Better Work and Family Balance

In 2005, thanks to a private donor the Victorian Women’s Trust was able to make a $15,500 grant to the Women’s Information Referral and Exchange (WIRE) to produce support material for women to negotiate with their employers around the achievement of practical and effective family-friendly work conditions. The subsequent booklet was a first rate resource.

Soon after, a small group of women from the Trust, WIRE, the Queen Victoria Women’s Centre Trust and Industrial Relations Victoria met to explore how this initiative could be taken a whole lot further. They developed a proposal for a national program and presented it in August 2007 to representatives of the Federal Government and Opposition.

Two months later, the Opposition Shadow for Workplace and Industrial Relations, Julia Gillard MP took up the proposal and announced it as a flagship policy commitment and pledged $12 million to roll out the program if they won government.

With the election of the Rudd Government in November 2007, we now await the implementation of this commitment.

A private donor grant of $15,500 becomes a $12 million federal government initiative that can help thousands of women and men around the country achieve better work and family balance. From little things, big things grow!

Some facts and stats

37.9% of employed women have dependent children.

32% of female employees report using part-timework to provide care, compared with 4% of males.

45.3% of all employed women with dependentchildren took time off in 2002 to care for a sick child,as compared with 26.7% of men with dependentchildren in the same year.