taken Dad and Partner Pay, and found that 27 per cent of these dads said they had experienced blowback from their bosses and colleagues over taking leave.16
Half of the respondents thus afflicted said they had fielded negative attitudes and comments. Half said they had suffered adverse treatment on pay decisions, and decisions about conditions and duties. A quarter of them looked for other work as a result, and one in ten actually resigned.
Now, to take a cautious view, it must be remembered that the survey canvassed only the recollections of those men, and not the balancing views of their employers, about what exa
ctly was said and why. These statistics cannot be taken as an authoritative estimate of actual discrimination. But perception is what this game is all about. If the fear of adverse consequences plays any role at all in the disinclination of men more broadly to change the way they work when they have children, then the experience of these men – amplified by the fact that for each man thus affected, there are untold numbers of colleagues watching what happened and learning deeply from the spectacle – must surely be instructive.
Our first child was born when we lived in London – me working as a correspondent, Jeremy slaving long hours in a large City law firm with an extensive avant-garde art collection and smoking rooms on every floor. When Audrey was born, I was at home with her for six lovely months. Then I was offered a job in Sydney, as political sketchwriter for the Herald. We had always taken turns, and we decided that we would move back to Australia – me to start my new job, Jeremy to take six months at home with our baby. He had a standing offer from his old Australian firm to go back to his former job. But how would we explain to them why he wasn’t available to start right away, even though he was in Sydney?
Half-jokingly, we canvassed a range of more acceptable alibis. Perhaps we could tell them that Jeremy had developed a serious prescription drug addiction? Or that he was conducting a six-month surfing tour of remote Australian beaches? It was only half a joke, because for all the sincerity of Jeremy’s belief that raising a child should be a genuinely cooperative affair, he retained a reasonable apprehension about how such an approach would be viewed, professionally speaking. In the end, he took the time at home, and they coped. The births of our second and third children were celebrated by far more routine paternal circumstance: two weeks’ paternity leave each, involving about thirty trips to the chemist and at least one week spent abortively trying to assemble a flat-pack garden shed. An entirely uncontroversial affair.
Everyone has a story about what happened when they had a baby. An entire online biosphere draws its lifeblood from such experiences. And when I asked men on Twitter to tell me their stories, a babel of experience presented itself almost immediately. Some had glorious tales to tell: sympathetic bosses, colleagues who encouraged them all the way. (Mainly, they worked in the public sector or in the arts.) Some had horror stories. The two I reproduce here are interesting because they signify, for me, the possibilities of what men can do if they persist.
Let’s take the case of Charlie first. He works in a call centre for a major utility company. ‘Call centres are an odd beast,’ Charlie reports. ‘They are the blue-collar end of white-collar. As such, they are more genteel than retail or hospitality but without the clinical, politically correct dynamic of the public service or high-end private sector work. There is a robust group dynamic where ribald discussion is still permitted (to a degree) without fear of reprimand; the line that keeps it civil and respectful is almost solely determined by the attitude of management. As such, people can still say what they think without feeling like they are being muzzled. It’s not a garage, but it’s not a boardroom.’
Charlie is married. He and his wife decided they were ready to have a baby, and it more or less happened overnight. Charlie had no qualms about asking for a compressed roster – four days of ten hours, rather than five of eight hours – so that he could go to doctors’ appointments, shop for baby gear and otherwise be a part of what was about to be a large change in his life. Compressed rosters are a bit of a treat, as they make life harder for managers trying to ensure all shifts are reliably covered.
‘I am not career focused but I am diligent towards my job, and am afforded more flexibility than some other employees as I am consistent and deliver good results,’ Charlie says. ‘I am often confident in approaching my employer about asking for “favours” as I am never reprimanded or counselled about my performance.’
Charlie’s request was approved.
‘I was often gently chided by male workmates about “doing women’s chores” when I told them how I spent my days, but I didn’t care. The happiness of my wife and me was more important than trying to exude an alpha dynamic at work.’
Charlie found out about the Dad and Partner Pay entitlement, and approached his supervisor to apply for it: ‘Her face dropped, like she had been shot in the stomach.’
Charlie provides some context. ‘Management are graded by KPIs around effective leadership of staff. High levels of “unplanned” leave or unpaid leave is therefore a black mark against them; it indicates that they are not engaging with their charges effectively. So I had just barrelled up and asked for a very large hole to be punched in the numbers her yearly bonus was to be calculated on! To her credit, she diplomatically suggested she could look into it.’ As it turned out, the supervisor’s fears were unfounded. This was a new category of leave, with a different classification, and wouldn’t affect her targets. She brightened considerably, thanked Charlie, and all was well. When the baby was born, the supervisor was one of the first people Charlie called. ‘I felt very, very supported by her and wanted to let her know first,’ he says.
