This podcast was recorded at ANU on Thursday 3 October. Annabel Crabb is in conversation with Samantha Maiden, National Political Editor Sunday Telegraph.

Working women are in an advanced, sustained, and chronically under-reported state of wife drought, and there is no sign of rain.

But why is the work-and-family debate always about women? Why don't men get the same flexibility that women do? In our fixation on the barriers that face women on the way into the workplace, do we forget about the barriers that – for men – still block the exits?

The Wife Drought is about women, men, family and work. Written in Annabel Crabb's inimitable style, it's full of candid and funny stories from the author's work in and around politics and the media, historical nuggets about the role of ‘The Wife' in Australia, and intriguing research about the attitudes that pulse beneath the surface of egalitarian Australia.

One of Australia's most popular political commentators, Annabel Crabb is the ABC's chief online political writer.