Voluntary Work and Labour History

Labour History

Volumn , Issue 74, 1998, Pages 1-9

  Oppenheimer, Melanie ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 85172768143     PISSN: 00236942     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.3828/27516549     Document Type: Article

References (64)

1. Alexis de Tocqueville as discussed in Gianfranco Poggi, Images of Society, Stanford University Press and Oxford University Press, Stanford and London, 1972. Extracts from Democracy in America, 2 vols, London, 1969, first published 1835-40.
2. Miss A.F.C. Bourdillon (ed.), Voluntary Social Services. Their Place in the Modern State, Methuen and Co., London, 1945, p. 1.
3. Eva Cox, A Truly Civil Society, 1995 Boyer Lectures, ABC, Sydney, 1995, p. 15.
4. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1989 (1958). Arendt outlines three basic human activities, labor [sic], work and action, p. 7
5. Frank Prochaska, The Voluntary Impulse. Philanthropy in Modern Britain, Faber and Faber, London, 1988; and William Beveridge, Voluntary Action. A Report on Methods of Social Advance, George Allen and Unwin, London, 1948.
6. Beveridge, The Human Condition, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1989 (1958). Arendt outlines three basic human activities, labor [sic], work and action, p. 7
7. Frank Prochaska, The Voluntary Impulse. Philanthropy in Modern Britain, Faber and Faber, London, 1988
8. William Beveridge, Voluntary Action. A Report on Methods of Social Advance, George Allen and Unwin, London, p. 318.
9. Derek Fraser, Evolution of the Welfare State, Macmillan, London, 1981 (1973), p. 95.
10. Derek Fraser, Evolution of the Welfare State, Macmillan, London, 1981 (1973) pp. 97-101.
11. This has been well covered in numerous texts. For example, Prochaska, Voluntary Impulse and Geoffrey Finlayson, Citizen, State, and Social Welfare in Britain, 1830-1990, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1994.
12. Poggi, Images of Society, pp. 58-59.
13. Jeremy Kendall and Martin Knapp, 'A Loose and Baggy Monster: Boundaries, Definitions and Typologies', in Justin Smith, Colin Rochester and Rodney Hedley (eds), An Introduction to the Voluntary Sector, Routledge, London and New York, 1995 p. 85. The international classification of non-profit organisations has twelve groupings-culture and recreation; education and research; health; social services; environment; development and housing; law, advocacy and politics; philanthropic intermediaries and voluntarism promotion; international activities; religion; business, professional associations and unions; and a miscellaneous category.
14. See Kendall and Knapp in Davis Smith, Introduction to the Voluntary Sector, pp. 76-78. This classification has been adopted by the Australian authorities.
15. See Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), Voluntary Work. Australia, June 1995, new issue, Canberra, 1996, pp. 29-31.
16. Frances Donovan, Voluntary Organisations. A Case Study, PIT Press, Occasional Paper no. 3,1977, p. 26.
17. There has been some movement in this area, particularly with the relatively recent formation of the Australian and New Zealand Third Sector Research organisation, and the launch of its journal, Third Sector Review, in 1995. Mark Lyons from UTS is currently collaborating with the ABS to develop the first accurate estimates of Australia's non-profit sector.
18. ABS, Unpaid Work and the Australian Economy, 1992, Occasional Paper, Canberra, 1994, p. 2. Curiously the more recent 1994-95 ABS report on voluntary work did not attempt to put a monetary value on the estimated 433.9 million hours of voluntary work carried out.
19. See ABS, Voluntary Work, p. 1.
20. These are the most recent figures available, and have been taken from the recent Industry Commission Inquiry which tabled its final report in Federal parliament in September 1995. See also Ted Flack, The Industry Commission Inquiry into Charitable Organisations-A Fundraising Perspective', ANZTSR Newsletter, no. 4,1995, p. 3.
21. It must be acknowledged here that 'volunteer' is a restricted form of reference. Although the volunteer exercises a freedom of choice to work without pay within the various voluntary organisations, that freedom and choice is subsequently limited by the structures and the activities within the organisation. The volunteer is therefore often restricted in what she/he can or cannot do, thereby limiting the overall 'freedom' of the volunteer.
