Australia's Regulatory Framework of Supports for Worker-Carers: A Gender Justice Perspective

This thesis examines Australia's work-care supports against original gender justice criteria: universal availability, enforceability, substantiveness, and gender-neutrality. It reveals that legislated work-care supports were designed to be supplemented by market offerings. However, work-care supports in the market are rare and often motivated by compliance or commercial motives. As a result, these supports have key deficiencies against the gender justice criteria. The thesis offers timely evidence for necessary regulatory reforms to establish work-care supports that will promote gender equal distributions of work and caregiving.