industry & reform the government has so far only increased the number of days of parental leave , whereas a gender-neutral policy would start to shift the dials .
Gender gap
Calls for gender-neutral policies for unpaid carers .
By Elise Hartevelt
A global review has highlighted an urgent need for gender-neutral policies to protect the mental health of unpaid female carers .
Researchers from the University of Melbourne looked at nearly 140,000 records worldwide and found that unpaid caregiving negatively affected people ’ s mental health , particularly in women .
One in ten Australians are informal carers of older and sick people , with the majority working unpaid .
Melbourne University research assistant Jen Ervin said Australia has many socialcultural levers which result in women taking on disproportionate rates of care .
“ It ’ s disappointing that Australia is still behind in introducing gender-neutral policies ,” Ervin said .
“ These policies would start to shift the dials .”
Ervin told Aged Care Insite that genderneutral policies would help “ even the scales ” in caregiving and safeguard the mental health of female carers .
ACI : So , you found that globally , 80 per cent of informal caregivers are women . How were these gendered roles reflected in your review ? JE : Caring has been deeply gendered for a very long time due to pervasive and entrenched social and cultural norms around unpaid labour and care . We know caring is considered feminised work , so many countries ’ policies around leave and carer ’ s leave are still highly gendered .
At a policy level , there ’ s a need for workplace policies to allow both men and women to work flexibly and take time off for care . So , there needs to be a genderneutral policy approach , so it doesn ’ t fall disproportionately on women .
There ’ s been a slight flexibility in stigma in Australia , where men can take off time to provide care . I don ’ t think men are bluntly refusing - I believe there are a lot of sociocultural levers resulting in women doing disproportionately more care .
In Norway , for instance , they have a ‘ use it or lose it ’ parental leave approach that is gender neutral . So , if fathers don ’ t take up their 16-week component , the whole family loses allowance . This has led to a rapid shift where 90 per cent of fathers take up their parental leave , and that ’ s why these levers work so well . It also makes child caring more normative for dads . A knock-off effect could be that men are also more likely to take care of their older parents , for example , and that ’ s a massive shift .
That ’ s really clever . Yeah , clever and a bit disappointing that Australia is still behind this . Genderneutral policies were raised several times during the Jobs Summit , especially around discussions about parental leave . We pushed very hard through academic leaders and women who were present . But
What are some of the factors in caregiving that cause it to negatively impact mental health ? Many theories attempt to explain why informal or unpaid care provision can adversely affect a carer ’ s mental health . Some of the most popular and evidencebased approaches include the multiple stressors theory , which talks about different stress elements in combination with external and internal individual cases stresses .
There are also theories around the strain of juggling multiple roles that can lead to an overload of role-strain perspectives . And then there ’ s also the impact of time scarcity on the mental wellbeing of carers . But on the flip side , many carers will prioritise the health of the person they ’ re caring for , which means they don ’ t necessarily practise self-care behaviours for themselves .
And last but not least - caregiving is emotionally laden work . That effect is probably played out through the relationship someone has with the person they ’ re caring for and how healthy they may be . So , it ’ s very different to look after a healthy older person or child as it may be to look after someone like your spouse or parent who ’ s very unwell . So , that family effect can be quite different depending on the circumstance .
So , how can we better support them from a societal perspective but also through the government ? We need to understand better how to help current and future caregivers . Part of this is doing more research and qualitative work about their needs . But the first thing is to recognise caring because there are many ways we can help support carers already .
These include respite care , counselling to reduce carer ’ s stress , peer-to-peer networks , and providing information to help navigate health services and systems . Financial support is also a big one , to allow for care subsidies for the carer because they ’ re often unable to work or their paid work is limited from their caregiving provision . It means they not only have less money and less cumulative wealth , but they also don ’ t have as much accumulated super . ■
16 agedcareinsite . com . au