The call centre was closed, and Charlie made redundant, about halfway through his wife’s maternity leave, but he found another job, without losing a day’s pay, in another centre which also took a number of his colleagues, and agreed to give Charlie the Dad and Partner leave he hadn’t had the chance to take from his first employer. They also agreed to a compressed roster for him.
Charlie’s story is a success story, but it required persistence, both to identify and pursue the flexibility available to him, and to ignore the gentle resistance from colleagues. ‘In a social context, the men chattered the most,’ he says. ‘None was overtly malicious, but it seemed like it was an opportunity for alpha males to assert their dominance, loudly, and to announce to the workplace at large how much more committed they were to their jobs. Management would recognise their behaviour for what it was, but a male who was bent on advancement may have thought twice about approaching it as I had, if they were very career focused.’
Sometimes, though, it can all come down to who your boss is.
Brendan, who is a contract administrative officer in the resources industry, negotiated a deal when he started his job that he would take one morning off a week, and make up the hours elsewhere.
‘My American boss was happy with that situation, and all the other managers were afraid of him, so I had no problems for a year or so,’ he says. ‘I got to spend a lot of time with my eldest daughter (she is now seven) when she was an adorable small child. I will treasure that time my whole life.’
But then Brendan’s boss got the boot. ‘Suddenly I had a new boss, and I got the talk about my hours and how increasing responsibility and what-not meant greater commitment to the workplace was required. I conceded that a whole morning off was less than ideal if I wanted to climb the ladder in order to be able to better provide for my family, but argued strongly for an hour and a half or so away from work once a week to drop the piglets off at school and be part of that daily experience of their lives. My workplace has official policies on all of these things, including work–life balance. Despite this, I was pressured quite strongly by my direct boss to confirm to 8 am to 5 pm, Monday to Friday (I only get paid for thirty-eight of these forty hours), unless, of course, they needed me longer. When I argued that the company had a purported commitment to work–life balance and I wanted to spend precious time outside work hours with my kids, my boss simply said “We all have families. What makes yours special?”
‘Worse than that, however, was the CFO, a dapper-suited, neat-haired new age carapace containing an uninhibited misogynistic bogan, whose actual words to me, in concert with my boss in the same room, were: “To be successful you have to accept that weekends are for families.”’
Brendan opted for a discreet partial retreat. He stopped taking the whole morning off, but insisted on his right to do the school run once a week. And that’s how he’s proceeded ever since. Every now and again, his boss corner
s him and asks him when he’s going to cut out the school drop-off. The exchange always goes the same way, Brendan asking ‘Do you believe I’m neglecting to put in the hours?’ and his boss agreeing that he works longer hours than required; Brendan asking if there are any concerns about the quality of his work and his boss replying that he was satisfied with the work. The problem, says his boss when pressed, is that it’s better for everybody to work the same hours.
On the whole, the palaver involved in seizing a whiff of flexibility, one morning a week, has left Brendan feeling wrung out. ‘Despite the year, and the new touchy-feely edge to corporate business and all the right words about work–life balance and looking after oneself and the family – my experience is that it remains lip-service when it comes down to it,’ he says. ‘I actually think it’s worse for men, because the expectation on us is to conform to the stereotype of male success – you’ll be at the office early and leave late. Weekends are for families. The ladies in the office don’t seem to get as much grief because, after all, women are the caregivers and that’s just expected, isn’t it? In these people’s world view? And these people, sadly, in oil and gas, anyway, are still older white males. I just keep doing my thing. I take my girls to school at least once a week, and stay with them in the classroom until the bell goes, and then make my way into work by 9.30. And I make up the hours easily by staying back until six, once or twice a week, and starting at seven every other day. But I know that it’s a pebble in the management’s shoe that I won’t conform, and if it comes down to it, in these uncertain times for resources, it’ll be one of the marks against my name.’
Low-level hassling is a common enough story for men who take time out of work to tend to their families, even if they make the time up elsewhere. And Brendan’s impression that it’s harder for men has some scholarly support. A 2013 study of middle-class workers in Canada found that ‘caregiving’ fathers were subjected to more mistreatment at work than traditional fathers, and in some workplaces more than twice as much mistreatment as ‘caregiving’ mothers.17 Of the women studied, in fact, those without children were hassled more than mothers. In fact, patterns of mistreatment – the researchers found – was much more to do with how closely workers conformed to traditional expectations of them, much more than it was to do with gender. The least mistreated people tended to be men who had children but did not take anything beyond customary responsibility for them, and women who had children and did. Those in line for a tougher time were women without children, who were thought cold or indifferent, and men looking after their children, who were thought soft.
The Wife Drought Page 7