A greater number of jobs available in the service sector, globalisation, and the feminist movements are some of the reason that there has been a steady increase of Australian women entering the workforce. This reality coupled with the dramatic rise in divorce rates over the last few years has seen a new social group predominating in the lower socio economic areas. Single mothers who work part time or on a casual basis. It is this group that we will be looking at in detail, as we try to understand what forces are at work to disadvantage these women in the workforce and consequently, in every day life.
             The fast moving force that is globalisation has contributed to women's entrance and growing persistence in the workforce, which has benefited the economy as well as the economic well being, and personal independence of women (Maynes, 2004). However, Subrumaniam (2003) states that although there has been an opening for employment for women, the jobs that have been opened are mainly in the low paying area of the service sector, home work and migratory labour, a factor that suggests gender inequality has not been reduced, only reborn in another form. This inequality is exasperated when the case is looked at from the perspective of the single mother.
             Gender ideologies contribute to the reality that many women will be the full time carers for the children when a marriage or relationship disintegrates. Mothering in Western, and other, societies hold a strong emphasis as the mother being the caregiver and not the breadwinner. As a result of this ideology single mothers are now among the most disadvantaged in our society, as well as other industrialised Western countries. Yuval-Davis (1997, pg 6) suggests that this ideology of what is innate in all women, is the basis for women's exclusion from the public political domain, but also that their value is not as great as mans across cultures. The biological fact that women bear ...