Australian Journal of Labour Economics Volume 26 Number 2 is out now
Volume 26, number 2 of the Australian Journal or Labour Economics (AJLE) is out now, with three brand new articles.
The AJLE is a forum for the analysis of labour economics and labour relations.
The first paper is based on the address given by Emeritus Professor Peter Dawkins AO to the 32nd Australian Labour Market Research Workshop, drawing on his 40 years of experience working as a researcher, public policy advisor, university vice-chancellor, and, most recently, leading the establishment of Jobs and Skills Australia (JSA) as its Interim Director and Acting Commissioner.
The second paper is by Ruth Steinbring, Francisco Perales, Janeen Baxter and Dr Jack Lam, of the University of Queensland on the ‘Characteristics of male-breadwinner, female-breadwinner and equal-earner households in Australia: The role of couple-level human capital’. The paper reflects on the observed phenomenon that as women’s participation in the labour market increases, so does the number of women who out-earn their male partner. However, despite this, male-breadwinning persists and Australian households remain highly gendered in terms of the division of labour. Women continue to undertake the bulk of unpaid labour and care and most men out-earn their female partner.
The third paper is ‘The contented Australian female worker: Paradox lost, paradox found’ by Mike Dockery of Curtin University. The paper examines the phenomenon of the ‘paradox of the contented female worker’, identified in the UK, whereby women report higher job satisfaction than their male counterparts, despite generally holding inferior jobs. It has been argued that this was due to women having lower expectations than men, and that the phenomenon would disappear as women’s positions in the labour market improved. The paper seeks to examine whether this phenomenon is observable in Australia, using data from the HILDA survey to investigate how the differential in women’s job satisfaction, relative to that of men, evolved in Australia between 2001 and 2022.
The Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre team acknowledges the Wadjuk Nyungar people as the traditional owners of the land on which the Centre is situated.