Gender and Welfare Regimes: A Comparative Analysis

ARTICLE y GENDER AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF WELFARE REGIMES alicy Jane Lewis, London School of Economics, UK dologicaL 'stitute of Summary wives and mothers and paid workers. Sw...

ARTICLE y GENDER AND THE alicy dologicaL 'stitute of Summary Its 'f This paper builds development of the concept slovakia 'arsaw, regime' must between unpaid as well as paid work and tgoslavia welfare. Consideration ngary is crucial to a gendered understanding of , Belgium welfare because historically women have X'arsaw, typically gained entitlements dependent status within and mothers. The paper cch of the male-breadwinner family model has served historically to typologies of welfare ternal the model has been modified (ion. and to different degrees in particular ated per- countries. right Box It is suggested that , USA, examples of historically :rmitted breadwinner states and : the US account for the level ties the nature ofwomen's mission m the market participation; ~s not services and ,maternity pying, lived inequality between in regard to social security. pnd creating breadwinner states have responsibility. The picture France, which is taken as an example of a 'modified' 11992 nature of French women's of this participation has historically Iced, m that it has been predominantly by any women have benefited, :al, a social security system horizontal redistribution ~ prior.lblishers between families with icted Patriarchal control 10m the family rather than in collecttve ensing institutions, and unlike Court France recognized women's Journal of European Social 160 traverse les typologies etablies des systemes de protection socia/e, et ensuite que ce modele a connu des modifications diverses et plus au mains importantes dans certains pays. L'auteur avance que I'Irlande et fa Grande- Bretagne sont des exemples de pays (ortement marques, historiquement, par ce modele de l' homme apporteur de revenu, et que ceez' aide a expliquer Ie niveau et, surtout, la nature de la participation des femmes au marchi du travail (temps partiel), Ie manque de creches ou garderies, l'insuffisance de la protection de fa materniti et l'inegaliti persistante entre mari et epouse face d la securite sociale. Les Etats fortement marques par ce modele ont eu tendance a tracer une ligne bien nette entre responsabilite puhlique et responsabilite prives. La situation se presente autrement en France, qui est un exemple de pays OU ce modele centre sur /'homme s'est modifie. La participation des femmes fram;aises au marche du travail a ete historiquement d'une autre nature, en particulier du fait de la predominance de l'empLoi a temps plein, et les femmes ont beneficie, quoiqu~ indirectement, d'un systeme de securite sociale qui priviJegiait une redistribution horizontale, par Ie biais du. systeme salarial, entre les families avec enfants et celles sans enfants. Le controle patriarcal s'est localise au sein de la famille plutot que dans les institutions collectives et, contrairement a l'lrlande et a fa Grande- Bretagne, la France a reconnu les revendications des femmes en tant qu'epouses, meres et travailleuses salariees a fa fois. La Suede est un exemple de pays faiblement marque par Ie modele de l'homme apporteur du revenu familial. Pendant La fin des annees 60 et durant les annees 70, les gouvernements socio-democrates successifs se dirigerent resolument vers un modele familial a deux apporteurs de revenu, en incitant les femmes a un travail remunere par [,introduction d'une imposition separee et de conges parentaux et par Ie developpement des services de garderie. Bien que Ie modele fram;ais et Ie modele suedois semblent etre plus favorables aux femmes que /e,modele britannique, l'article Journal of European Social Policy 1992 2 (3) GENDER AND WELFARE REGIMES Thus concepts such as 'decommodification' or 'dependency' have a gendered meaning that is rarely acknowledged. While Esping Andersen (1990) writes of decommodification as a necessary prerequisite for workers' political mobilization, the worker he has in mind is male and his mobilization _may depend as much on unpaid female household labour as state policies. Decommodification for women is likely to result in their carrying out unpaid caring work; in other words 'welfare dependency' on the part of adult women is likely to result in the greater independence of another person, young or old. The unequal division of unpaid work thus blurs the dichotomous divisions between dependent and independent, commodified and decommodified. As Kolberg (1991) has noted, the interface between the private in the sense of the informal provision of welfare, the market and the state has not been subjected to close analysis. Indeed, informal care was absent from Titmuss's (1963) classic threefold division of welfare into state, fiscal and occupational provision, and as Langan and Ostner (1991) comment, it is just as absent from more recent categorizations. In the work of Esping Andersen or of Leibfried (1991) women disappear from the analysis when they disappear from labour markets. Yet consideration of the private/domestic is crucial to any understanding of women's position because historically women have typically gained welfare entitlements by virtue of their dependent status within the family as wives, the justification being a division of labour perceived to follow 'naturally' capacity for motherhood. Women have thus tended to make contributions and draw benefits via their husbands in accordance with assumptions regarding the existence of a male-breadwinner family model (Land 1980). Furthermore, in welfare regimes where the social security system operates a dual insurance/assistance model, this in and of itself tends to be gendered, with first class (insurance) benefits going mainly to men and 162 activity for women. Given that in modern societies independence derives primarily from wage earning (Pateman 1988), the assumption that women were located mainly in the private sphere supported by a male breadwinner also meant that women have only been partially individualized. In regard to social policies, the liberal dilemma first described by Okin (1979), whereby individuals in fact meant male heads of families, has persisted. Modern welfare