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Traversing time and gender: Australianyoung people's participationAriadne VromenPublished online: 03 Jun 2010.

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Journal of Youth Studies, Vol. 6, No. 3, 2003

Traversing Time and Gender: Australian YoungPeople’s Participation

ARIADNE VROMEN

ABSTRACT This paper details the participatory behaviour of Australian young peoplethrough an examination of the relationship between gender, awareness of time con-straints and participation. It engages with existing feminist critiques of how partici-pation is conceptualized and recent research that looks at the effects of both structure andagency in the lives of young people. The paper is based on an original survey of18-year-old 34-year-old Australians and shows that rather than this age group havinghomogeneous (or even negligible) participatory experiences, four distinct participatorytypologies emerge. These four typologies are labelled as Activist, Communitarian, Partyand Individualistic. Two participatory types, Activist and Communitarian, are differen-tiated by gender, with women being more participatory. I argue that an understandingof the complex relationship between gender and participation is enhanced when parent-ing commitments, paid work commitments, and the awareness of the relationshipbetween time and participation are included in analysis.

Introduction

This paper argues that an accurate understanding of political participation oughtto reflect the realities of social citizenship experienced by young people. Chang-ing socio-economic circumstances coupled with structurally based factors, suchas gender, class and ethnicity, need to be brought into any understanding ofparticipation. Another factor often neglected in most research on politicalparticipation of young people is that of agency. This paper will develop thenotion of practice, as dually shaped by structure and agency, by looking at bothparticipation and social changes experienced by young Australians. It will beinformed by feminist critiques of citizenship that see participatory practice asgendered. The relationships between gender, parenting, participation andawareness of time constraints will be examined empirically in the latter half ofthe paper, using new survey data collected from a random sample of Australiansaged between 18 and 34.

Structure/Agency: ‘Seeing’ Participation

In the late 1990s, Evans & Furlong (1997) charted the state of play in youthstudies literature and found that theoretical offerings by sociologists AnthonyGiddens and Ulrich Beck were playing an important role in the conceptualiza-tion of individual subjectivity and in self-actualization in the lives of youngpeople. Evans and Furlong (1997, pp. 36–37) saw that these theoretical turnswere useful in helping social scientists understand changing transitions between

Ariadne Vromen, Government and International Relations, University of Sydney, Sydney NSW 2006, Australia.Email: a.vromen@econ.usyd.edu.au

ISSN 1367–6261 print/1469-9680 online/03/030277-18 2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd

DOI: 10.1080/1367626032000138264

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youth and adulthood (see also Cieslik & Pollock, 2002). In other work, Furlong& Cartmel (1997) suggest that we can best understand young people by labellingthe new patterns in their lives as ‘structured individualisation’. They establishthis by arguing that ‘although social structures continue to shape life chances,these structures tend to become increasingly obscure as collectivist traditionsweaken and individualist values intensify’ (Furlong & Cartmel, 1997, p. 2).

Johanna Wyn and Rob White develop these concepts in the Australian context,but support the individualization thesis to a lesser extent, instead labelling thetrade-off between structural change and agency as a ‘paradoxical relationship’(Wyn & White, 2000, p. 166). They suggest that more often than not theperception of choice at the individual level is predetermined by the structuralconditions in young people’s lives, and that these perceptions will differ accord-ing to their status in society. One of the main points to take from Wyn andWhite’s discussion is the assertion that young peoples’ experiences are differentbecause they are ‘less and less able to rely on established pathways andstructures to establish their livelihood’ (2000, p. 166). As a corollary of this, it isto be expected that processes based on gender and social class will be differentfrom those experienced by earlier generations (Wyn & White, 2000, p. 178).

There are expectations in this new youth studies literature that gender(similarly to class and ethnicity) is no longer as relevant to structuring practiceas it once was. The argument is that due to highly individualized pathways andtransitions between youth and independent adulthood, structural factors do notconstrain or enable individuals in the same way as previously assumed. It hasbeen observed that those who favour the individualization perspective on youthand social change tend to stress ‘the increasing androgyny of gender roles’(Nagel & Wallace, 1997, p. 49). It will be an intention of this paper to deducewhether there is evidence of the gendering of participatory practice in theprocess of youth transition.

It is sometimes argued that analyses of young people’s political participationoften occurs at the expense of a discussion of inequality, citizenship status, anda particular focus on socially excluded youth. John Bynner (2001, p. 55) suggeststhat it is only once young people have reached a minimum requirement forcitizenship status, facilitated by access to a full range of resources, that we oughtto discuss, or even expect, engagement in the political process and local decisionmaking. Yet if we embark on a discussion of citizenship and participation asincorporating both status and practice (or structure and agency), and not as ahierarchical either/or, we can understand both change and continuity in struc-tural inequality, and examine the different ways in which structure and agencyinteract in differing contexts (Jones, 2001, p. 198).

