The Role of Cash-for-Care In Supporting Disabled People's Citizenship: Gendered Conflicts and Dilemmas In Social Citizenship (original) (raw)
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There are moves across many countries away from state-led provision of services for disabled people towards cash-based systems, which have been welcomed by disabled people as increasing choice and control over services and support, and increasing independence and social participation. However, feminist scholars have long warned about the implications of commodifying care for women, and the possible consequences of substituting cash for services for social citizenship have remained underexplored, for both disabled people generally, disabled women and mothers more particularly, and for personal assistants/care workers. This article will attempt to address that gap by carrying out a comparative literature review and policy analysis of the role of policy development and outcomes in cash-for-care schemes, looking comparatively across policy developments in several countries, as well as developed welfare states beyond Europe to examine: (a) the impact of the tensions between various governance levels, particularly local and national government; (b) the gendered impact of such policies on (for example) gendered divisions of paid and unpaid work, citizenship and social participation; (c) the impact such policies have, or are likely to have, on different groups of men and women across the life course and across different social and economic groups; and (d) how such policies can contribute to the well-being and/or detriment of different groups of women (and men) within different social, political, economic and historical contexts.
Uncertain subjects: Shaping disabled women's lives through income support policy
Canadian Journal of Disability Studies Published by the Canadian Disability Studies Association Association Canadienne des Études sur le Handicap, 2020
This article provides a critical reading of one aspect of the “third mobilization of transinstitutionalization” (Haley & Jones, 2018), focused on how power is exercised through the B.C. government income support program (or the ambiguously-named B.C. Benefits), shaping the embodied lives of women living with chronic physical and mental impairments. I research and write as a woman living with a disabling chronic illness whose explicit focus is power: how it is enacted and what it produces in the everyday lives of women with disabling chronic conditions living on income support. I too have been the recipient of disability income support. Thus, my accounts are ‘interested.’ My writing seeks to create a disruptive reading that destabilizes common-sense notions about disabled women securing provincial income support benefits, in particular in British Columbia (B.C.), interviewed as part of my doctoral research. Despite public claims by the B.C. government to foster the independence, community participation, and citizenship of disabled people in B.C., the intersection of government policy and practices and how they are read and taken up by disabled women discipline them in ways that produce profound uncertainty in their lives, such that these women become uncertain subjects (Kimpson, 2015). Keywords: Power, disability, policy, uncertainty, women, income support
Gendering Welfare State Analysis: Tensions between Care and Paid Work
The article revisits comparative research on gender relations and the welfare state through the lens of the tensions between paid work and care. It discusses how these tensions shaped the intellectual enterprise of gendering welfare state analysis and women’s political activity in the welfare state, and the emergence of normative perspectives to overcome divisions between care and paid work. It concludes by identifying three challenges for future research posed by intersectionality, immigration and gender implications of long-term welfare state change. Nonetheless, the greatest cross-cutting challenge remains the need to balance care and paid work in feminist analysis of welfare states.
Towards gender equality with care-sensitive social protection. IDS Policy Briefing 49
2014
Unpaid care is intertwined with social protection in numerous ways. Unpaid care work responsibilities affect the ways and extent to which social protection provisions are used by poor women. This is mainly because access to social protection takes time and effort that women may not have because of their socially prescribed and entrenched roles as care providers. At the same time social protection provisions have the potential to alleviate the drudgery of care work on women and girls. For instance improved access to fuel and water (through public works programmes) reduce the heavy labour of fetching and carrying, improve women’s and girls’ health and leisure time. Likewise social transfers and unconditional cash transfers can recognise the extra work that women and girls spend in care work activities and provide support for dependants and carers.
The article offers some theoretical and historical reflections on the concept of gender as it relates to the notion of assistance. Explores the political dimensions of both concepts and problematizes the dichotomy between the gender-marked realms of the political and the pre-political, a dichotomy that has greatly influenced modern political theory and thought. It examines the modern state’s care practices and the transformations in assistance which occurred within the charitable and assistance organizations that took shape in parallel and in consonance with this state action.
Arguing for a universal caregiver model of welfare provision and assessing alternative incarnations1
fondazionefeltrinelli.it
A feminist approach to political philosophy and policy-making, as I understand it and endorse it, is one that aims to spell out a theory of justice that is not built on the consideration of male experiences and life patterns alone (defining work as paid work, social contribution as contribution through paid work, workers as free from caring responsibilities, etc.) and that is attentive to (and adequately deals with) the special obstacles women face in trying to pursue a life plan of their own making. In many countries (not exclusively northern Atlantic ones), women have now won equal legal rights to further their education, hold property and participate in the realms of politics and paid work. This does not mean, as has been repeatedly noted by feminist scholars, that they now have the same opportunity men have to make effective use of these rights. The reasons are manifold and relate, for the most part, to the history of women's subordination and the multiple shadows it still projects, and in particular, to the long shadows of the separate spheres model of family and social organization 2 . The gendered division of labour (henceforth GDL) assigning different spheres of activity to men and women has thus come to be considered by many feminists as a (if not the) central source of women's continuing inequality in the present world , Bubeck 1995a.
Community Care Policies and Gender Justice
International Journal of Health Services, 1987
The current approach in the United States to the provision of community care to the elderly interacts with the feminized structure of family care-giving to foster inequities for women, who provide the bulk of informal, unpaid care. The central concern of present policies with limiting eligibility and rationing benefits results in policies that reduce the choices of these carers, many of whom are already substantially disadvantaged by their economic position in society. What is necessary for gender justice is development of policies that address the needs and rights of carers and elders by providing necessary supports to families, including, when appropriate, adequate compensation to carers. We argue for an approach that takes into account the relationship of the adequacy of government support and the capacity of individuals to freely choose the caregiving role. "When men and women are given the opportunity and the capacity to choose, then
2013
Introduction: the importance of unpaid care 1.1 Rationale for the thematic review 1.2 Objectives and main research questions 2 Approach: theoretical perspectives and review methods 2.1 Theoretical framework 2.2 Methodology 3 Results 3.1 Social protection 3.1.1 Types of intent on unpaid care-social protection 3.1.2 The political economy of incorporating unpaid care into statements of intent-social protection 3.1.3 Evaluating implementation and outcomes of intent on unpaid care-social protection 3.2 Early childhood development (ECD) 3.2.1 Types of intent on unpaid care-ECD 3.2.2 The political economy of incorporating unpaid care into statements of intent-ECD 3.2.3 Evaluating implementation and outcomes of intent of unpaid care-ECD 4 Conclusions and future directions 4.1 Key findings 4.2 Analysing gaps in knowledge 4.3 An agenda for the future Annexe A: Methodology Annexe B: List of social protection policies covered in the review Annexe C: List of social protection policies that address unpaid care concerns Annexe D: List of early childhood (ECD) policies covered in the review Annexe E: List of ECD policies that address unpaid care concerns Annexe F: Declining trends (ECD) Annexe G: Conflicting discourse (ECD)