regimes have all subscribed to some degree to the idea of a male~ breadwinner model. Indeed, its persistence, to varying extents, cuts across established typologies of welfare regimes. Leira (1989), for example, has shown that Esping Andersen's identification of a Scandinavian welfare regime breaks down as soon as gender is given serious consideration. The Norwegian system, which has continued to treat women primarily as wives and mothers, is closer in many respects to that of Britain than it is to Sweden. But just as the male-breadwinner model has not existed in its'pure form, sathe model has been modified in different ways and to diffe~ent degrees in particular countries. In its pure form we would expect to find married women excluded from the labour market, firmly subordinated to their husbands for the purposes of social security entitlements and tax, and expected to undertake the work of caring (for children and other dependants) at home without public support. No country has ever matched the model completely, but some have come much closet than others. This paper looks at the way in which twentieth century·welfare states have treated women as wives and mothers and as paid workers, comparing Britain (with reference also to Ireland) as historically strong male- breadwinner states with, first, France, where it is argued that the male-breadwinner model remained implicit in sociaJ policies because of the focus on children rather than on women and where women's historically stronger position in the labour market also modified the operation of the model; and second, Journal of European Social Policy 1992 2 (3) s Industrial Development Authority, played a decisive role in ensuring that men had priority y in the labour market. In the civil service, a marriage bar prevented married women from the working until 1977. Those married women determined to enter the labour market faced exceptionally harsh treatment under the tax 1e system, with high marginal rates and a very in low tax free allowance, and the lowest levels of child care provision in Europe. Married women's treatment under the social security system has· also exhibited the kind of features that might be hypothesized for a strong male- en breadwinner country until very recently, when Until 1984 married women received lower Jth rates of benefit, shorter length oj payment of benefit, and were not eligible for per unemployment assistance. Indeed, Ireland has r been the only European country to pay dependents benefits regardless of whether the mg wife is in paid work (Callender 1988). Britain has also shared an historical commitment to the male breadwinner model, In which, while it has been substantial-Iy )le modified i'n the late more explicable some of the differences in the position of British women, especially vis-a-vis the labour market. In line with the dominant turn of the century view of gender roles in the family and nd their link to social stability 1991), one Cabinet minister tried to ban the work of married women during the 1900s, and during the inter-war years a marriage bar operated in the professions. A parallel effort was put into the education of working class wives and mothers in household management nd and infant welfare, using the small army of female visitors attached to charities and increasingly by World War I, health visitors ns employed by local authorities (Lewis 1980). This pattern of thinking about the family nt meant that policymakers faced a number of contradictory pulls. While wives and mothers was paramount, social policies were not permitted to undermine the man's responsibility to provide for 164 19705, Britain offered an allowance for the unpaid work of caring for infirm dependants (the invalid care allowance) within the social security system, but, at the very same time that legislation was being passed to provide women with the means of legal redress on an individual basis against sex discrimination in pay, promotion, hiring and other mainly workplace related issues, the invalid care allowance was denied to married women on the grounds that caring was part of the 'normal' duties of such women. The strong male~breadwinner model also predicts relatively low levels of female labour market participation and of social services such as child care. All northern European countries (except Ireland) have experienced a significant increase in women's labour market participation rates, particularly for married women. In Britain, married women's participation increased from 10 per cent in 1931 to 26 per cent in 1951,49 per cent in 1971 and 62 per cent in 1981. On the face of it, British married women's labour participation rates have much' in common with those of France. Dex and Walters' (1989) analysis of two samples of French and British women with dependent children drawn during the early 1980s found identical participation rates of 51 per cent. However, it is important that virtually the whole of the post-war expansion in married women's work in Britain is accounted for by part-time employment (44.5 per cent worked part-time in 1987, compared to 22.5 per cent in France). Sweden also has high levels of part- time work (43 per cent in 1989), but here again it is important to distinguish the meaning of 'part time'. In Britain part-time work tends to be 'precarious' (following the OEeD definition), with short hours and few benefits. While, in 1979, 29.8 per cent of women in part-time manual jobs and 23 per cent in non-manual jobs worked less than sixteen hours, by 1990 thes~ figures had become 43.7 per cent and 31.8 per cent (Lister 1992). In Sweden most women working part-time are in fact in full-time jobs Journal of European Social Policy 1992 2 (3) GENDER AND WELFARE REGIMES women working, the assumption is that women will be secondary wage earners and, despite the large numbers of women in paid employment, they tend to be in short part- time, low status work. Davies and Joshi's (1990) econometric analysis of gross cash earnings foregone by a woman bearing one, two or three children shows the costs in Britain (and Germany) to be similar and high at 50 per cent of income. In France and Sweden the costs ate similar and low at 10 per cent or less. Modified male-breadwinner countries - France s The picture is different in