We need an honest conversation about work-life conflict

Recently my 93-year-old mother, a testament to the effectiveness of My Aged Care in enabling independent living, misplaced her walking stick.  I’m the first family member she told, but being a plane flight away, I wasn’t much help. 

I reached out to my 62-year-old cousin Miriam, who lives around the corner from my mum. She was in a whirlwind of caregiving, including nursing her adult niece who’d had a harrowing jet-ski accident in Bali, requiring a medivac flight, surgery and two weeks of bed rest. She also supplies weekly childcare for her toddler granddaughter, and, as if that’s not enough, she’d just whipped up a rice salad for a friend undergoing cancer treatment. Mum thought she may have left her walking stick when Miriam brought her over to visit a few days before. 

Here's the twist: Miriam also has a senior full-time job that requires long hours and travel to remote Queensland communities. 

I'm sharing this story not just to celebrate my cousin’s exceptional caregiving abilities, but to shed light on the everyday reality faced by many older working Australian women. It’s a tough balancing act, and it's high time we started talking more about it. 

As we live longer, healthier lives, there’s an essential conversation about how we, as a society,  navigate work-life conflict, particularly for working women who find themselves with intergenerational caregiving responsibilities.

As policymakers call to reimagine what work looks like across an increasing lifetime, too often they exclude the fact that most of the world’s informal caregiving – whether to children, elders, or family members with disabilities, chronic illnesses, or mental health issues - is still being done by women. 

Alongside other countries, Australia’s caregiving needs are on a steep rise. Factors like our ageing population, one in two people living with chronic health conditions, and more women staying in the workforce after having children, are rapidly reshaping the landscape.  

Much of the societal burden of this caregiving falls on the shoulders of older women, many of whom - out of personal desire or financial necessity - need to stay working for longer. This ranges from raising children who take longer to become independent, to dealing with aging parents or relatives with various health issues. Women also often step up to support family and friends battling health conditions, and when their children start their own families, they often provide informal childcare services, too. 

While flexible work arrangements may appear to be a solution, they don’t alleviate the hidden stressors that come with juggling work with so many different and often unpredictable life responsibilities. 

Thankfully, these complex challenges are being examined and voiced in some places, including within the ARC Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research (CEPAR). One of Australia’s leading gender and equality workforce academics, and Chief Investigator at CEPAR, Professor Marian Baird has been a long-term champion of resolving work and care responsibilities for women.

“There’s a lack of recognition from society, the community, and even their own families for the time, effort and emotional strain carried by those who care for elders,” Professor Baird says. “How do we acknowledge that care is taking place and allow women to combine their work with elder care, which can be even more unpredictable than childcare?” 

Talking about childcare, it's no secret that many older women play a significant role in providing flexible and affordable care for their children's children. While studies highlight the many reciprocal benefits of grandparent childcare, they also reveal the financial and other sacrifices made by these grandparents, including the ‘intergenerational trade-off’ between grandmothers’ workforce participation and that of their daughters (and daughters-in-law).

We don’t have to look far to find other women like my cousin Miriam. There is a bevy of stretched and stressed mature worker-caregiver women out there. 

As Second 50 women, we can either resign ourselves to the exhausting journey ahead or actively engage in the care economy conversation and contribute to crafting more empathetic and creative work-life solutions.  

So that’s exactly what we are doing. If you are interested in delving deeper into this issue and learning about other challenges and opportunities facing women in their Second 50, our discussion paper, "Empowering Women in their Second 50," is available for reading.

Our member community will soon kick off a special interest community focused specifically on “Managing Work-Life Conflict”, aiming to foster shared learning, constructive dialogue and collaboration on this critical matter. Second 50 members can also jump into our Learning Hub, where we are building a library of curated content to help us all better understand and manage this challenge.

The Second 50 community is set to launch with a small seed group in November 2023 and will be open to Australian women in February 2024. We’d love you to join us in this important conversation about the realities and complexities of balancing work and caregiving as we age.