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Work-life Balance: A Growing Struggle We can email, text, face-book and tweet anywhere, anytime. But have smart-phones and tablets (平板电脑) made it easier to balance work with the rest of life? In the decade since John Howard dubbed the work-life balance a “barbecue stopper”, mobile technologies have revolutionized work for many Australians. They have eliminated the physical boundaries that once defined workplaces and allowed employees unprecedented flexibility in where and when they work. But new technologies can be a mixed blessing for workers. The office is always in your pocket. The Australian Work and Life Index, prepared by the Centre for Work + Life at the University of South Australia, has tracked the work-life experience of Australian workers for five years. The latest report, titled “The Big Squeeze”, shows little improvement in work-life outcomes in that time. According to the centre’s director and a co-author of the report, Professor Barbara Pocock, at least a quarter of Australian workers are badly affected by work-life interference. “We are not seeing a runaway train here but we are seeing a problem that is affecting a lot of people and it is very persistent,” Pocock says. However, there is one group for which things are getting worse: full-time women workers. That group’s dissatisfaction with their work-life balance has climbed from 15.9 percent to 27.5 percent over the past five years, while the same rate for full-time men has been fairly steady. Seven out of 10 full-time women workers often or always feel “rushed and pressed for time” and 41 percent of mothers with full-time jobs said they would prefer to work part-time – the largest proportion since 2007. Professor Pocock says mobile technologies are a contributing factor, especially for those who work in the service sector and among managers and professionals. “We’ve got work that’s leaping the spatial boundary of the workplace and that’s particularly affecting full-time women who are holding ho