22. Industry Commission, Inquiry into Charitable Organisations, p. 81.
23. See also Australian Council of Social Services, Volunteering in Australia, ACOSS Paper no. 74, April 1996, pp. 25-28.
24. The ABS carried out an extensive analysis of voluntary work and volunteers in 1994-95. The breakdown of the organisations in which volunteers are found are as follows:-sport/recreational/ hobby-31.4%; welfare/community-29.7%; education/training/youth development-25.3%; religious-17.7%; health-6.9%; emergency services-4.9%; arts/culture-4.1%; environmental/ animal welfare-3.7%; business/professional/union-3.3%; law/justice/political-1.7%; and foreign/international-0.8%. However, when an analysis of number of hours worked by volunteers in considered, sport/recreational/hobby constitutes 24.1% and welfare/community 24.4% with education/training/youth development at 14.1% and religious at 16.3%.
25. See ABS, Voluntary Work, p. 10.
26. The ABS carried out an extensive analysis of voluntary work and volunteers in 1994-95. The breakdown of the organisations in which volunteers are found are as follows:-sport/recreational/ hobby-31.4%; welfare/community-29.7%; education/training/youth development-25.3%; religious-17.7%; health-6.9%; emergency services-4.9%; arts/culture-4.1%; environmental/ animal welfare-3.7%; business/professional/union-3.3%; law/justice/political-1.7%; and foreign/international-0.8%. However, when an analysis of number of hours worked by volunteers in considered, sport/recreational/hobby constitutes 24.1% and welfare/community 24.4% with education/training/youth development at 14.1% and religious at 16.3%.
27. See ABS, Voluntary Work, p.7.
28. The ABS carried out an extensive analysis of voluntary work and volunteers in 1994-95. The breakdown of the organisations in which volunteers are found are as follows:-sport/recreational/ hobby-31.4%; welfare/community-29.7%; education/training/youth development-25.3%; religious-17.7%; health-6.9%; emergency services-4.9%; arts/culture-4.1%; environmental/ animal welfare-3.7%; business/professional/union-3.3%; law/justice/political-1.7%; and foreign/international-0.8%. However, when an analysis of number of hours worked by volunteers in considered, sport/recreational/hobby constitutes 24.1% and welfare/community 24.4% with education/training/youth development at 14.1% and religious at 16.3%.
29. See ABS, Voluntary Work, p. 1. From these figures, taking into account methodology and other variables, one can state that voluntary work has indeed increased in Australia overall since Mark Lyons estimated that approximately 10% of the Australian population over the age of 15 contributed an average of seventy-four hours a year to major voluntary organisations. Lyons used ABS data from State surveys in Queensland and Victoria in 1982, New South Wales in 1986 and South Australia in 1988.
30. Quoted in Industry Commission, Charitable Organisations in Australia. An Inquiry into Community Social Welfare Organisations, Draft Report, 27 October 1994, p. 78-79.
31. Volunteers in Welfare, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1990, p. 43.
32. Other studies on the types of people who carry out voluntary work include Jill Hardwick and Adam Graycar, 'Volunteers in Non government Welfare Organisations in Australia: A Working Paper', SWRC Reports and Proceedings, no. 25, September 1982; E. Fisher, Women's Voluntary Work, Canberra, NWAC, 1983
33. Lorraine Wheeler, Close to Home: The Community Services Industry, NSW, NCOSS Issues, Paper 7, December 1986.
34. ABS, Voluntary Work, pp. 9 and 10.
35. See Terry Irving (ed.), Challenges to Labour History, UNSW Press, Sydney, 1994, especially Irving's chapter 1 and Stephen Garton's chapter 4.
36. Irving, Challenges to Labour History, p. 3.
37. There are some exceptions such as chapters by Raelene Frances, Joy Damousi, and Kay Saunders and Geoffrey Bolton in Raymond Evans and Kay Saunders (eds), Gender Relations in Australia, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Sydney, 1992, where women's voluntary work is discussed. However, despite acknowledging the need for further historical examination, the general inference in these chapters is that voluntary work was the domain of middle and upper middle class women only. I am also aware of Joanne Scott's recently completed doctoral thesis which includes an examination of women's voluntary work in Queensland during the interwar period.