France, where the nature of women's labour market participation has historically been stronger in that it has been predominantly full-time, and where women have benefited, albeit indirectly, from a social security system that has prioritized horizontal redistribution between families with and without children, rather than vertical redistribution between rich and poor. In 1945 twice as much flowed out in family allowances as in social insurance. The ailowances enabled a French family of four to double its income, whereas in Britain it received 15 shillings from family allowances when the average male wage was 121 shillings (Pedersen 1991: 447). In 1971 e the French three and four child family on median earnings received four times as much in family benefits as its British counterpart (Dawson 1979: 203). Family POlicy has been dominant within the French social security system and in contrast to Britain its goals have been clear (on the conflicting goals of British policy, see Brown 1987). The primary aim of French social security has been to compensate parents for the costs of children and to this extent the system has been gender-neuttal; Pedersen (1991) has described the early twentieth 166 legitimated in France by pronatalist concern. This resulted in substantial emphasis on the importance of good mothering and the pioneering French efforts to improve maternal and child welfare in the early twentieth century by, for example, the Gouttes de Lait were exported to Britain. Nevertheless, the percentage of women in full-time paid work increased during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in France (from 30 per cent in 1866 to 37 per cent in 1911), in contrast to Britain where the percentage fell. This was in large measure attributable to the different occupational structure in France and the large number of women employed in family businesses; as late as 1968, 20 per cent of French women were employed in the rural sector (Silver 1977). While in Britain it became part of the badge of working class male respectability to keep a wife, enforced by a strong trade union movement as well as by the discourse of social reform, so in the French context this was neither so possible nor desirable. Patriarchal control was firmly located within the family rather than in collective instit~tions, and for a significant number of husbands it was not in their self- interest to exercise their legal right (which they held until 1965) to prevent their wives working. Thus, in France, there were no early twentieth century attempts to push women out of the labour market and paid maternity leave was introduced in 1913. During the 1930s, pronatalist concern deepened and gave rise to increased pressure for an allowance for la mere au foyer (women at home raising children). Such an allowance was introduced in the 1930s, although under the 1939 Code de la Famille it was paid only to urban families, the reasoning being that in rural areas women could engage in both farm work and mind children (Laroque 1985). The allowance was thus conceptualized more as a compensation for earnings foregone and, as Pedersen has argued, stood in stark contrast to the British treatment of married women workers under the 1931 Anomalies Act, which effectively deprived them of the right to Journal of European Social Policy 1992 2 (3) GENDER AND WELFARE REGIMES commitment to policy-neutrality regarding women's role, but the outcomes of the shifts in both family and labour market policy during the late 1970s and 1980s have been mixed for women. In 1977 the frais de garde was rolled up with the allowance for single wage earners ·(the extended mere au foyer allowance) into the compliment familial. During the course of the Senate debate on this measure, the minister, Simone Weil stated firmly:, 'Le complemeht familial serait versait aussi bien aux meres restant a leur foyer qu'a celles qui exercent une activite professionelle. Cette neutralite nous a semble egalement equitable' (Journel Officiel, Senat Debats, 221 4176: 609). The commitment both to neutrality regarding women's choice to go out to work or not and explicitly to seeking policies that would help them (but not men) to combine 'la vie professionnelle and la vie familiale' persisted throughout the 1980s (e.g. the report of the Haur Conseil de la Population et de la Famille 1985). However, as Pierre Laroque (1985) has pointed out, the complement familial continued to benefit one-earner families more than two-earner families. This was in part because the benefit (like all benefits introduced after 1970) was means tested in accordance with the new priority given vertical redistribution. Research during the 1980s (e.g. Ekert 1983) has also shown that working wives pay a disproportionate amount towards the funding of family benefits. The operation of the joint tax system also works to penalize married women's work and may account for the greater incidence of part-time work among higher paid women (Crompton, Hantrais and Walters 1990), while the interaction of the tax system with a benefit system that gives significantly more to large families may also encourage lower income women to stay at home (Hantrais forthcoming). Third children attract more family benefit via the allocation au jeune enfant and more tax relief; working women giving birth to a third child are entitled to longer maternity leave. 