Work, family and law: The role of law in reflecting, constituting and challenging the ideal worker norm

This J.S.D. dissertation explores the role of law in reflecting, constituting, challenging and changing workplace practices and culture that are based on a traditional male model of the unencumbered worker and the traditional female model of unpaid reproductive worker. These two model workers reflect the dichotomy between the public and private spheres, productive and reproductive work, paid work and family. They are gendered---reflecting and maintaining traditional gender roles that limit the equal participation of men and women in both paid work and family caring and burden women disproportionately with the costs of unpaid care work.;The dissertation is comprised of three consecutive articles, each building upon the last in developing an understanding of how law currently operates and how law might be used to prompt and enable greater integration of work and family spheres, and gender equality. It commences with an exploration of how laws can impact both gender equality and work-family balance despite having no such explicit objective. The US unemployment insurance regime is used as an example of such laws. It then turns to consider an alternative regulatory setting---Australia---and explores laws that do explicitly attempt to effect gender equality, antidiscrimination laws. Regulatory theory is used to tease out how the Australian Sex Discrimination Act establishes both formal legal and other regulatory mechanisms that operate to effect and limit change. The third article ventures into law reform, outlining a proposal for reforming Australian equality laws to make them more effective at prompting, enabling and holding accountable corporate family-friendly workplace initiatives.