This paper is interested in conceptualizing participation in a broad sense anddoes not limit it to a discussion of voting [1] or party membership, as otherwriters on young people and politics tend to (for example, Furlong & Cartmel,1997, pp. 101–105). Using World Values Survey data, Spannring et al. (2001) havedemonstrated that in the 1990s there was an increase in civic participation byEuropean young people. In most European countries, localized communitygroups of a religious, sporting, charitable and educational character attracted thehighest numbers of members, but there was a general decline in party-based andunion memberships. Young people can also be seen to demonstrate agencythrough their political involvement in alternatives to mainstream party-basedpolitics (Kimberlee, 2002, pp. 90–93). Images of new forms of participation by

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young political actors receive less exposure than complaints about cynicism anddisengagement of the young (see Lean, 1996; Putnam, 2000). This paper contin-ues to ‘see’ new forms of active participation by young people.

While it is beyond the intent of this paper to extensively review the existingliterature on political participation of young people, it needs to be pointed outthat recent work on social movements has established the importance of lifecourse dynamics in understanding political action. Goldstone & McAdam (2001)and Sherkat & Blocker (1997) find that ‘baby boomer’ participation is correlatedwith life course factors such as partnerships, having children, and types andpatterns of employment. Goldstone & McAdam (2001, p. 197) advocate anexamination of both the micro and macro construction of the relationshipbetween life course effects and participation. The approach in this paper is tofocus on the macro and micro approaches apparent in the development ofparticipatory practice. It is necessary to survey the socio-economic changesexperienced by this age group, used here as the structural/macro setting, as anaccompaniment to an examination of aggregated micro processes obtained fromthe survey data.

Feminist Understandings of Participatory Practice

Like youth researchers, feminists have broadened the debate about politicalparticipation to make it more inclusive of individual practice (see Bussemaker &Voet, 1998; Prokhovnik, 1998). First, feminist analysts have usefully questionedpolitical theory’s tendency to distinguish action undertaken in the private spherefrom that taken in the public arena (Jones, 1990; Pateman, 1989). Among politicaltheorists there is a consensus on what private sphere activity is—such responsi-bilities as family, housework and childcare (Dietz, 1992, p. 66). These responsibil-ities are usually undertaken by women, and are often assumed to diminish thepossibility of women participating in public sphere-based, political action.Political life is distinguishable from private aspects of social life, but the twospheres can be best understood as interdependent, rather than as separate(Pateman, 1989, p. 110). It is argued here that the application of this position isimperative for any understanding of participatory practice.

Second, feminist theorists have emphasized care and compassion as civicvirtues worthy of inclusion in any analysis of the politics of the public sphere(Bussemaker & Voet, 1998, p. 296; see Tronto, 1987; Sevenhuijsen, 1998). SelmaSevenhuijsen suggests that discussing care is both a moral and a politicalquestion, and she argues that focusing on this complexity within the frameworkof politics and citizenship need not lead to an essentialist position on femalemorality (Sevenhuijsen, 1998, p. 13). This theme is taken up by Raia Prokhovnik(1998, p. 89), who argues that citizenship practice occurs in both the private andpublic sphere, and that there is a need to define oneself as citizen in ‘connexion’with both spheres, rather than in a hierarchical binary. We can see the appli-cation of her premise by appreciating that the experiences people have in theprivate sphere inevitably have implications for conduct in the public sphere; andthat one does not cease to be a mother, or a father, when entering the publicworld (Prokhovnik, 1998, pp. 96–98).

Prokhovnik’s argument is that we must re-value women’s and men’s respon-sibilities and experiences in the public and private spheres as forms of citizen-ship practice. The corollary of this is that a fuller and more democratic

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understanding of the way political participation is practiced will be obtained.This is different from other arguments that, although they see the public andprivate sphere activities as interdependent, seek to democratize both spheres bychanging the existing practice within them [2]. This paper acknowledges theimportance of these debates but seeks to, initially, describe existing practice byAustralians aged 18–34, rather than detail prescriptions on welfare state inter-vention in that practice.

A third concern of feminist citizenship theorists is the inequitable distributionof available time for participatory action. Attempts to construct practice in thepublic and private spheres as equivalent responsibilities are not straightforward:‘Time is … a resource that either constrains or facilitates choices in a highlygendered way. It is a resource that has profound implications for the ability ofwomen and men to act as citizens in the public sphere’ (Lister, 1997, p. 133).Participation, particularly when it is voluntary, is dependent upon time, and itis important to realize that a detailed understanding of active involvement oughtnot simply reflect the participation of those ‘with the most evenings to spare’(Hernes, 1988, p. 195). Instead, Lister’s argument can result in a more nuancedunderstanding, and portrayal of the relationships between time, participatorypractices and gender. Time is not only gendered, it can also be seen to beaffected by socio-economic status, measured through indicators such as edu-cation, household income and type of paid work. It has been previously arguedthat participation could also reflect higher socio-economic status, in that ‘thosewith more money have more time to think about doing something for thecommunity’ (Spannring et al., 2001, p. 33).