168 both mothers and paid workers - has offered real gains to women. Weak male-breadwinner countries - Sweden 3 Sweden was not always a weak male- breadwinner state. Pre-World War II Swedish social democracy embraced the idea of difference in its thinking about the relationships between men and women, largely as a result of the great influence wielded by Ellen Key. Her ideas inspired the social democratic movement as to what was 'good and rightful' in everyday life (Key 1912, 1914). The most powerful image in Swedish social democracy has been that of building the 'people's home', which encompasses the double idea first, of society and state as a good family home, where no one is privileged, all co-operate and no one tries to gain advantage at another's expense; and seeanq, of ensuring that productive capacity is used to the advantage of people and their families. Whether in the big 'people's and society, or the small people's home of individual household and family, women's contribution (and rewards) were allocated on the basis of wife and motherhood in line with the family wage model (Hirdman 1989). During the 1930s and 1940s, the situation in Sweden changed to resemble the French, albeit that the policy logic was somewhat different. During t~is period, the Social Democrats' conceptualization of women's place in society was significantly influenced by the writings of Alva and Gunnar Myrdal, themselves members of the Party. Picking up the common theme of national suicide in the face of falling birth rates, the Myrdals insisted on 'democratic' population planning (which differentiated them from the extremes of national socialism) and the importance of society investing in the welfare of families. But alongside this rnaternalist politics and Journal of European Social Policy 1992 2 (3) :y from that of dependent wife to worker. Since the mid-1970s women have been treated as workers and have been compensated for their unpaid work as mothers at rates they could command as members of the labour force. The most important changes designed to id promote women's market work were first, the introduction of separate taxation in 1971. This, together with high marginal tax rates, has meant that it has been generally favourable for family income if a woman goes la out to work rather than the man adding extra overtime hours (Gustafsson and Stafford :d 1988). In Britain, where separate taxation was introduced in 1989, the labour market effects are not the same because of low progressivity in the tax system. The second major change was the increase in the number of places in public day care: in 1.968 10 per cent of all children under school age had e places, in 1979 27 per cent and in 198747 per cent. Finally, in 1974 a scheme of parental insurance was introduced, rather than women being given flat rate maternity benefits, they were offered compensation for loss of market earnings. Men were also offered the same 90 as per cent replacement of earnings if they chose ;, a parental leave of six months to be taken before the child reached four years together with a ten day per year child sick leave. The leave was extended again in 1975 and again in 1980 to twelve months parental leave and 60 days child sick leave. Not surprisingly the labour market participation rate of women in Sweden increased dramatically. Participation rates in the 1950s and 1960s were lower than in many other western countries, but by 1986 89.8 per cent of women aged 25-54 (only 5 per cent less than men of comparable age) were in the labour market and 85.6 per cent k of women with children under 7 worked ) compared with 28 per cent in Britain. By 1984,.only 7 per cent of Swedish women between 25 and 54 were classified as r 'housewives'. Thus j having moved away from the male- , 170 have tended to oscillate ovec time between treating these women primarily as workers (under the nineteenth century poor law) or primarily as mothers (under post~war welfare state legislation), Predicting the treatment of lone mothers in strong male-breadwinner countries is virtually impossible because their position defies the logic of the system, but governments have tended historically to categorize lone mothers firmly as either mothers Of workers. In late twentieth century Britain no lone mother with a child under 16 who is claiming income support is obliged to register for work and they have the lowest labour market participation in the European Community. While 47 per cent of lone mothers were in paid work during the period 1977-9, this figure actually dropped to 39 per cent for the period 1986-8 (Millar 1989). Indeed, Britain is the only EC country where lone mothers have a lower employment rate than mothers in two parent families. In France, as Baker (1991) has pointed out, lone mothers reap the advantage of generous family benefits paid to all families with children, and while they have the highest labour force participation rate in the EC next to Denmark and Luxembourg, France is unusual in that the incomes of employed and unemployed lone mother families are very similar (Millar 1989). In Sweden, as might be expected, 87 per cent of lone mothers are in the labour force and for the most part work full-time. In material terms they are the best off, but at the price of being particularly time poor. What can be hoped for from the state? The position of women within different welfare regimes revolves around two related issues, the valuing of unpaid work and the sharing of it. Nowhere have these issues been addressed directly. In moving from the male- breadwinner to a dual-breadwinner model, Sweden may be judged to have gone a long Journal of European Social Policy GENDER AND WELFARE REGIMES League was an active campaigning force in the late 19605 and 1970s, but one of its most important original qemands for the six hour day was not met by the body of legislation that transformed women's labour market participation because of opposition from the trade union movement. Such a measure may well have served to redistribute unpaid and paid work between men and women. On the other hand, the Swedish case may lend support to Balbo's t1987) argument that modern welfare states call forth greater female public participation. All Nordic parliaments with the exception- of Iceland have reached a critical mass (30-40%) of women members and it is in part this that has led to Scandinavian women's optimism about the role ofthe state. (In Sweden the percentage fell from 38 to 28 as.a result of the 1991 election, although the number of women ministers has remained the same at eight.) What is secured as a by-product of other concerns, for example pronatalism in France, or the desire to increase the labour force as in Sweden, can be reversed. Political and institutional power is crucial not so much for securing material well-being, as for putting issues that are central to enlarging women's choices, like the division and valuing of unpaid work, onto the political agenda. Notes I am indebted to Ilona Osmer for her ideas about the concepts developed in this paper. 2 The most significant attempts to date are by Langan and Osmer (1991) and by Shaver (1990). 