four - The Australian empirical landscape of extended working lives: a gender perspective

Summary

Introduction

Australian government policies to extend working lives have been promulgated in four intergenerational reports (2002–15), similar to policy directions proposed in other advanced economies. These reports advocate extending workforce participation, with targets for workers aged 55–64, regardless of gender, to mitigate the projected economic and fiscal consequences of an ageing population. This chapter analyses the distinctive Australian policy context and empirical landscape of extended working lives and considers the implications of this ‘ungendered’ exhortation for older women's working and post-working lives.

The neoliberal political context that influences the extension of working lives interconnects the liberalisation of global trade boundaries powering global competition, downward pressure on national labour forces and contractionary state welfare expenditure, through ‘minimal regulation of the labour market and a lean, adaptable welfare state that urges its citizens to work’ (Beck, 2006: 79). The neoliberal objective privileges ‘productive’ relations while subordinating multiplicities of social identities, including gender, age and ethnicity, to global economic power arrangements. A feminist political-economy critique exposes the inequality consequences for women of extending their working lives within the neoliberal institutional context.

Government policy discourses promoting extended working lives

The Australian government's 2015 intergenerational report commits the government to restoring ‘intergenerational equity’ as ‘future generations will not only have to fund their own government services, they will be funding the services used by Australians today’ (Commonwealth of Australia, 2015, xix). The 2015 intergenerational report proposes raising the pension age to 70 by 2035 as a means to re-establish future ‘intergenerational equity’, while, at the same time, labour force participation rates are projected to fall. The discourse of ‘active ageing’ is promoted as a form of productive ageing, which purports to present ‘great opportunities for older Australians to keep participating in the workforce and community for longer, and to look forward to more active and engaged retirement years’ (Commonwealth of Australia, 2015: viii). Without the government's budget ‘repair strategy’ to bring the budget back to a ‘sustainable surplus’, the policy scenario projects that gross debt will reach 125% of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2054/55 (Commonwealth of Australia, 2015: viii–ix). Neoliberal constructions of budget ‘repair’ and ‘surplus’ form the gold standard of recovery from the global recession, in contrast with the rhetorical frame of ‘austerity’ used in the Eurozone.