Very few existing studies of gender and participation explore the relationshipbetween time, participation and gender. However, one empirical study did seekto empirically test claims made by feminists about the inequitable distributionbetween public and private sphere responsibilities among men and women(Burns et al., 1997, pp. 1–3). The data for the Burns et al. (1997) research, basedon a survey of 380 married (heterosexual) couples, is important as it comparesmembers of the same household and the gendered variations in the undertakingof their public and private sphere responsibilities. There are very few resource-based factors, such as time, money or education, that differentially affect thepolitical participation of husbands and wives. However, while women whobelieve in equality at home are most likely to be active in politics, beliefs aboutdomestic arrangements have very little consequence for men’s political activity.For men, the experience of household budgeting and autonomous decisionmaking about the use of free time enhances their ability to participate politically.Thus, ‘domestic inequality works to advantage the participation of husbands’(Burns et al., 1997, p. 21). The article concludes that, when only the public sphereis empirically evaluated, resources such as money, education and civic skillscount most when it comes to political participation. When the private sphere isalso examined, similar resources do not operate.

There are two primary implications that this study has for this paper: first,that private sphere commitments shape men’s and women’s participatory prac-tice in different ways; and, second, that attitudes towards gendered practice areimportant to understanding participation. This paper only explores existingpatterns of behaviour, but suggestions for further research on the relationshipbetween attitudes and practice are presented in the conclusion.

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Traversing Time and Gender 281

Young People and Social Change

Recent European literature that explores the citizenship status of young peopleemphasizes the significant effect of generational differences in life course transi-tions [3]. For example, traditional associations between paid work and familycommitments are necessarily altered by factors such as increased tertiary studytime and/or decreasing paid employment opportunities (Wallace, 2001, pp. 17–18; see also Nagel & Wallace, 1997, pp. 46–47). These shifts are similar in theAustralian context: Australian research has shown that young people, in botheducational institutions and paid work, are economically dependent on theirparents/family for increasingly longer periods of time (Schneider, 2000), andthat high youth unemployment, matched with broader uncertainty about stablepaid work, remain serious public policy concerns (Sweet, 1998, p. 9; McClelland& McDonald, 1999). Wallace (2001, p. 18) points out that these types of shiftshave ‘helped to redefine what is meant by “young” and leads to a move awayfrom the standardised transitions upon which the post-war welfare state wasbuilt’.

The implication of these differentiated life experiences is that we can no longerunderstand ‘youth’ in categorical age-specific terms. Instead, Wyn and Whitesuggest that we utilize the concept of youth to interpret ‘the complexities ofsocial change and the intersections between institutions and personal biography’(1997, p. 10). That is, ‘being young’ is a relational concept that is sociallyconstructed and, more often than not, historically and culturally specific (Wyn &White, 1997, p. 11). This means, in practice, that any examination of youth insociety ought to demonstrate how structures facilitate and constrain the lives ofindividuals with the potential for agency and choice in constructing biographicaltrajectories.

Recent Australian research has explored young people and life coursetransitions, such as relationship formation, leaving the family home andhouse ownership, to find that these are not being experienced universally, inthe same way, or even by the age of 25 (Hillman & Marks, 2002), the age oftenused as the categorical entry point into independent adulthood. Hillman &Marks (2002) have confirmed that gender remains ‘one of the structural andcultural realities that affects the shape of people’s lives’ (Nilsen & Brannen, 2002,p. 36).

This paper is particularly interested in the relationships between these shiftsin life course transitions and the interdependence between parenting, genderand participation. To demonstrate that any relationships found are specific to aparticular age group of political actors, I need to further show how life coursetransitions, centred on gender and family, are being differentially experienced inAustralia. Research published from the Australian Family Life Course Studydemonstrates that the balance between family, work and social components of‘our lives are always changing and differ for men and women at different stagesof the life cycle’ (Glezer & Wolcott, 1997, p. 4). Probert & McDonald (1999) agreethat negotiations between work and family are gendered. They also demonstratethat ‘choices’ or realistic options for negotiation about these commitments areprofoundly shaped by socio-economic status, particularly that relating to classand education. While opportunities for career-based employment have increasedfor well-educated young women, there is simultaneously a growing tendency forchildlessness in this group, ‘suggesting that young women may feel that they

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Table 1. ‘Generation X’ women and children

Expected number Actual average numberof children of children

20–24 years old, 2.4incomplete high school20–24 years old, 2.55post school educated30–34 years old, 2.4 1.96incomplete high school30–34 years old, 1.81 1.17post school educated

Source: McDonald (1997, p. 4).

still have to choose between work and career in a way that is unknown to mostyoung men’ (Probert & McDonald, 1999, p. 151).

In Australia, research on family and fertility rates has demonstrated youngwomen’s expectation of, on average, how many children they will have, asrelated to their actual practice, is differentiated by whether they have a post-school qualification (McDonald, 1997, p. 4). Table 1 shows that educatedwomen’s desire for children decreases with age, and their actual practice (by age34) decreases even further. The differences are less marked for less educatedwomen, with their expectations of numbers of children staying the same overthe two age groups, and their number of children actually born being higherthan the similar group of more educated women.

