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In this article the author examines some recent trends in home-based employment in Australia, in the over-employed and under-employed and in the regional distribution of unemployment. Changes in labor demand and in job security have produced some specific responses on the part of workers and employers. But the magnitude and direction of these changes is not always clearly understood. With the restructuring of the workforce to meet new global demands, changes are occurring to, or are being demanded of, standard ways of working. People are seeing the need to create niche markets for themselves in the wake of downsizing and the offshore movement of traditional jobs. One of those changes is to the split between those who work at home and those who work in a location away from their private lives and families. Some researchers have suggested that the increase in those working at home has been quite marked, driven by workforce restructuring. Survey of persons employed at home in late 1995 estimated that 230,000 women worked at home but of these, only about 16,000 are registered in occupations that might be classified as fashion industry out-workers.

The article focuses on the increasing labour force participation of women with children. The percentage who had the care of dependent children had dropped in an almost identical way, from 54 per cent in the mid-to 46 per cent in the mid-1990s. It is because two trends have been working in parallel. The first is the trend for more of those women who have children to stay in, or return to, the workforce after the birth of a child or during the early child-raising years. The second trend has been occurring with somewhat less fanfare, perhaps because it has not attracted the need for specific services. During the same period, the birthrates of women aged under 25 have also declined. The 1985 Canadian divorce law used gender-neutral language and made it clear for the first time that mothers were expected to support their children financially. Child support decisions varied considerably with legal advocacy and judicial discretion and could not be said to be based on the cost of childrearing, the non-custodial parent's income, or equitable sharing between partners.

This article focuses on the Australian workplaces. In its recent release, "Australian Social Trends," the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS 1996) examined unpublished data and concluded that although it does not show in the data, there is a difference in the "standardized" rate at which men and women take sick leave. Part of this difference is because women and men have different occupational arrangements; if the shape of both groups were identical, women would be seen to be taking more sick leave than men for each type of occupation. The overall analysis suggests a slightly higher use of sick leave by both mothers and fathers with children under 15, compared with men and women who do not have the same child-related responsibilities. The casualization of the workforce has hit women more than it has men, because they are more likely to be working part-time or in areas more subject to the casualization of labor. Casualization, by definition, is employment which does not bring with it either sick leave or holiday leave. Neither, in most cases, does it carry with it long service leave, which is available to 84 per cent of full-time permanent workers and more than half of the part-time permanent workers.