Social Policy and Gender
Content
- Introduction
- Background
- Gendering Welfare State
Introduction
The social protection agenda was created with the primary goal of empowering the underprivileged, excluded, and vulnerable social groups, with distinctions made based on factors such as age, health, and other factors. Intentionally or not, this emphasis has excluded women as a socially underprivileged group. Despite the fact that some policies were directed at families with female heads, gender was rarely employed as a distinct lens to analyse how vulnerable and exposed to risk the poor were so as to guide the development of social protection policies. Students will gain the information and theoretical tools they need to critically engage with social policy topics and debates in this programme on social policy and gender. As concepts of justice, citizenship, and inequality are used as analytical tools to critically assess current social policy concerns in the actual world, feminist perspectives on welfare are investigated. It is looked at how gender is used as a category of analysis and what impact it might have on other categories like race and class. Policy-making and political institutions have been examined to show how presumptions (or ambitions) about gender roles and the structure, role, and duties of the family are reflected in the framing, design, and evaluation of policies.
Background
The limitations and hurdles that men and women experience are numerous and distinct, limiting chances for women and girls in particular. Such restrictions may be gender-specific, whereby societal norms and practises apply to men or women based on their gender, or they may be gender-intensified, whereby the disparities between household members reflect the norms and customs governing distribution of food, access to healthcare, and ownership of property, among other things. Additionally, it may be gender-imposed, in which case the prejudice in the broader public sphere is reflected in manifestations of gender inequality and disadvantage (Kabeer, 2008).
Due to these restrictions, women and girls are disproportionately represented among the extremely poor, which limits their access to the labour market or forces them to work in less secure, more sporadic, or unprotected wage jobs in the informal economy.
All social protection programmes have had planned and unexpected consequences on women and gender relations, notwithstanding the wide variance in the gender-related design elements of these programmes.
Programs can have the following effects on an individual level: greater mobility for women; improved knowledge, abilities, and confidence among women; and, in some circumstances, subtle alterations in men's views. Even if gender-sensitive design elements do exist, they are frequently not used successfully, are misunderstood by programme implementers, or are superseded by rigid sociocultural norms. For instance, in the public sector, presumptions about the kind of work that is suitable for women and compensation that is based on male productivity norms only help to exacerbate inequality in the labour market. Despite being included in the planning, child care services are rarely offered by public works programmes.
These and other factors highlight the need for a deeper comprehension of the justification for, as well as the policy and programme consequences of, a gendered approach to social protection. Additionally, focusing on gender indicates the extent to which regional, class, and gender disparities worsen as a result of changes in the global economy, such as privatisation and commercialization processes. Women's unpaid care work is still one of the key points of dispute; this lesson will go into more detail on this topic. Despite an increase in the number of women participating in paid work, gender-based segmentations and disparities in wages/income, work-related social benefits, and social security continue to exist in the labour market.
Gendering Welfare State
Welfare states are profoundly gendered structures that have the capacity to both advance women's civic participation and exacerbate inequalities between the sexes. The welfare state can play a crucial role as a significant employer of female labour for women's economic independence, agency, and social and political citizenship, it has been highlighted time and time again.
The gender distribution of paid and unpaid work, particularly how the responsibilities for taking care of needs are distributed within families and between families and the state, has received significant attention from feminist researchers in their examination of the origins of gender inequality. The connection between gender roles and the welfare state's definition of women as social and political actors is another topic that has been studied. Thus, gender equity has been linked by feminism researchers to two distinct ideas: "diversity" and "equality," where the latter refers to treating women equally with men. Supporters of the notion of gender equality based on "diversity" have pointed out that this method falls short by treating men as the norm. Egalitarians have also critiqued this strategy since it is predicated on "essentialist" ideas of femininity, which have a propensity to entrench gender inequality in society. In order to attain gender equality, these two distinct ideas suggest that various techniques must be implemented as well as various roles for the State.
Nancy Fraser (1997) contends that a synthesis of two approaches—the "universal breadwinner" model, which encourages women to act like men in the workforce, and the "care-giver parity model," which compensates women for the economic disadvantages they experience as a result of their role as family caregivers—can resolve the dilemma of finding a way out of the "equality vs. difference" approach. They gave the name "universal caregiver" to this new political goal. She stated that policies should encourage men to take on the roles that most women who are known to provide primary care are known to play. This indicated that efforts to change should be directed toward men rather than women, and that a deconstruction of gender differences is a requirement for gender equity. Furthermore, the separation and division between the private and the public are seen as problematic in feminist critiques of liberalism.