McDonald (1997, p. 10) also examined birth rates based on occupation of 35–39year olds, and found that women in professional occupations had a much loweraverage number of children than women working in traditional blue collaroccupations (1.61 as compared with 2.01). We could expect that the behaviourtypical of this group will be followed by successive groups of young women.That is, higher educated women have fewer children than lower educatedwomen, and fertility falls as involvement in paid work increases—a trend thatMcDonald says is increasing in the population. Women are becoming moreeducated and more likely than ever to be in paid work, reinforcing the idea thatthe relationship between paid work and parenting is structured by educationand class, and may well be related in complex ways to political participation.Research on participation and young people has more often than not failed tomake the link between private sphere responsibilities, such as caring work, andpolitical participation. Yet there is some evidence that attitudes towards gen-dered parenting roles has become more gender neutral, although actual parent-ing practice has not (see Wilkinson & Mulgan, 1995, pp. 66–68); however, seeKarvonen & Rahkonen (2001, p. 228) on young males favouring traditionalgender roles.

Another factor that I would like to include in this analysis of young peopleand transitions is changes in living situation, particularly differences betweenthose who are single and those in partnerships, that is either de facto or married.The proportion of all young Australians not in a partnership has increased: in1996, 19 per cent of 18–24 year olds and 63 per cent of 25–34 year olds were ina partnership compared with 25 per cent and 72 per cent, respectively, in 1986(Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2000). Table 2 presents data from the Australian

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Table 2. Living arrangements by age group and gender

Lives with otherLives with unrelated

parents Lone parent Lives alone individuals

18–24 years oldMen 66% 0% 7% 27%Women 57% 7% 7% 29%

25–34 years oldMen 36% 2% 26% 36%Women 23% 31% 19% 27%

Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics (2000, p. 3).

Bureau of Statistics 1996 Census to show living arrangements of male and femaleyoung Australians aged 18–34 and not living in a partnership. From the data wecan see that gender differences mainly occur around the likelihood of being anun-partnered parent, with a higher proportion of women in this category.

Method and Participatory Types

This paper draws on a survey of a broadly representative sample of 28718-year-old to 34-year-old Australians conducted via telephone by NewspollMarket Research in April 2001. The survey was designed by the author inconsultation with the polling company. Respondents were selected by theapplication of a stratified random sample process that included: a quota set foreach Australian capital city and non-capital city areas, within each of these areasa quota was set for each telephone area code; random selection of householdtelephone numbers, which were drawn from current telephone listings for eacharea code; and random selection of an individual in each household by screeningquestions requesting the resident individual who last had a birthday.

This dataset has both strengths and limitations. It is a new dataset that focusesonly on political behaviour, and in a more extensive way than existing explo-rations of young people’s political practices. However, I acknowledge that thegeneralizability of the results are limited by the small sample size, and there maybe some reservations about the broad age group studied. I nonetheless considerit important to look at a broader age group of young people to understand thecomplex relationship between gender and participation, and this is explained inthe following.

A broader age group of ‘youth’ was utilized in this research so as to fully seethe interaction between participatory practice, gender and parental status. Otherstudies have broadened the usual policy making and institutionalized notions ofyouth, as age 15–25 (see Wyn & White, 1997, p. 1), to extend to the late twenties(see Hillman & Marks, 2002; Dwyer et al., 1998). This has been done so as to beable to measure social and economic change experienced by young people, andin acknowledgement that age-based trajectories, or markers, in both the publicand private sphere are not as predictable as they once were. In Australia severallife course markers no longer occur within the usual demarcations of the ‘youth’age group. For example, the average age for first having children (now 27 years,with a steadily increasing number of women deferring childbirth until they are

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35 years or older (24 per cent)) has increased, as has the average age people firstgetting married (29 years for men, 27 years for women) (Australian Bureau ofStatistics, 2002). Furthermore, as it is generally highly educated women who arehaving children and getting married at an older age, and as there is a recognizedassociation between education level and political participation (see Hogan &Owen, 2000), it was necessary to include a broader age range to study therelationship between private sphere commitments and public sphere-basedpolitical participation.

I developed the questionnaire topics so as to account for a broad range ofparticipatory activities. This included activities such as the boycotting of prod-ucts, and a range of community and activist group involvements. The question-naire did not ask individuals to estimate the amount of time they spentparticipating in any of the participatory activities or groups. This was judged astoo complicated and temporally dependent for a single highly structured inter-view. This kind of information can only really be collected through time-usediaries, preferably in a longitudinal panel study. I was also more interested inelaborating on the range of, and relationships between, participatory activitiesundertaken by individuals, rather than trying to calculate the time spent ondifferent participatory acts.

Furthermore, this study only sought to measure the behaviour of individuals,and not attitudes. Again, this decision was made due to the format of theinterview; a highly structured questionnaire was not judged an appropriate wayto obtain individual attitudes towards participation. If attitudes are to beaccurately obtained, then a qualitative dimension needs to be added to thestudy, so there can be a comprehensive response to the necessarily open-endedquestion of ‘why?’.