3 The material in this section is drawn from a larger piece of work carried out in co-operation with Gertrude Astrom. References Ashford, D. (1982) British Dogmatism and French Pragmatism: Central-Local Relations in the Welfare State, London, Allen and Unwin. Baker,]. (1991) Family policy as an anti-poverty 172 Haut Consei! de 1a Population et de la Familie (1985) Vie Professionelle et Vie Familiale, de Nouveaux Equilibres a Construire, La Documentation Francaise, Paris, Ministere des Affaires L'Emploi. Hernes, H. (1987) Welfare State and Woman Power: Essays in State Feminism, Oslo, Norwegian University Press. Hirdman, Y. (1989) The Swedish Welfare State and the gender system; a theoretical and empirical sketch, The Study of Power and Democracy in Sweden English Series Report No.7, Stockholm. Jenson, J. and Kantrow, R. (1990) Labor Market and Family Policy in France: An Intersecting Complex for Dealing with Poverty, in G. Schaffner Goldberg and Eleanor Kremen (eds) The Feminization of Poverty. Only in America? New York, Praeger Publications. Jenson,]. (1988) The limits of 'and French women as marginal workers, in]. Jenson, E. Hagen, and C. Reddy (eds) The Feminization of the Labout Force: Paradoxes and Promises, New York, Oxford University Press. 1onung, c. (1984) Patterns of occupational segregation in the labour market, in Gunther Schmid and Renate Weitzel (eds) Sex Discrimination and Equal Opportunities, Aldershot, Gower. Kalvemark, A. S. (1980) More Children of Better Quality? Aspects in (sic) Swedish Population Policy in the 1930s, Stockholm, Alqvist and Wiksell. Key, E. (1912) The. Woman Movem~nt, New York, G. P. Putnam's Sons. Key, E. (1914) The Renaissance of Motherhood, New York, G. P. Putnam's Sons. Kolberg, 1. E. (1991) The gender dimension of the welfare state, International Journal of Sodology, 21(2),119-148. Land, H. (1975) The introduction of family allowances: an act of historic justice?, in P. Hall et af. (eds) Change, Choice and Conflict in Sodal Policy, London, Heineman. Land, H. (1980) The family wage, Feminist Review 6: 55-78. Land, H. and Ward, S. (1986) Women Won't Benefit, London, National Council for Civil Liberties. Langan, M. and Osmer, I. (1991) Gender and welfare, in Graham Room (ed.), Towards a European Welfare State?, Bristol, School of Advanced Urban Studies. Laroque, P. (1985) La Politique Familiale en France depuis 1945, Documents Affaires Sociales, Paris, Ministere des Affaires Sociales et de la Solidarite Nationale. Leibfried, S. (1991) Towards a European Welfare State? On the Integration Potentials of Poverty Regimes in the EC, TS, Bremen, Bremen University. Leira, A. (1989) Models of Motherhood, Welfare State Polides and Everyday Practices: The Journal of Europelm Social Policy 1992 2 (3) GENDER AND WELFARE REGIMES PP. (1942) Cmd. 6404, Report of the Committee on Social Insurance and Allied Services, HMSO, London. Prost, A. (1984) L'Evolution de en France de 1938 a 1981, Le Mouvement Social no. 129 Oct-Dec.: 7-28. Pyle, J. L. (1990) The State and Women in the Economy. Lessons from Sex Discrimination in the Republic of Ireland, Albany, SUNY Press. Questiaux, N. (1985) Family policy in France, in S. N. Eisenstadt and Ora Ahimeir The Welfare State and its Aftermath, London, Croom Hel~. Rodgers, B. N. (1975,) Family Policy in France, Journal of Social Policy 4 {2l: 113-28. Shaver, S. (1990) Gender, social policy regimes and the welfare state, Sodal Policy Research Centre Discussion Papers, no. 26, Sydney, University of New South Wales. Silver, C. B. (1977) France: contrasts in familial and societal roles, in J. Zollinger Giele DEVELOPMENT OF WELFARE REGIMES Jane Lewis, London School of Economics, UK wives and mothers and paid workers. Sweden is taken as an example of a 'weak' male- breadwinner country. During the late 1960s on the idea that any further and 1970s successive Social Democratic of 'welfare governments consciously decided to move incorporate the relationship towards a dual-breadwinner society, pulling women into paid employment by the of the private/domestic introduction of separate taxation and parental leaves, and by increasing child care provision. While both the French and Swedish models by virtue of their would seem to offer women more than the the family as wives British, the paper concludes with a cautionary suggests that the idea note. In neither France nor Sweden did women's own demands playa significant role cut across established in determining their treatment. Paradoxically, regimes, and further that the feminist movement has been historically in different ways stronger in Britain. This must raise issues as to what can be expected of the state and as to the pOSSible fragility of the gains. Ireland and Britain are 'strong' male- that this helps to and, more importantly, Resume (part-time) labour the lack of child care rights; and the long- NATURE ET DEVELOPPEMENT DES husbands and wives REGIMES SOCIAUX Strong maie- tended to draw a. resale. firm dividing line between public and private eet article se fonde sur l'idee selon laquelle is different in tout developpement du concept de systeme de protection sociale doit integrer Ie rapport male-breadwinner country. The entre Ie tr(:l,vail, remmere ou non, et la labour market protection sociale. La prise en consideration been stronger in du domaine privelfamiliai est indispensable full-time, and pour comprendre la dif(erenciation selon les ,albeit indirectly, from sexes des formes de protection sociale: en that has prioritized effet, historiquement, les femmes ont acquis via the wage system des droits, en raison meme de leur situation and without children. de dependance dans la famille en tant has been located within qu'epouse et mere. L'article suggere que Ie modele familIal dans lequel e'est l'homme qui Britain and Ireland, apporte Ie revenu' familial, a rempli, claims as both historiquement, une fonction importante qui Policy 1992 2 (3) 159-173 © Longman Group UK Ltd 1992 0958-9287192102301159/$03.50 JANE LEWIS s'acheve par un avertissement. Ni en France, Thus con ni en Suede, les revendications des femmes 'depende n'ont joue un role significatif dans fa rarely ad determination de leur traitement. D'une fagon (1990) w paradoxale, le mouvement (iministe a ete necessar) historiquement plus puissant en Grande- mobilizal Bretagne. Des