Choosing part-time work helped to keep me sane

Late last year, I was offered my dream job – serving on the executive team of an influential NGO reporting directly to the impressive female CEO.

But when the offer was made, I became paralysed with fear. How would I manage a demanding full-time role plus my responsibilities as a sole parent – to myself and my children?

How would I manage a demanding full-time role plus my responsibilities as a sole parent – to myself and my children?Credit:

The job had flexibility and was family-friendly. I could work two days from home; a nine-day fortnight; an early start or a late finish; even five-days-in-seven. The organisation wanted me on board, and they wanted to make it easy for me to say yes.

Yet I knew that early morning phone calls and late night emails were unavoidable in a senior role. I would be tapping out texts as I made my children breakfast and returning to my desk after they were asleep. I would be too exhausted in the evening to ask them about their day, let alone read them a story.

With regret, I declined the job. I subsequently took a part-time role at an equally excellent workplace, albeit with less pay and less seniority. It was a difficult and pragmatic decision – made in the best interests of my family.

A few weeks after I started my new job, I heard Diane Smith-Gander, chair of the Committee for Economic Development, discussing productivity on ABC Radio. She argued that women’s workforce participation is Australia’s largest untapped resource.

I knew that early morning phone calls and late night emails were unavoidable in a senior role.Credit:

But it was this sentence that halted me: “[We need to] stop this time-honoured tradition of educating women, getting them into jobs, training and developing them, then sort of letting them go off into a minor part-time workforce if they have a career break for caring responsibilities.”

The language irked me. The idea that I’d wandered off into “a minor part-time workforce” seemed to diminish the difficult decision I’d made, and my success in securing a satisfying part-time permanent position in my industry.

What’s more, my decision to work part-time was the difference between chaos and sanity. As any sleep-deprived woman who has bundled tired children into daycare before rushing off to their full-time job knows, the wheels will fall off sometime. And it’s usually ugly.

Because if women are in the workforce full-time, who is looking after the kids? And not just the kids, but everything else? Who is doing the washing, the cleaning, the shopping, the cooking? Who’s taking the car to the mechanic and the dog to the vet? Yes, it’s mostly the women.

Most recent ABS stats, from May 2021, show 62 per cent of women spent five or more hours in the previous week on unpaid indoor housework compared with 35 per cent of men. That these statistics are persistent around the world may be because more women work part-time. But the question remains – where is the equality?

A recent Dutch study showed that women in permanent, well-paid, highly skilled part-time roles have better life and job satisfaction scores. It’s truest in women with male partners working full-time. Because, frankly, part-time work allows them the best of both worlds – a satisfying work life and a sane home life.

Women’s workforce participation and affordable childcare became the tropes of a promised economic recovery during the federal election campaign. Countless reports show affordable childcare is the answer to getting women back to work. As more women join the workforce, the economy grows, wages increase, and women’s career trajectories rise. It sounds like a win-win. But at the coalface, women are barely holding it together.

A startling May 2022 report from Deloitte found almost half of Australian women feel “burned out” and more than half have higher stress levels than a year ago. About 45 per cent say their mental health is extremely poor or poor and 32 per cent have taken time off work due to stress. And yes, it’s an economic issue – the World Economic Forum estimates burnout costs the global economy $US322 billion annually.

Last week’s announcement of a $9 billion investment in early childhood education in Victoria was hailed as a game-changer for families. It came just two days after the NSW state government promised $5 billion toward more affordable early childcare places. But childcare is not the silver bullet our political leaders believe it to be. Without a seismic rethink of how and why we work – and what responsibilities we owe ourselves and our children – the wheels are going to fall off.

It took the COVID-19 pandemic to help reveal the ludicrousness of my own family situation. For several years, I worked 60-hour weeks on top of being the sole parent and sole income earner in my family. As COVID hit, I hit a wall. I stopped work and did some study. I walked my children to school. I saw a counsellor. Gradually, I returned to work – part-time. What I learned is it’s not about juggling better; it’s about putting down a few balls so you can keep the rest in the air.

Guilting highly educated women with caring responsibilities into full-time work for the benefit of the economy is unhelpful. So is chastising them for seeking part-time roles. This is gendered buck-passing and what women hear is: it’s their job to pick up the pieces, again.

Even with a progressive new federal government and state governments who seem hell-bent on social reform, supporting mothers in the workplace needs broad systemic change. It requires high quality affordable childcare, plus better parental leave, plus flexible workplaces, plus more permanent part-time roles, plus in-built career tracks for part-timers, plus better mental health care, plus changes to social welfare, plus partners who take greater responsibility at home.

For now, we must ask ourselves as individuals what is sustainable – for ourselves and our families. Sometimes, the answer may come at a cost to our careers. Ultimately, the economy – and maybe even our children – will thank us.

The Opinion newsletter is a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform. Sign up here.