In an earlier paper I explored the 19 acts of participation in detail (Vromen,2003). In the present paper I start with the combinations of statistically associ-ated acts of participation into conceptual participatory types. The 19 questionson participatory practice were reverse coded and then, using SPSS software,subjected to a principle components analysis so as to discern whether, statisti-cally, there were any strong associations between the various types of partici-pation. Principle components analysis revealed the presence of four componentswith eigenvalues above 1, explaining 12.4 per cent, 10.5 percent, 9.5 per cent and7 percent of the variance, respectively. While this type of factor analysis onlygoes a small way in accounting for relationships existing in participatorypractice, it does suggest that there are some discernible patterns whereby thereare co-existing but distinctly separate participatory types [4]. I computed fourscales of participation and then calculated both means and significance tests forthese scales along eight demographic variables. The category with thesignificantly higher mean is presented in Table 3.

That women have a higher commitment to communitarian-type acts is afinding that is not new (see Onyx & Leonard, 2000). However, when coupledwith the finding that young women are more likely than young men to haveactivist involvements, it suggests that gender has an important relationship withparticipatory practice, and indicates a need for more research on how life courseeffects impact on choices to participate. The results using the party scale arequite different from the activist and communitarian scales, and suggest that thisparticipatory form attracts a different sort of individual to the other two types.Males have a higher mean than females on this scale, but the difference is not

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Table 3. Relationships between demographics and participatory types

Activist Communitarian Party Individualist

Gender Women (p � 0.023) Women (p � 0.009) — —Age groups — — 25–34 years —

(p � 0.013)Income level — — $50,000 � —

(p � 0.000)Socio-economic status White (p � 0.026) White (p � 0.000) — —Education level High school High school Post high High school

and post and post school and posthigh school high school (p � 0.01) high school(p � 0.001) (p � 0.001) (p � 0.000)

Language spoken — — — —Work status — — Full time —

(p � 0.035)Location City (p � 0.004) — — —

significant. The individualist scale is only differentiated by one demographicvariable and the acts that comprise this scale include some that a majority ofthose interviewed have done at some stage: donating money, volunteering time,and boycotting.

These initial results indicate a notable shift in the relationship between genderand participation for this age group. Most research on political participationsuggests that men are more participatory than women (McAllister, 1997,pp. 246–247; Wilkinson & Mulgan, 1995, p. 86) or that there is now convergencebetween men and women’s participation (for a summary, see Smith, 2001,pp. 211–212). By using a broader approach to participation, the research in thepresent paper has revealed that there are no differences between men andwomen when it comes to institutionalized political forms such as party member-ship. But in group-based forms of participation such as those characteristic ofactivist and communitarian involvement, gender differences are pronounced.

To further explore these findings, the present work will draw on feministwork that emphasizes notions of private sphere-based caring work and differen-tiated time constraints.

Looking Closely at Gender, Parenting and Participation

The importance of the results based on sex difference have already beenexplored. Additionally, it is important to take into consideration other demo-graphic factors that are more related to the stage of life of an individual, suchas marital status and parenthood, and the relationship those have with both theact of participation and the perceived constraints on participation.

In this sample both men and women are significantly more likely to be in apartnership (married or de facto) if they are aged older than 25. However, slightlymore women than men are in a partnership—53 per cent as compared with 47per cent. The likelihood of being a parent also increases with age group, with 98individuals (34 per cent total; 27 per cent men and 42 per cent women) beingparent to at least one child. Two-thirds of women interviewed, aged between 30and 34, had children; and very few 18-year-old to 24-year-old men or womenwere parents. Of the 98 parents, 34 per cent were responsible for only one child,

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Table 4. Comparing averages on participatory scales

Activist Communitarian Party Individualist

Non-parents 1.59 1.88 1.40 2.91Male 1.39 1.68 1.47 2.88Female 1.81 2.16* 1.30 2.94

Parents 1.34 1.90 1.39 2.89Male 1.02 1.68 1.42 2.71Female 1.56 2.05 1.37 3.02

• p � 0.05.

45 per cent for two children and the remaining 21 per cent had responsibility forthree or more children. The children of these people were most likely to be aged4 years or younger (74 per cent), with the next largest group (44 per cent) havingchildren aged between 5 and 9 years.

From these general findings, which demonstrate that nearly 50 per cent of18–34 year olds are in a partnership and more than one-third are parents, we canexamine whether life course stages shape participatory practice. I looked at thedifferences in participation between men and women depending on whetherthey were a parent and whether they were in a partnership. There were nosignificant differences on any of the four participatory scales between those whoare parents and those who are not, nor were there between those who are in apartnership and those who are not. When gender is factored into this analysisthe results change slightly, in that the average number of communitarian-typeparticipatory acts is significantly higher for female non-parents than theircounterpart male non-parents (p � 0.02); when male and female parents arecompared, this difference disappears. As observed in Table 4, both groups ofwomen who are parents and those who are not have a higher average then theirmale counterparts on the activist participatory scale, but this difference is notsignificant. However this difference does re-surface when the averages arecompared for men and women who are not in partnerships. That is, un-part-nered women have a significantly higher average on the activist scale than doun-partnered men (p � 0.02); this difference is not apparent between men andwomen who are in relationships.

