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Role swap could reduce tension

MEN should swap their role as breadwinner for the "mummy track" employment path and end relationship tensions over work and family, according to a national discussion paper.

The paper is designed to ignite public debate about gender stereotypes that trap men on a highway to retirement and burden women with the lion's share of unpaid work and caring roles.

The 150-page paper, launched by Sex Discrimination Commissioner Pru Goward, insists that unpaid work is at the centre of a conflict between paid work and family that must be resolved for social good and the more pressing national economic imperative of long-term growth.

"Ignoring these paid work and family tensions poses negative long-term threats to individual health, workforce participation rates, women's retirement incomes, fertility rates, the nation's productivity and relationships themselves," the paper says.

It foreshadows a future where men break free from the breadwinner model that imprisons them on a 40-year treadmill, to pioneer a career path that follows the "mummy track" women traditionally take with variations in the intensity and hours worked over a life cycle.

This brave new world is in line with the Government's predictions that we will live longer and work longer to manage the costs of an ageing population and to sustain the levels of economic growth that the nation is said to require.

The crunch is best described by figures that document the "double shift" effect of women's rise in employment without a corresponding increase in men's share of housework and caring duties.

Men might look like winners, but they consistently express resentment at being absent from children.

Fathers of young children are likely to be working a greater number of hours than all men. When their youngest child is under five, fathers do about the same housework as men in childless couples.

"Arguably, this working pattern is damaging to men's physical, mental and emotional health," the paper says.

"It bestows on them the overwhelming financial responsibility for family, insufficient breaks from work and insufficient time for family and intimate relationships."

Atop of this precarious family sandwich is the shadow of elderly relatives and the fact that women overwhelmingly care for them.

Ninety-one per cent of parents receiving help in 2003 were being cared for by their daughters, many of whom were in employment.

The Howard Government wants baby boomers to provide for their own retirement and defer that exodus for as long as possible.

At the same time it wants older Australians to remain at home and delay entry into institutional care for as long as possible.