Overcoming obstacles? Women in public housing and paid employment in Australia

This paper examines the extent to which women renting in public housing, who are in paid employment, have been able to overcome some of the obstacles to paid work commonly faced by other public housing tenants. Previous work has shown that living in public housing could hinder people’s ability to take up paid work by trapping them in unemployment and poverty. Other research has indicated that by giving people housing stability, living in public housing could facilitate their decision to look for and find paid work. Drawing on an ongoing longitudinal study consisting of interviews with female public housing tenants engaged in paid work in urban and regional Victoria, this research provides insights into how women have been able to enter or return to paid work and whether living in public housing has helped or hindered them in finding paid employment. In particular, this paper shows that even though the women interviewed have been able to overcome some of the obstacles to paid work encountered by other female public housing tenants, they were only able to do so because it was a time in their lives when they either had fewer family responsibilities, had friends or relatives who could look after their children, and/or had experienced improvement in their health conditions. It is argued that, in any case, the majority of these women are still trapped in poverty due to low paid casual work, insufficient welfare provision, and the ways in which their rents and welfare benefits are affected when they take up paid employment