These results suggest that the influence of gender on participation is notconstructed, principally, by the status of parenthood. Consequently, to obtain anaccurate picture, it may be that the complex connections between attitudestoward distribution of time between paid work, parenting and participationneed also to be taken into account. To establish this line of thought, Table 5demonstrates that there is a significant relationship between paid work statusand gender (phi � 0.329, p � 0.000), with men much more likely than women tobe working full time. To a lesser extent there is a relationship between paid workand parenting statuses (phi � 0.146, p � 0.047), with non-parents more likely tobe in full-time work than parents.

Individuals were asked whether there were factors that prevented them from‘being more involved in community and political activities’. They were read outa list of options, presented in Table 6. The 73 per cent who said that they did nothave enough time were then asked what (multiple) commitments contributed tothe constraints on their available time. Clearly the majority of individuals

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Table 5. Demographics: paid work by gender and parentalstatus

Paid work status Men Women Parents Non-parents

Full time (55%) 71% 38% 48% 59%Part time (21%) 14% 28% 19% 22%Not at all (24%) 15% 34% 33% 20%

considered it was their paid work that constrained their time available forparticipatory activities. The 22 per cent who suggested that there were othercommitments that constrained their time mainly mentioned study, hobbies orsport.

Time

A large majority (81 per cent) of parents agree that they do not have enoughtime to participate more in community and political activities. This issignificantly more than 69 per cent of non-parents who agree with the statement(phi � 0.126, p � 0.033). I then examined whether gender was the interveningfactor in this difference between parents and non-parents; it was not. That is, theconceptualization of time constraints does not seem to differ between male orfemale parents. I also found that both female and male parents were slightlymore likely than female and male non-parents to agree that they did not haveenough time to participate, but this difference was not significant. From thispreliminary exploration of the relationship between gender and time for partici-pation, it can be seen that most men and women, more or less equally, claim thatthey do not have enough time to participate more.

While I am primarily interested in gender, relationships and parenting in thispaper, I also examined whether other demographic factors were associated withtime and participation. The only other significant factor was that individualsliving in a white collar household were more likely than those living in a bluecollar household to say that they did not have enough time for participatoryactivities (phi � 0.146, p � 0.013).

Interest

Just over one-third of the sample agreed that they did not participate morebecause they were not interested in having active political and communityinvolvements. Lack of interest in participation was not differentiated by gender,parenting status or any of the other demographic variables utilized in this

Table 6. Participation and perceptions of available time

Participate more? % Time constraints? %

Don’t have enough time 73 Job commitments 75 (55 of total)Nothing interested in 36 Family commitments 48 (35 of total)Other reason 17 Social commitments 28 (20 of total)None of these/Don’t know 5 Other 22 (16 of total)

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Table 7. Agreement that paid work commitments are a timeconstraint

More likely Less likely Phi p

Men, 86% Women, 63% 0.267 0.000Non-parents, 82% Parents, 63% 0.203 0.003Post high school, 83% Not completed high school, 65% 0.203 0.014Higher income, 75–84% Low income, 50% 0.295 0.001

research. A further 17 per cent agreed that there were ‘other’ reasons for notparticipating more. A range of responses were given, which suggested thatindividuals felt deficient in factors such as knowledge of participatory activities,motivation for involvement, and access to organizations [5]. In retrospect, thequestion did not properly deduce whether individuals believed that theirpolitical and community involvements were sufficient; nor could it establishwhether 18–34 year olds would like to be more involved. However, as a largemajority agreed that time was a factor in their decisions about participation, thefocus on time constraints is logical. It was not the intention of the questionnaireto deliberate on the attitudes that shaped participatory practice; rather, it was toevaluate, and enumerate, the patterns in existing practice of this age group ofpolitical actors.

Paid Work Commitments

Three-quarters of those who agreed that they did not have enough time forcommunity and political activities believed that it was their paid work thatconstrained them. As pointed out in the section Method and Participatory Types,no attempt was made to enumerate the amount of time spent on participatoryactivities; rather, the question sought to measure perceptions about the relation-ship between practice and time. Therefore, it was also possible for respondentsto agree that there were multiple constraints preventing them from spendingmore time on participatory activities. Table 7 shows that men, non-parents, thehighly educated and the highly paid are more likely to nominate work commit-ments as constraints on their available time for participation. These findings tendto perpetuate the view that sees the public sphere as a space independent ofprivate sphere commitments. That is, the highly educated, and well-paid, male,non-parents define their time in terms of interaction between the public worldsof paid work and political participation, more than nominating the private lifeconcerns of family and relationships.