The endeavour to separate men's public lives from women's private household lives is at the heart of this. As a result, this division is seen as being intrinsically gendered. Liberalism overlooks one of the most important factors contributing to sex disparity and oppression by treating the public and private realms as separate from one another, despite the fact that they are closely linked. According to academics, welfare states were created around ideas of "independence" based on citizenship, where independence is defined by dominantly masculine traits and skills.
Although the welfare state has improved women's lives and expanded democratic prospects, it can also be argued that it has also been a source of oppression, giving women some degree of choice in their economic dependency on males. This is due to the fact that calls for the inclusion of women on equal footing in a gender-neutral society frequently result in competing demands for the acknowledgement of gender-specific abilities, needs, and concerns.
Taking this argument a step further, scholars have also stated that the issue with social insurance programmes is that they frame their beneficiaries as possessive individuals with rights, whereas social assistance programmes frame their beneficiaries as stereotypically female individuals who are subject to guiding authorities rather than a contract. It does highlight some fascinating ways in which gender is frequently included into welfare states, albeit this is typically complemented with examples from the United States.
The objectives of "gender equality" have changed, but this has had the opposite effect of what was intended: it has encouraged women's workplace involvement rather than guaranteed equal opportunity for men and women in terms of jobs, careers, and other societal arenas. It has been common, particularly in industrialised nations, to consider women's employment as the answer to all issues. For example, mothers are often seen as having the power to reduce poverty, boost reproduction, and address the issue of an ageing population through employment. Equal treatment, which is defined as the elimination of overt sex discrimination, is a significant step forward but does not ensure equality of results. Women's dependency is still widespread, especially in (increasingly prevalent) social assistance programmes that, even when they are gender-neutral, prefer to route funds through male "heads of household" or see the pair as a unit. In these situations, married and cohabiting women's social citizenship rights cease to be legitimate rights because they are being mediated by their male partners. In this sense, means-tested benefits, pensions, and tax credits fall short of addressing the issue of female hidden poverty and may possibly make it worse.
Even while policies are being revised to support the "egalitarian" view of gender relations and the family model, which encourages families to balance family and work, the issue of the unequal distribution of unpaid care work in the field is still present. This makes gender discrimination in the workplace and the pay gap problem harder to address. It is clear that women's earning potential is decreased throughout their lives due to the fundamental and structural nature of gender and family relationships, which may be regrettable. Social aid must therefore be viewed in the perspective of this broader social landscape.
The gendered division of labour restricts women from achieving their educational and professional goals in a number of ways, which ultimately prevents a favourable climate from developing for them to enter the workforce. A sex-segregated labour market and the absence of a comprehensive child-care system both present challenges for women who want to support their families. Employment insurance (EI) and maternity benefits are useless due to these factors and low-income women's forced segregation in low-paying, irregular, and part-time occupations and are unable to improve their economic stability.
Therefore, neither marriage nor employment (alone or in combination) will be adequate to significantly improve women's economic insecurity until social policies address fundamental gender inequity. For instance, it has been stated that the Nordic social democracies have relatively high levels of gender equality thanks to female labour force participation and the social policy's redistributive mechanisms. Sweden, for instance, has achieved what is known as "participation parity" in the labour market, with almost equal proportions of women and men employed. This accomplishment, however, hides the fact that gender inequality has been re-inscribed in novel ways. If one examines closely, one may see that many women work part-time, with women making up more than 90% of all part-time workers in Sweden.
This demonstrates how contradictory it is, encouraging men to work full time and concentrate on their career paths while restricting women to part-time jobs in the public sector where it is simpler to balance work and family life. On the other hand, the SEWA (Self Employed Women's Association) health insurance programme in India is an illustration of an employment-based programme that was successful in reaching women informal workers. It was accomplished via a comprehensive insurance plan that also provided life and asset insurance. Along with the fact that it had been built on the preexisting patterns of solidarity of SEWA as a trade union and as a collection of cooperatives for women with strong organisational capacities, the success factors included an exceptional display of strong leadership skills, first-rate expertise from insurance experts, a willingness to respond to members' needs, and the setting of realistic rates.