questions s'imposent, comme male and celle concernant les attentes que l'on peut much on avoir vis-a-vis de l'Etat et celie de fa fragilite state poli eventuelle des acquis. is likely t canngwi depender likely to another'J Gender and the development of division c welfare regimes 1 dichoton and indeJ Recent comparative work on modern welfare decomrnc states has emphasized the importance of the As Kol relationship between state and economy, and between in particular between work and welfare informal (especially Esping Andersen 1990). Work is the state defined as paid work and welfare as policies analysis. that permit, encourage or discourage the from Titl decommodification of labour. While this is a division c substantial advance on the older literature occupatic which focused only on the comparative Ostner (1 development of policies of social from rna amelioration, it mi&,ses one of the central of Espin! issues in the structuring of welfare regimes: womenc the problem of valuing the unpaid work that disappea is done primarily by women in providing consider. welfare, mainly within the family, and in crucial tc securing those providers social entitlements. position The crucial relationship is not just between typically paid work and welfare, but as Peter Taylor of their c Gooby (1991) recently signalled in this wives, th journal, between paid work and unpaid work labour p' and welfare. capacity The latter set of relationships is gendered, tended tc because while it is possible to argue that the benefits, divisions in paid work have substantially assumpti diminished to the extent that gr~ater numbers male-bre of women have entered the labour market Furtherrr (although not with regard to pay, status and social se, hours) all the evidence.suggests that the msuranCi division of unpaid work remains substantially itself tenl the same (see, for example, Morris 1990). (insuran< 161 second class (welfare/assistance) benefits to women (Gordon 1990). In Britain 2.5 million working women are excluded from the contributory social security system because they fall below the lower earning limit. The development of modern welfare states in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries coincided with the period when the boundary between the public world of paid work and political participation and the private domain of the family was strongest in both the prescriptive literature and in reality, at least for middle class women. In its ideal form, the male-breadwinner model prescribed breadwinning for men- and caring! homemaking for women. It was part of a much larger gendered division between public and private that informed the work of political philosophers after Locke, and was taken as one of the measures of a civilized society by late nineteenth century social scientists such as Herbert Spencer. Working within an evolutionary framework, Spencer argued that society was 'progressing' towards a position whereby all women would be able to stay home in their 'natural' sphere. While it may be argued that his was a shared ideal- between men and women, employees and employers and the state (Lewis 1986) - it is important to note that it was never completely achieved. The male-breadwinner model operated most fully for late-nineteenth century middle class women in a few industrialized countries. Working class women have always engaged in paid labour to some degree. In reality, as Sokoloff (1980) and Pateman on their (1989) have insisted, the two spheres have been and are intimately interrelated rather than separated. Not least as a provider of welfare the family has been central to civil society, rather than separate from it. Over time, the boundary between public and private has been redrawn at the level of prescription. For example, in English the phrase 'working mother' entered the language during and after World War II, but wage earning was always deemed a secondary Journal of European Social Policy. 1992 2 (3) JANE LEWIS Sweden, where it is suggested that there has Industt been a shift away from a strong male- decisiv. breadwinner model towards something very in the I different: a dual breadwinner model. It is marria: suggested that the strength or weakness of the warkin male-breadwinner model serves as an determ indicator of the way in which women have exeepti been treated in social security systems, of the system level of social service provision particularly in low ta} regard to child care; and of the nature of of chit< married women's position in the labour worner market. system The paper is intended as an exploratory that mi charting exercise, very little attempt has been bread~ made so far to gender welfare regimes. 2 While reform it is impossible to come to any definitive Until 1 conclusion as to where women 'do best', both rates 0 France and Sweden would seem to offer benefit women more than Britain. However the paper unemp concludes with a cautionary note. In neither been tl France nor Sweden did women's own depend demands playa significant role in determining wife is their treatment. Paradoxically, the feminist Brita movement has his~orically been stronger in commi Britain. This must raise issues as to what can which, be expected of the state and as to the possible modifi( fragility of the gains. moree positio the lab In iiI cenrur) Strong male-breadwinner states - Ireland their iii and Britain 1991), worke Ireland has been historically, and"'lnore and du unusually, has remained well into the late operat! twentieth century an extremely strong rnale- was pu breadwinner state. Despite the choice of wives ~ export led development during the 1960s and and inl 1970s, the labour market participation of female women remained virtually the same at just mereas under 30 per cent. Incoming electronics firms empla) that employed 80 per cent female workers This elsewhere in the world, employed 51 per cent meant in Ireland; in manufacturing more generally contra! 