Poor urban planning that embodies traditional, patriarchal values is forcing many women to choose between career and family, according to a leading academic.

The separation of residential areas from professional employment areas is resulting in a clear “division of labour” for families, Professor Barbara Pocock, director of the University of South Australia’s Centre for Work + Life, said.

The Centre has just released a four-year study into how households and work fit together in good urban planning and policy.

Despite a growing proportion of Australian women graduating with high-level managerial or professional qualifications, many are “forced” to abandon careers in the city and take low-skilled, insecure and poorly paid jobs once they start a family, Pocock said.

“Women are making forced choices in thin labour markets, where there are limited opportunities,” she told Architecture & Design.

The “anorexic” labour market of many planned suburbs is reinforcing more traditional gender roles by creating a division between work life and home life. ??Urban planning needs updating to be in line with changes to gender equality, Pocock said.

Policies need humanising, to create suburbs that can support women and men in professional roles without forcing them to commute for hours a day.

“Men may be on a longer spatial leash but they spend a long time commuting and less time with their children,” she said.

“There are examples of suburbs where jobs and education facilities have been integrated into the development and they have much better prospects for women and also men.”

In order to move forward, planning needs to consider less traditional ways of living. For example, given that one third of marriages is predicted to end in divorce, there will be a lot of single-parent households, as well as a lot of older, sole occupant households.

“While hard infrastructure is important there needs to be more put into social infrastructure,” Pocock said.