Work and Family Conflict and Australian Labour Law
Several themes characterise Australian literature on work and family conflict, especially that written within the disciplines of labour law and industrial relations. Much of this scholarship approaches the topic from an understanding that work and family have pre-existing meanings that labour law and industrial relations merely act upon. Writings largely assume that work and family are naturally separate (though interlocking) spheres of life, and that work/family is a phenomenon of relatively recent origin, produced particularly by rising labour market participation rates of women. Most of the literature assumes family as a heterosexed Anglo-centric model.
This description of the assumptions that characterise much of the secondary literature on the topic of work and family is also apt to describe the premises of labour market legal regulation in the form of labour law.
Anna Chapman is currently engaged in a project that seeks to analyse the relationships between work, Australian labour law and family in a way that reveals the assumptions identified above, thereby attempting to move beyond them.
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