Family Commitments

Nearly one-half of the sample agreed that family commitments constrained theirtime to participate. Table 8 becomes the opposite of Table 7; it is now women,parents, the less educated, and non-paid workers who agree that family restrictstheir time to participate in political affairs. There is a clear demarcation betweenperceptions of everyday practices around politics, work and family that remaingendered for this age group of young Australians, which supports the qualita-

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Table 8. Agreement that family commitments are a timeconstraint

More likely Less likely Phi p

Women, 57% Men, 40% 0.168 0.015Parents, 90% Non-parents, 23% 0.648 0.000Partnered, 65% Single, 30% 0.351 0.000Not working, 65% Full time, 40% 0.208 0.01130–34 years old, 62% 18–24 years old, 36% 0.237 0.003Incomplete high school, 66% High school, 43% 0.199 0.016

tive findings of Probert & McDonald (1999). This point will now be taken up inmore detail in the next section.

Comparing ‘Like with Like’

The tables so far presented start to paint a picture of the general pattern ofpublic and private sphere interdependency characteristic of this age group ofAustralians. However, what is still needed is a clearer portrayal of the interplaybetween gender, parenting and the conceptualization of time constraints onparticipation. Tables 9 and 10 illustrate the patterns that can be found when wecompare like with like; for example, when female parents are compared withfemale non-parents or when male parents are compared with female parents. Theresults in Tables 9 and 10 clearly support the gendered picture of the relation-ship between public and private sphere commitments implied in Tables 7 and 8.That is, this age group of Australians still prioritizes the practice of malebreadwinner/female homemaker model once children are entered into theequation. Male parents are just as likely as male non-parents to see work as amajor constraint on their participatory practices; yet female parents are muchless likely than women without children to nominate work as a constraint. Whencomparing gender within parenthood status, the differences become morepronounced: male parents are doing more of the paid work than female parents,and women are doing more of the child rearing. Nearly all female parents (98per cent) see their family commitments as a constraint on participation, but only77 per cent of male parents do. When male and female non-parents arecompared with one another, it is clear that they are both able to prioritize theirpublic sphere commitments in more or less equivalent ways, and the negotiationbetween participation and other factors in their lives takes place in the publicsphere.

Many feminists tend to concentrate primarily on caring work, in terms ofcaring for those less capable of caring for themselves such as children, whendiscussing the private sphere (Cass, 1994). Yet we could also examine partner-ships (the combination of marriage and de facto categorizations) as private spherecommitments in terms of their probable interactions with public sphere commit-ments of paid work and participatory activities. Others have looked at thepropensity to enter into partnerships as a distinctive feature of understandingthe relationship between life course patterns and activism (see Goldstone &McAdam, 2001), and I have examined this here. First, it needs to be taken intoconsideration how the sample is divided: 100 of the individuals under consider-

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Table 9. Perceived family and paid work constraints withingender

Work Family p

MenNon-parent 85% 24%Parent 90% 77%Total 86% 40% Work � 0.447, phi � 0.075;

family � 0.000, phi � 0.504

WomenNon Parent 78% 22%Parent 46% 98%Total 63% 57% Work � 0.001, phi � 0.328;

family � 0.000, phi � 0.758

ation in this section are single, and 109 are in a partnership. Of the singles 15 percent are parents; of the partnered 59 per cent are parents. Clearly there is astrong relationship between being in a relationship and being a parent. How-ever, from the patterns in the Tables 7 and 8 we would expect that it is primarilyparental status that is related to family as a time constraint, and that partneredbut childless individuals probably conceptualize time in the same way aschildless singles. What was found is that there are predictable gender differencesin that men see work as a time constraint, more so than women, and womentend to see family as more of a time constraint than do men. However, thestatistically significant difference is again between those in a partnership andthose who are not, clearly replicating the differences between parents andnon-parents seen earlier.

Importantly, when only the 130 childless individuals are examined to see howthey discuss time constraints, there are no significant differences between menand women, or between those who are partnered and those who are single. Thisreinforces the view that gender differences tend to come into play when childrenare added into the picture, and the relationship between public and privatesphere commitments needs to be more plainly re-negotiated.

Table 10. Perceived family and paid work constraints withinparenting status

Work Family Significance

ParentMen 90% 77%Women 46% 98%Total 63% 90% Work � 0.000, phi � 0.451;

family � 0.003, phi � 0.332

Non-parentMen 85% 24%Women 78% 22%Total 82% 23% Work � 0.297, phi � 0.091;

family � 0.872, phi � 0.014

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Traversing Time and Gender 291

I also believed it was necessary to look at other demographic types in termsof gender and conceptualizations of time. The main demographic variables thatI was interested in were the approximations I had of ‘class’. These are thedivision by household occupation into blue or white collar, and level of edu-cation of individuals [6]. I examined the differences between genders, withineither the parents or non-parents category, for both the blue collar and whitecollar categories of main income earner in the household. Among respondents inwhite collar households there were no gender differences in conceptualization ofwork or family as a time constraint on participation. However, among bluecollar respondents, differences between male and female parents became appar-ent in the mentioning of both job and family as time constraints. Female parentswere significantly more likely to mention family (phi � 0.372, p � 0.009), andmale parents were significantly more likely to mention their paid work as aconstraint (phi � 0.616, p � 0.000). There were no gender differences for non-par-ent blue or white collar respondents.

