Part-timers fail at work, home

Women professionals are hit hardest. Pic by: Getty Images

Part-time employment has failed to deliver either at home or in the office, with large numbers of white-collar workers suffering career burnout and family stress.

Those hit hardest are women professionals who had looked to part-time work as a way of balancing family responsibilities and working life.

But a report to be published today says many part-time professionals are being confronted with reduced incomes, career dead-ends and the inability to find enough family time.

It warns that many businesses will not be able to attract and retain "knowledge workers" if they do not address the imbalance between work and family life.

The report is the result of what is believed to be the most extensive study undertaken of work-life balance.

It is based on a survey by Beaton Consulting of 12,000 white-collar workers that had the backing of Professions Australia and most peak professional groups.

"It is bleak in many respects," said Beaton Consulting principal George Beaton.
The report found that many part-time professionals feel obliged to work as hard as their full-time counterparts, but their careers have been retarded and their incomes have fallen.

Dr Beaton said this had clear benefits for business in the short term. But it was one of the reasons many of those surveyed displayed little loyalty and were considering switching employers.

The report, written by Canadian academics Linda Duxbury and Chris Higgins, shows that there has been a serious decline in fertility among female professionals.

Because large numbers of female professionals had delayed having children over the past 10 to 15 years, Australia could be facing the reverse of the baby-boomer population bubble, Dr Beaton said.

"There is going to be a significant population deficit - a vacuum if you like - that is going to last for a couple of decades."

This trend was likely to be confined to the most socially and financially advantaged sector of the community: white-collar professionals, Dr Beaton said.

The report's findings are in line with a separate report by Beaton Consulting that says lawyers with dependent children had the highest level of ``role overload''.

One of those who has beat the odds and is successfully balancing her work and family life is Clayton Utz partner Robyn Banks, who works part-time in the law firm's Melbourne office. "I'm a bit wary of the term 'balance'," she said. "Sometimes I think I'm on a tightrope."

Mrs Banks said her part-time career was working well because of the support she had received from the partners at her firm and the fact that she could afford to pay a full-time nanny to help care for her children, Madeline, 7, and Tamara, 3.

"Unlike most working women, I have the ability to buy my flexibility, I suppose," she said.

"This might sound soppy, but I have also had incredibly supportive people around me - not just my husband, but partners in the workplace who have been incredibly good about it."

Mrs Banks said the tension between career progression and the desire to have children was well-known to women lawyers.

"It's an interesting demographic dilemma," she said. "On the one hand, you can wait until you are senior enough to leave the office at 3pm, in which case your fertility is not likely to be as great.

"Alternatively you can have kids early in life and, in terms of career development, that is much harder.

"For me it worked. But I know one woman who put it off hoping she would make it to the top and now she has neither -- she didn't make it to partner and she didn't have kids."

Federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick said she was particularly concerned about the ability of men and women to juggle employment and family responsibilities. "This topic is one of the hottest debates of our time," she said.

Professor Duxbury will launch the report this morning at the National Gallery of Victoria.

The Australian, April 8, 2008