Time to care: does law offer an avenue to quality part-time work?

Twenty years ago, Professor Beth Gaze exposed the failure of Australia's industrial and anti-discrimination laws to guarantee working parents access to quality part-time work. In the intervening two decades, we have seen significant legislative change and greater policy focus on the importance of advancing gender equality at work. Despite this shift, work-care pathways for parents in Australia continue to be highly gendered, with mothers overrepresented in casual and part-time work and often forced to trade job security, decent remuneration and status to access reduced working hours. Through an analysis of statutory entitlements and caselaw, this article examines the effectiveness of current legal avenues available to parents seeking to access quality part-time work. I argue that, despite reform, neither industrial law nor anti-discrimination law has managed to dislodge the primacy of the ideal worker norm or significantly improve conditions for mothers in part-time employment. The article concludes with an examination of why quality part-time work remains unattainable for many parents and the persistent barriers that law reform will need to address if it is to be effective.