Gender Equalising and Gender Neutral Policies and Their Pitfalls: A Typology of the Gender Dimensions of Social Policies (original) (raw)
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Making welfare regime analysis sensitive to gender relations
Sociološki pregled, 2008
This paper is a discussion of the most representative contributions to the study of gender and welfare states from the comparative perspective. In the first section of the paper we follow the development of the gender and welfare state analyses that brought these two separate theoretical and empirical interests together; in the second section we follow the internal development of the comparative welfare regime analysis with respect to gender relations, which was brought about by this convergence. Building on these contributions, we describe our own framework for the analysis of the implications of the socioeconomic transformation in post-socialist countries on gender inequality in economic wellbeing. We introduce a three dimensional classification of women on which rather abstractly defined gender content of welfare regimes could be actually empirically measured.
Annual Review of Sociology, 1996
I would like to thank Renee Monson for helpful comments and discussions about gendered interests, the nature of the relationship between gender relations and welfare states, and the feminization of poverty. Thanks to Kathrina Zippel for general research assistance on this project, and for providing a summary of the literature on gender and the welfare state in Germany, including many works written in German.
Estudios Working Papers, 1996
I would like to thank Renee Monson for helpful comments and discussions about gendered interests, the nature of the relationship between gender relations and welfare states, and the feminization of poverty. Thanks to Kathrina Zippel for general research assistance on this project, and for providing a summary of the literature on gender and the welfare state in Germany, including many works written in German.
The Impact of Welfare Regimes on Gender Equality
This paper assesses the impact of welfare state regimes on creation of genderequality which is understood as equal economic opportunities and greater reconciliation of work and family between sexes. It identifies which welfare regimesupports women the most in both dimensions. It uses the Esping-Andersen’s typology of welfare regimes (1990) to segregate welfare regimes according to promotion of genderequal economic opportunities and their ability to reconciliation of work and family life.The paper investigates the outcomes of different indicators that affect presence of gender equality across welfare clusters (15 OECD countries), furthermore three casestudies of welfare regime characteristics and their linkage to presence of gender equalpolicies is investigated. These cases are: Sweden (socialdemocratic regime), Germany(corporatist-statist regime) and the United States (liberal welfare regime).At the final stage, clusters are examined under the Hierarchical Cluster Analysis(HCA) to confirm dissimilarities of welfare characteristics towards creation of gender-equal economic and reconciliation of work and family. As the result of this researchpaper, further strengthened by HCA statistical investigation, the socialdemocratic cluster emerged as the most equal in creation of gender equal opportunities in bothdimension. The liberal cluster lags in underdeveloped policies of work and family reconciliation, while corporatist-statist suffers from inability to create equal economic opportunities, further negatively strengthened by minimal state welfare provision towards reconciliation of work and family responsibilities.
The Gender Impact of Social Protection Policies: A Critical Review of the Evidence
Over the course of the neoliberal era, social protection policies have been transformed dramatically; these changes have had profound gender implications. Since the early 1980s, welfare state regimes around the world have shifted away from 'universalism' towards 'targeting'. More recently, there has been a further shift-especially in industrialized countries-away from the male-breadwinner to the adult worker model. Despite the progressivity implied by this latter shift, important issues of gender inequality remain unresolved (even in Nordic countries where levels of gender equity are higher than elsewhere). This paper presents a critical review of social protection policies, examined from a gender perspective. The analysis presents a conceptual framework on gender and the welfare state, and examines the experience of major industrialized and developing countries in engendering social policy. In particular, this paper provides a careful examination of care-related programs, since this domain is particularly important to understanding the gendered effects of social protection policies. Finally, the gendered implications of the global crisis and subsequent policy measures are examined.
Gender and European Welfare States
2008
How can we understand the varied ways in which gender assumptions underpin welfare states across Europe and how they are changing? Do the Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism encapsulate differences between gender regimes, or do we need a more targeted gender analysis, differentiating male breadwinner from dual earner models? And how do these models relate to those post-state socialist countries which have joined the EU since 2004? In academic debate and political reality, 'Europe' has tended to mean 'Western Europe'; but 10 of the 27 member states are now former state socialist countries, with profoundly different social, political and gender histories from those in Western countries. One argument is of a shift in Western Europe towards women's increasing labour market participation, away from a male breadwinner model, albeit in most countries more a one-and-a-half model and far from gender equality, and at most a one-and-three quarter. Another sees post-state socialist countries 're-traditionalising' towards a male breadwinner model, as supports for mothers in the labour market have been reduced under social and economic transformation since 1989. Does this mean that there are contrasting trajectories East and West? Or should they be better seen as converging, in the context of economic and social change and European Union policy? This chapter will argue that both theoretical approaches shed light on gender regimes in Europe, and on changes to them. Unpacking the male breadwinner model into component parts (paid work, care work, income, time, power) allows us to understand the way that gender has been at the heart of gender inequality in male breadwinner systems in Western Europe, and how-to different degrees-regimes have supported a move from the male breadwinner system towards gender equality in paid and unpaid work, income, time and power. In practice, the social democratic regimes have supported gender equality and the move away from the male breadwinner model much more positively than other regimes, albeit all 27 members have signed up to the European Union's gender policy. A more collective approach, including social support for children and for childcare, has underpinned policies for gender equality. Some countries of Central and Eastern Europe have retained social welfare systems which support gender equality, particularly through supports to motherhood, despite the move from state socialism, and through periods of social and economic turbulence. Systems of state support for gender equality, in particular through supporting the social costs of children and care, are at the heart of the success of the Scandinavian social democratic states as the most gender equal welfare states in the European Union, and-to a lesser extent-in some parts of Central and Eastern Europe which were formerly under state socialist domination. Websites European Commission Database on Women and Men in Decision-making
Gender, social policy and the idea of the welfare state
2018
The topic of gender and social policy makes sense only in relation to the historical project of the welfare state. It is time to re-evaluate this project not least because of how neoliberal policy settings have all but dis-established the welfare state. Even though the neoliberal political class has not successfully persuaded the public to abandon its historically acquired expectations of a welfare state, neoliberal governments at least in the USA, Australia, New Zealand and the UK have adopted a tri-pronged attack on the institutions of the welfare state: cut back and reduce the scope of welfare state services; stigmatize so-called welfare dependency, remove a rights-based conception of welfare benefits, and substitute publicly subsidized private decisions concerning the management of the vicissitudes of life for a collective system of social security; and take the core service institutions such as schooling, hospital and primary health care out of a public bureaucratic ethos and turn them over to market principles of business efficiency and consumer choice