I also examined the significance of the three different levels of educational.First, I should point out that there is a significant relationship between educationlevel and parenting; that is, the more educated are less likely to be a parent(phi � 0.177, p � 0.011). This reinforces the results of McDonald’s (1997) researchon fertility rates mentioned earlier. Generally there are no differences betweenmale and female non-parents when each of the three education levels isexamined. There are also no differences within the three groupings betweenmale and female parents in awareness of family as a time constraint. The onlysignificant differences are between male and female parents who have notfinished school, in that men are significantly more likely to perceive work as atime constraint (phi � 0.434, p � 0.017); and this pattern is very similar for thosemen and women with a post-high school education (phi � 0.424, p � 0.012,). Thissuggests that while blue collar men prioritize work more than blue collarwomen, this issue does not divide simply around socio-economic status, andprobably has more to do with the relative time demands of types of employ-ment; well-educated men and less-educated men both nominate work as aconstraint on their ability to participate.

Conclusions

This paper demonstrates that becoming a parent does not decrease, or change,levels of participation for this age group of political actors. Despite this, it hasbeen shown that perception of time constraints reveals more about the traditionalnature of public and private sphere demarcation. Many public sphere-basedfactors have changed for this age group and affect life course transitions—in-cluding women and men’s now equivalent access to education, paid work, partyand individualist political participation, and the new occurrence of womenbeing more involved in group-based, activist and communitarian-types of par-ticipation. However, it is private sphere responsibilities that are still gendered;principally, when individuals become parents. Furthermore, when it is takeninto consideration that increasingly higher levels of well educated women arenot having children, it becomes clear that women are still forced into makingchoices that men do not have to make: choices between prioritizing their publicand private sphere commitments.

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Nonetheless, this quantitative picture of the relationship between gender andparticipation is only partial. To establish whether this age group does replicatetraditional attitudes to the relationship between work, participation and caring,further qualitative research is needed on gendered attitudes and participatorypractice. Furthermore, we need to understand the extent to which attitudes areinterdependent with practice, and if young people perceive the broader struc-tural changes they have experienced as having shaped their practice and lifecourse choices (see Nilsen & Brannen, 2002; O’Connor et al., 2002).

The shift towards androgynous roles expected by youth studies researcherswho focus on individualized patterns in life course transitions is not shown inthis examination of political participation. Structural divisions in society such asgender, and, importantly, level of education, can be seen to shape the pathwaysAustralian young people take into social and political practices. However, thisresearch implies that there will remain a public sphere in which young peoplewill reject institutionalized party political forms of participation in preference forinformal, group-based, and issue-centred forms of participation, which are alsoconducive to women’s involvement. Young people also favour engagement inindividualized forms of political action such as boycotting, donating money andvolunteering time. Thus, we must anticipate heterogeneity in young people’sapproach to political participation, and acknowledge the participatory opportu-nities provided by high levels of education.

The broader implication is that if we believe, as a society, that individualsought to be involved in political and community affairs, then we have tofacilitate gender-based equity in all spheres of people’s lives. It is not enough, ata public policy level, to concentrate on democratizing the public sphere if theprivate sphere remains an arena for undemocratic sharing of responsibilities.Public policy needs to recognize complexity in people’s lives and ought to bewilling to engage in the ‘double democratisation’ of the public and privatespheres (Siim, 1996, p. 11).

Notes

[1] Voting is compulsory in Australia, resulting in very high turnout, and thus voting is notenumerated as a form of political participation in this paper.

[2] For example, Birte Siim argues that women’s full citizenship will only be understood when we‘engender the public/private divide and [provide] the means for a double democratisation of thefamily and of public life’ (Siim, 1996, p. 11).

[3] However, one author has suggested that political behaviour researchers rarely look at differentexperiences had by generations as an explanation for different behaviour (Kimberlee, 2002, p. 93).

[4] The participatory acts included in the scales are presented in the Appendix.[5] While some did suggest that they were currently involved in participatory practices, this was a

much less frequent type of response.[6] Some interesting results become apparent here, but the results really ought to be treated with

caution as the numbers in some cells of the cross-tabulations were quite small, yet always greaterthan five.

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Appendix: Items in Four Scales of Participatory Practice

Activist (seven items)Human rights organization Environmental organizationWomen’s organization Heritage/conservation organizationAttended rally or march Boycotted productsOther activist organization

Communitarian (six items)Church group Youth clubVolunteered time School/university groupContacted MP Ethnicity group

Party (five items)Campaign work Party memberUnion member Contacted MPSporting/recreation group

Individualistic (four items)Volunteered time Made donationsBoycotted products Sporting/recreation group

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