Welfare programmes that specifically target mothers have a tendency to label mothers and their children as impoverished and in need while undervaluing both their rights as citizens and their labour as paid or unpaid caregivers. On the other hand, social insurance programmes grant workers rights in exchange for their labour or financial contributions, even though this is not always the case. Additionally, gendered presumptions about the identities, interests, and obligations of citizens are used in modern anti-poverty activities. As a result of feminist policy campaigning in numerous national and international venues, where women were referred to as "the poorest of the poor" and governments were urged to take appropriate action, women have recently received more attention from focused social assistance programmes. Microcredit schemes, which target women because of the presumption that they are more frugal, efficient, and enterprising, have been one reaction.
Even though the financial sustainability of these organisations is still an issue, they have successfully reached underprivileged women. Microfinance organisations typically offer loans with the intention of assisting women in starting businesses, however studies reveal that these loans are frequently used for social insurance purposes (Lund and Srinivas, 2000: 28). The Grameen Bank offers loan operations free from dealings or middlemen with men because women make up the majority of its borrowers. The Grameen gave defaulting loanees in Rangpur, an economically struggling area where loan repayments may have worsened the situation, a goat. The poorest people could return to microcredit programmes thanks to the ability of loan recipients to repay using the goat's progeny. By sending a female employee to collect the loan, the Grameen also made an intentional attempt to make the method of repaying gender sensitive.
Public works initiatives that may benefit women are yet another example. Generally speaking, public works programmes are public, labor-intensive infrastructure development projects that offer cash, food, or input-based rewards. A significant public works initiative in India, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) reaches around 45 million households. This initiative recognises women's contribution to food security and agriculture at the national level, but it also aims to address women's lower representation in paid jobs and gender wage discrepancies in the rural sector. Through the implementation of a quota that mandates the employment of one-third of women in each state under MGNREGA, they encourage the engagement of women. Additionally, MGNREGA acknowledges the significance of gendered social risks, particularly those related to women's child care, household duties, and the problem of time poverty. The program's structure includes amenities for a crèche. In India, the MGNREGA programme favours working women, particularly single women, who are close to their homes (5km). The program's promotion of women's involvement in guaranteeing the success of the program's execution is another crucial aspect. One of the main objectives of MGNREGA is to promote democratic processes at the grassroots level by ensuring equal representation for women and transparent, accountable administration. This also includes grassroots monitoring systems that enable localities to keep an eye on the implementation of the plan and demand it be done well, like the Social Audit Forum. Public works has been criticised as well, though, for its narrow focus on proper employment and the little options it provides for women to pursue other, more lucrative careers in agriculture.
Therefore, designing and implementing policies and programmes with consideration for gender has the potential to lessen gender-based poverty and vulnerability while also improving the efficiency of various social protection measures. These are required to improve social protection's ability to influence changes in gender relations at the individual, intra-household, and communal levels. This can be facilitated by policies and programmes being informed by in-depth analyses of economic and social vulnerabilities that affect women throughout their lives, as well as by acknowledging the importance of addressing gender issues for the success of programmes and the provision of viable exit strategies from poverty.
References
- Barrientos, A and Hulme, D. (eds) (2008) Social Protection for the Poor and Poorest. Palgrave Macmillan: Basingstoke, UK.
- Chant, S. (ed.) (2010) The International Handbook of Gender and Poverty: Concepts, Research and Policy. Cheltenham and Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar.
- Hall, A. L., &Midgley, J. (2004). Social policy for development. Sage.
- Hassim, S., &Razavi, S. (2006). Gender and social policy in a global context: Uncovering the gendered structure of ‘the social’. In Gender and Social Policy in a Global Context (pp. 1-39). Palgrave Macmillan UK.
- Holmes, R. and Jones, N. (2009) ‘Putting the Social Back into Social Protection.’ Background Note. London: ODI.
- Holmes, R. and Jones, N. (2010) ‘A Toolkit on How to Design and Implement Gender-sensitive Social Protection Programmes.’ London: ODI.
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