38. Marilyn Waring's seminal work in this area is one such example. See her Counting for Nothing? What Men Value and What Women are Worth, Allen and Unwin, Wellington, 1990
39. Three Masquerades. Essays on Equality, Work and Human Rights, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1997 (1996).
40. See also Chris Beasley, Sexual Economyths. Conceiving a Feminist Economics, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1994.
41. 'Volunteers and the Public-Private Divide', unpublished paper delivered to the 5th Women and Labour Conference, Macquarie University, September 1995, p. 11.
42. See my Volunteers in Action. Voluntary Work in Australia, 1939-1945, PhD thesis, Macquarie University, 1997, under examination.
43. Belinda Probert, 'Job-sharing: a Work in Progress', The Australian, 29 January 1997.
44. House of Representatives Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs (Lavarch Report), Half Way to Equal. Report of the Inquiry into Equal Opportunity and Equal Status for Women in Australia, Canberra, April 1992, p. 37. This has been done with the 1995 ABS study on voluntary work already cited.
45. For a discussion on the results of the Industry Commission report, see Lyla Rogan, Tides of Change in Community Services. The Industry Commission and COAG as Case Studies', in Adam Farrar and Jane Inglis (eds), Keeping it Together. State and Civil Society in Australia, Pluto Press, Leichhardt, 1996, esp. pp. 130-141.
46. Marilyn Waring, Counting for Nothing, p. 6.
47. Marilyn Waring, Counting for Nothing, p. 28.
48. Michael Bittman, 'Occasional Paper. Recent Changes in Unpaid Work', ABS, May 1995, p. 1.
49. Lady Bountiful was a character in George Farquar's early eighteenth century play, The Beaux' Strategem. The description of the character was as 'an old civil country gentlewoman, that cures all her neighbours of all distempers, and foolishly fond of her son Sullen'.
50. For an historical perspective, see Frank Prochaska, Women and Philanthropy in Nineteenth Century England, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1980
51. Judith Godden, '"The Work for Them and the Glory for Us!": Sydney Women's Philanthropy, 1870-1900', in Richard Kennedy (ed.), Australian Welfare History: Critical Essays, Macmillan, Melbourne, 1982, pp. 84-101.
52. For a more recent analysis see Kathleen D. McCarthy (ed.), Lady Bountiful Revisited: Women, Philanthropy and Power, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick and London, 1990.
53. See, for example, Carmel Shute, 'From Balaclavas to Bayonets: Women's Voluntary War Work, 1939-41', Hecate, vol. vi, no. 1,1980, pp. 5-26.
54. NOW (National Organisation for Women) Task Force on Volunteerism, November 1973, reprinted in Ms Magazine, vol. Ill, no. 8, February 1975, p. 73.
55. For a general analysis, see Christopher Pierson, Beyond the Welfare State?, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1994 (1991), especially pp. 200-207.
56. For an Australian perspective, see Adam Graycar (ed.), Retreat from the Welfare State: Australian Social Policy in the 1980s, George Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1983
57. Cora Baldock, 'Working without Wages in Australian Welfare', in Esther Ngan-ling Chow and Catherine White Berheide (eds), Women, the Family and Policy. A Global Perspective, State University of New York Press, Albany, New York, 1994, pp. 99-115.
58. Baldock, 'Volunteers and the Public-Private Divide'.
59. There are many examples including Janeen Baxter, Work at Home. The Domestic Division of Labour, University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia, 1993.
60. This contrasts with texts such as Kate Darian-Smith's On the Home Front: Melbourne in Wartime, 1939-1945, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1990, pp. 55-56, which did not address issues of voluntary work in any detail, and merely repeated the stereotype.
61. Her recent chapter in Joan Beaumont's edited book Australia's War, 1939-45, Sydney, 1996, pp. 61-63 again mentions voluntary work but limited research and historical inaccuracy is evident.
62. Davis Smith, Introduction to the Voluntary Sector, pp. 29-30.
63. See for example S.W. Dyer, 'Back to the Land: Settlement Schemes for Adelaide's Unemployed, 1930-35', Labour History, no. 31, November 1976; David Green, '1918 Strike of Medical Profession against Friendly Societies', Labour History, no. 46, May 1984
64. Ray Markey, 'NSW Trade Unions and Co-operative Principle in the 1890s', Labour History, no. 49, November 1985.