ABSTRACT
Time-use surveys provide a remarkable window on the world of unpaid work. In this chapter, Australian data are used to represent the social policy regimes typically found in developed English-speaking countries.1 Finland was chosen as a contrast country on both theoretical and methodological grounds. The proportion of Finnish women working full-time resembles that found in the United States or Canada but the level of public expenditures resembles other Scandinavian countries. Alone among Western nations, Finland represents an instance of a country that combines a high level of expenditure on the public provision of social services and a remarkably high proportion of the female population in full-time employment. While other Scandinavian countries, such as Sweden or Norway, spend a comparable proportion of GDP on social services and have high rates of female labor force participation, a relatively high proportion of this participation takes the form of part-time employment. In antipodal contrast to Australia, Finland offers a unique opportunity to observe what happens when patterns of employment similar to the United States are combined with high levels of public expenditure on social services. Fortunately, both the Central Statistical Office of Finland and the Australian Bureau of Statistics collected data on time-use in 1987. Only minor adjustments for local variations are required to make the Finnish survey comparable with the Australian survey.2
