Quotas for men at home. Just imagine that for a second.

Can men ‘have it all’?

No one ever asks that question, do they? We assume men can be fathers AND work because that has always been the case.

So why is something that’s a given for men, something so complex and unattainable for women that it has triggered copious books, columns, blogs and conferences? That is the very conversation we need to having.

I have devoted the past few years to the complex and unwieldy topic of gender inequality in Australia and I have reached a simple conclusion. It is time to put the role of men at home under the spotlight.

Because we can talk about women at work until we are blue in the face, but until we talk about men at home, we’ll get nowhere. Without recognising the intersection of men and women – at work but mostly at home – nothing will change.

Can you picture for a moment a power point, loaded with a double adapter and a few international adapters loaded on top of each other? That is the image that comes to my mind when I think about women trying to work and have a family.

The problem is we are inhabiting an old house set to analog, two decades after digital came in. We have the digital equipment – women are educated, qualified and willing to work in the masses – but our power points are mostly set to analog so we can’t plug them in.

We don’t have sufficient childcare or adequate paid parental leave. We don’t have sufficiently enlightened employers or employment policies that are implemented sufficiently. We don’t have partners sufficiently sharing the load at home. Until these things change we will struggle to plug our sufficiently capable women in to work.

Let me explain.

Childcare

One day childcare won’t be framed as necessary for mothers, it will be deemed necessary for parents. That day is not yet upon us. In Australia when childcare isn’t available or where it’s too expensive it is, in the main, mothers who limit or discard their work accordingly.

Access to affordable, available and good quality childcare remains piecemeal, reflecting a time gone by when a mother working was a rarity. Mothers working is not rare and access to childcare should reflect this. Economically, Australia needs as many women working as possible. Working delivers women financial security and independence that is optimal not just for them, but for their families and for the economy. It enables women to have a shot at acquiring wealth over the course of their lifetime, as opposed to poverty as is currently the case.

It is worth noting that out of all the OECD countries, Australia comes last in terms of the percentage of our GDP that we invest in pre-primary education. The OECD average is 0.6 per cent of a nation’s GDP and here in Australia we invest 0.2 per cent.

So, if a woman has children, accessing childcare that matches her needs is the first necessary adapter, if she has a hope of connecting to power.

Mums: (Not always) welcome at work  

Mothers face some resistance in the workplace.

Last year the Human Rights Commission released a comprehensive report on pregnancy and mothers at work. It found that half of all new mums in Australia face pregnancy discrimination. Half.  In the year 2014.

This is quite definitive, in my view, that, like it or not, we are stuck in a time gone by. We have not thoroughly evolved to a point when mothers are accepted in the workplace. Plenty will scratch their heads at this research, I’m sure. But before it is dismissed as a statistical anomaly look up the food chain at work. Whatever the field, I am quite certain as you progress towards the pointy end of power, you will find that mothers are underrepresented. Why might this be?

Could it be that our workplaces are not filled with individuals who truly accept mothers are workers?

So, another necessary adapter for a modern woman to access analog power, is having an employer or manager who doesn’t discriminate against her on the basis of her being pregnant or having children. Only half of working women in Australia access this adapter.

Men as primary earner, women as primary carer.

How many full time working men have a wife or partner who doesn’t work or works part-time? 76%. This is significant. So significant that it cannot be dismissed in any serious examination of the stubborn gap between men and women at work in Australia. We can’t consider that and then shrug our shoulders and feign confusion that men and women aren’t participating as equals. The answer is RIGHT IN FRONT OF US.

Most holders of power in Australia are full-time working men and most of these have a partner at home.  Only 15% of full-time working women have this in reverse.

This means that our workplaces are run by or managed by men from whom their personal paradigm is set to “men as primary earner, women as primary carer”.  That doesn’t mean a man whose wife stays at home can’t open his mind and understand the reality of his employees with a different domestic arrangement. But, it is likely that he will bristle, in some way, at men and women who take a substantive caregiving role  in addition to their earning role at work.

It creates a conflict for women on two fronts: at work and at home. If a women is not encouraged or supported, at home or at work, that her choice to combine parenting with work, is perfectly valid working will be tricky. Similarly if her partner is not afforded support and encouragement in his caring role, this will create difficulty.

This is one of those outer adapters that can, and does, easily fall out for many women. This regime is analog. It’s the old world order. And yet it persists even in this digital age.

The mother of all roles

In practical terms motherhood is all consuming. Women still undertake the vast majority of caring work and this pattern usually begins the moment a baby arrives. It is compounded by the fact so few fathers in Australia take much time off in the first year of a baby’s life. This is indicative of the roles mums and dads will play over the course of their lives: mum as caregiver, dad as earner.

In those clever Nordic countries where paternity leave is mandated, fathers remain far more hands on well beyond their paternity leave. It sets them up as equal parents and the dads remain involved for the duration of their children’s lives. Where time off isn’t taken in that first year, fathers are destined to be less involved in the caring work.

Given the limited number of hours in a day, if a woman is spending more time caring for children and running the household, she will have less time to commit to paid work. That is clear.

In the Sydney Morning Herald today economics editor Jessica Irvine dismissed the notion that women are inherently wired for optimal parenting.

”  …the idea that men and women have innate biological attributes that make women better suited to caring for infants, while men play a more important role in the lives of older children.

In my experience, it’s simply not true. I don’t mind admitting that becoming a mother has not come naturally to me. I don’t think it does to anyone.

Parenting is not an expression of our innate abilities, but a process of trial and error, repeated on high rotation under conditions of extreme sleep deprivation.

It is testament to the hard work of many mothers that they make it look instinctive.”

I am woman, therefore I am mother.

Women are very often defined by their maternal status so if a woman doesn’t have children, this choice will be dissected. Barren? Heartless? Selfish? Cold? All of the above?

If they do have a children, and manage to secure a promotion that makes the news, their status as a mother will almost always be included in the headline or the opening paragraph. Mother of three runs the BBC! Mother of six promoted at at the NRL! They were actual headline printed last year.

Federal MP  Kelly O’Dwyer is often referred to as a new mum, which is perfectly acceptable because she is a new mum. But Andrew Hastie, the newly elected Federal Member for Canning, also has a very young child but he is rarely referred to as a new dad. Why?

Because we are happy to separate a man’s parental status from his job. Earlier this year when Julie Bishop was asked if it’s possible to attain seniority in politics and have children, she made a simple point. There are a great number of senior politicians who have children: they’re called fathers.

These are all closely related symptoms of a greater problem which Jessica Irvine described as our fixation with “primary” and “secondary” care givers in the realm of parenting.

“Mums and dads are forced to decide in the first few weeks which will be which. The idea that duties should be shared equally from the start doesn’t even compute in the current system. You have to ask yourself: do you truly believe men and women are equal? If you do – and I do – we need to ditch the idea that women are somehow endowed with special powers that make them superior care givers for infants, and not just thrust into that role by a social structure which doesn’t support their desire to also work.”

A solution! Quotas. For men at home.

The good news is I have a solution. I believe we can solve the perennial dilemma of women at work with the introduction of a quota. For men at home.

Think about it and then think about all the different issues that hold women back at work.

And then tell me that a quota for men at home wouldn’t be a game changer?