30 per cent of the labour force was female. wives;: Pyle (1990) has argued convincingly that policie: government policy, particularly that of the man's GENDER AND WELFARE REGIMES 163 dependants. Thus, national health and unemployment insurance introduced in Britain in 1911 did not cover women and children unless the woman was in full-time insurable employment (only 10 per cent were so placed). Nor was much protection offered the married woman as worker; Britain failed to implement paid maternity leave and never ratified the ILO Washington Convention provision for six weeks paid leave (Lewis and Davies 1991). Again the argument was that the father must support his family and that women's waged work was detrimental to the welfare of children and to the stability of the.lile reform was prompted in large part by EC law. family. In Britain, protective labour legislation was, as Mary Poovey (1989) has commented, the obverse of control. The concern was not so much to maximize the welfare of working women as mothers, but to minimize their labour market participation, a position that was shared by male and female trade unionists and by middle class women social reformers. The position of women workers was more complicated in that while there is evidence that they supported the family wage twentieth century, makes ideal, their material circumstances dictated their need to earn. Under the post-war Beveridgean settlement, women continued to be treated as dependants for the purppses of social security entitlements. Beveridge (PP. 1942) wrote at and welfare (Lewis length of the importance of women's role as wives and mothers in ensuring the continuance of the British race (at a time of fears about population decline) and insisted on marriage as a 'partnership' rather than a patriarchal relationship (Wilson 1977; Lewis 1983). It was, however, a partnership in which the parties were to be equal but different. Hence women were defined as wives and mothers and therefore as dependent on a male wage. Married women were accordingly invited to take the 'married women's option', paying less by way of contributions and women's welfare as collecting less in benefits. The married women's option was not abandoned until the middle of the 1970s, with the passing of equal opportunities legislation. From the mid- Journal of European Social Policy 1992 2 (3) JANE LEWIS (with full benefits), but are exercising their warne right to work a three-quarter time day while warne their children are small. In Britain, the despit inheritance of the male-breadwinner model is emplo reflected in the nature rather than the level of time,] women's labour market participation. (1990 In particular, Britain has large numbers of earnin non-working mothers of below school age two 0 children. This is related to the low level of Britail child care provision, which is especially at 50 striking compared to France, where some 95 Swed, per cent of 3-5 year aids are in publicly per ce funded child care and 25 per cent of 0-2 year aids. The figures for Britain are 44 per cent and 2 per cent respectively (Phillips and Moss 1988). It is also significant that Britain tends to make less provision (thereby arguably Modi Fran, giving less encouragement) to women workers who become mothers. Women with two years continuous service have the right to eleven Thep weeks leave before the birth of a child and 29 natun weeks afterwards at 90 per cent replacement partic income for six of those weeks, and the right that it to reinstatement, but, given the precarious where labour market position of British women, indire only 60 per cent qualify. has pI Strong male-breadwinner states have betwe tended to draw a firm dividing line between rather public and private !esponsibility. If women rich a: enter the public sphere as workers, they must out in do so on terms very similar to men. It is insura assumed that the family (that is women) will famil) provide child care and minimal provision is in Brit made for maternity leaves, pay and the right allow; to reinstatement. During the 1980s in Britain, 121 sl the publidprivate divide has been drawn more the FI tightly. Thus eligibility for unemployment media benefit has been linked much more firmly to in fan recent employment and to availability for (Daw, work, with attendant problems for women Fan who interrupt paid work to care or who need Frenc' to find child care. The maternity rights to Bri women won under the equal opportunities confli, legislation of the mid-1970s have also been 1987) significantly weakened. Indeed, Britain is the seeun only European Community member state in the cc which maternity rights diminished during the systen 1980s. While no effort is now made to stop (1991 165 century development of French family policy as following a 'parental', as opposed to a male-breadwinner model. Historically, family benefits have been financed in large measure by employers and must therefore be see'n as part of the wage system. The family allowances paid by employers during the 1930s were in some regions used as a means of controlling the labour force. Allowances were forfeit if work was missed for any reason, including strikes, and were also used as a means of attaching other family members, including women, to a particular firm. In other occupations the aim was less labour force control and more straightforwardly wage control during the Depression (Pedersen 1991; Thibault 1986). While rewarding women for the unpaid work of caring for children therefore had nothing to do with the introduction of family benefits in France, the nature of the redistribution from wage earners to non-wage earners did benefit women as well as children, especially given that some benefits were increasingly paid directly to women. Unlike Britain, there was no debate about this, family allowances had never been viewed as a feminist demand as they were in Britain during the 1920s (Land 1975; Lewis 1980; Pedersen 1991) and, given French family law, which vested complete parental authority in the husband (until reform in 1970), it was assumed that the interests of husband and wife would be as one. In fact, all the research on the division of resources within the household during the last decade (e.g. Pah11990) has revealed the existence of substantial inequalities between family members and in so far as family allowances, the most substantial of the many family benefits (which have included pre- and post-natal allowances, family supplements, payments to single-earner families, and payments in respect of child care) have been linked firmly to wages and thus to the wage earner, it is of course impossible