Health expert explains the steps to work-life balance

March 2007

It is reassuring to know that Professor Susan Davis (MBBS 1980, FRACP, PhD 1989) - a mother of four and a leading health researcher - can achieve a work-life balance.

Professor Davis, who addressed a sold-out audience at the recent Monash University Alumni Relations Gearing for Success seminar, explained how women can strive for a balance between career and family. She outlined the challenges that these women face in the future.

Professor Davis admitted that she enjoyed the benefits available to her and other female baby-boomers which enabled them to pursue a career and have children. These benefits included free access to education, better nutrition, immunisation, fertility choices and workplace discrimination against women.

Today, Professor Davis says, the choice to pursue a career and raise children is becoming harder.

Professor Davis advised women do need to make sacrifices. This might include saying no to things you do not want to do; staying focused on what you want in life; learning to delegate; and accepting that you can’t always be there for your family.

Professor Davis believes “time poverty” is the greatest cost to women’s health today. Women are struggling to find the time to rest, exercise and to eat healthy meals, causing them to become overweight or obese. This will lead to more cases of osteoarthritis and heart disease.

Professor Davis closed by addressing the challenges confronting women, particularly Generation Y (people born between 1979 and 1988).

Referring to women re-entering the workforce after having children she said, “It seems that when you get back on the bike, you’ve got to pedal harder and faster”. She believes there is a need to place an emphasis on women’s “productivity relative to opportunity”, not just the quantity of their achievements, such as an academic’s publication.

Links:

Professor Susan Davis is the patron of ‘Team Monash’ in the Mother’s Day Classic run/walk on Sunday 13 May. More information will soon be available at http://www.sport.monash.edu.au/