MATRIZ DE LA ENSEÑANZA PARA LA COMPRESIÓN

Participants responded positively to suggestions about changing workplace conditions and practices to allow workers to go home on time and take leave to care for sick children. They clearly thought that such provisions should apply equally to men and women. Some participants recounted their experiences with prejudices against mothers in employment.

Several participants spoke about flexibility in their partners’ workplaces, allowing them to take time off for sick children, leave work early sometimes, and attend special events at children’s schools. Several others spoke of having similar flexibility in their own workplaces. Flexibility seemed to be associated with a workplace culture of valuing parental roles, and a sort of reciprocity, with workers determined to repay employers for flexibility, and employers rewarding workers in a range of ways including with flexibility. ‘Alison’ described the increase in carer’s leave provisions as ‘a little leap in the right direction’.

A number of participants spoke about excessive workplace demands on workers. As ‘Alison’ stated:

I think it would be good for everyone to go home on time −mothers or fathers, all workers. There’s a real push in our society for more and more hours. You know people working from home fall into the trap of always working, easily fall into that trap of no knock-off time.

One participant described flexibility as ‘a two-edged sword’:

It works for people who are in positions where you can’t be replaced and you’re valued, but I have listened to radio programs of women who are factory workers and the difficulties they had when their hours were no longer set. All of a sudden they felt this intense pressure to do unpaid overtime. No-one asked them but they were really just saying ‘Look I’m really committed to this’ and that’s why I think the comment here about definite finishing time is really important because there’s always more work you can do and if you’re saying to everybody ‘Now go home, it’s time to go home, this is it and don’t take stuff home’ [laughter] that’s a really good thing. [‘Evelyn’]

Some participants spoke about differences between mothers and non-mothers in relation to putting in extra effort at work. Some stated that non-mothers resent the

limits imposed by mothers. ‘Denise’ recounted a recent staff meeting at the school where she was working. She often had to leave meetings to collect her child before the childcare centre closed. At one meeting, a well-respected male member of staff stated publicly that if people could not attend late meetings then they shouldn’t be working there. ‘Denise’ challenged the statement at the time, and was disappointed that the importance of children and the legitimacy of having childcare responsibilities could still be challenged in this way. She thought that if more men shared the responsibility for children there would be less acceptance of this sort of statement in the workplace.

‘Melissa’, aged 25, spoke about having to overcome a range of prejudices:

That’s the problem when you are uneducated and you’re going for jobs. It’s not so bad now I’m older but when I had [daughter] I was 22. I was young and I was a single parent and I had a problem with trying to get some jobs because they thought because I was the young single parent I would be unstable, I would be going home all the time because my kid’s sick. I had to sort of guarantee that I wasn’t going to be running off all the time, like there was just that prejudice. … But you can get over it because I did get jobs you know it’s just that sometimes you get a bit annoyed that you have to sit there and justify yourself … and I thought “Why do I have to prove myself to a stranger anyway that I’m still a good person even though I’m a single parent?” You know before I had [daughter] I used to get jobs like that [flicking her fingers] and I was still getting jobs but it seemed I was really having to work my way through it to get a job. [‘Melissa’]

Another example of failure to recognise and value family commitments was presented:

Even the university when you go in there at the beginning of the year, you get lecturers, they stand up and say “Well if university isn’t coming first then you shouldn’t be here” and I sometimes feel like standing up and saying “Well excuse me, my family comes first. I have obligations to my children. They can’t look after themselves. They’re not adults so therefore they should be coming first.” [‘Ingrid’]

In one of the focus groups, the difficulties for small businesses were discussed, with both employer and employee perspectives being represented. The participants could

clearly see both sides of the situation – the waitress who wanted Saturday night off at short notice because her child was sick, and the small business operator who has four children of her own, works a 60-hour week in the business and gets upset with staff who do not meet their commitments.