to be sure how far they actually benefited women and children in practice. The case for generous family benefits was Journal of European Social Policy 19922 (3) JANE LEWIS unemployment insurance (see also Deacon commitl 1976). Only during the Vichy regime were women' efforts made actively to prevent married in both women's employment and the mere au foyer during t allowance was extended and uprated. mixed f( Thus the French model recognized the was roll reality of women's claims as both mothers wageea and workers. In this sense it was, as Douglas allowan Ashford (1982) has argued more generally in During 1 regard to French politics, more pragmatic measure than the British. As the labour force firmly: ' participation rate of married women aussi bit increased, from 34 per cent in 1968 to 40 per celles qc cent in 1975 (Hantrais 1990), so French Cette ne policy documents addressed the reality of equitabl changes in women's labour market behaviour 4/76: 6( and their implications for family policy. As neutrali' Rodgers (1975) noted, this approach stands in to work marked contrast to the tendency of British policies policymakers to ignore changes in family roles to coml: and structures (see, for example, Land and familialt Ward's (1986) comments on the Fowler the repe Review of British social security system). In Popular 1972 the frais de garde was introduced How( specifically for families with working mothers pointed and a number of articles began to question continuo the social justice of paying benefits to women than tw staying at home when they might be better off because than women in the workforce. One of the introdu, most forceful contributions came from aecorda Rolande Cuvillier in an article republished in vertical the Joumal of Social Policy in 1979. This line 1980s (, of argument played, in the manner of many workin, Anglo-Saxon contributions ofthe 19805 (e.g. toward~ Murray 1984; and Mead 1986) on the operatic rhetoric of equality in the sense of treating to pena' women the same as men, but also within the account French context reflected the increasing work al preoccupation of the 1970s and 1980swith Hantrai achieving vertical as opposed to horizontal interact redistribution. This was promoted by means system ~ testing and by reducing the importance of families family benefits - by 50 per cent between 1955 women and 1985 (Questiaux, 1985) - within the forthco social security system. Prost (1984) has family I suggested that French family policy had lost enfant ~ its coherence by the 19'805. giving ~ French governments stated their explicit longer I 167 During the 1980s, while French women have done somewhat better than British women relative to men in terms of both pay and measures of vertical segregation (Hantrais 1990) and ten times as many work continuously through the childbearing and childrearing years as in Britain (Crompton, Hantrais and Walters 1990), the percentage of French women working part time has increased significantly due to conscious efforts to restructure the labour market. Between 1982 and 1986, 13,000 women lost a full- time job, while at the same time 450,000 part-time jobs were created (Jenson and Kantrow 1990: 113). Thus Jenson (1988) and Mazur (1991) have pointed out that while the 1983 Loi Roudy represented a strong measure of 'equality" legislation that notably provided for action to counter sex discriminatioI). and segregation at the workplace level, government action also encouraged part-time work, albeit regulating it to ensure the payment of pro-rata benefits. French women giving birth to a child get between 16 and 26 weeks maternity leave at 84 per cent replacement income and 90 per cent of working mothers qualify. There is a tax allowance for child care, and public child care provision is among the best in Europe. Within the EC, France was one of only three countries in 1988 where more than 50 per cent of wom~n with children under the age of five were in employment. Thus pronatalist inspired social policies resulted in generous benefits to compensate for the costs of children and the way in which they have been financed also benefited women as mothers. These benefits 'have been diluted by more recent moves towards giving greater priority to vertical redistribution and to means testing, and also serve to penalize women workers. Nevertheless, compared to Britain or Ireland, France's modified male- breadwinner model - in which patriarchal control has been vested in husbands more than in trade unions, employers or governments, while state policy has recognized the reality of women's roles as Journal of European Social Policy 1992 2 (3) JANE LEWIS policies to encourage a higher birth rate, they from 1 also insisted that state policies should aim to the m. realize the potential of each individual. Thus worh while women's roles as mothers acquired unpal' 'national' significance, so it was also insisted comm that women had the right to develop their The talents in other fields, particularly that of paid promc employment. The Myrdals argued that if the introd state wanted babies, it must also make it This, 1 possible for mothers to work, albeit hasm sequentially (Kalvemark 1980). During the favoUl late 1940s Alva Myrdal developed with Viola out to Klein her influential idea of 'women's two overtil roles', whereby women should be encouraged 1988) to enter the labour market until the birth of a was in first child, returning when the child left school effects (Myrdal and Klein 1954). The state and progre employers were asked to support motherhood major and married women's role as workers, albeit of pIa, that these would be, much more than was cent 0: envisaged in France, sequential and therefore places. separate endeavours. It was not envisaged per eel that workers would also be the mothers of insura small children. In terms of Myrdal's policy being I inheritance in Sweden, it was important first, werec that she sought to reconcile women's claims earnin both as workers on equal terms to men and as per cel home' of state mothers within a single strategy; second, that to can her main justification for such a strategy was, a parel not unlike the French, the n'ation's need for before women's labour power and for more babies, with a rather than women's expressed needs; and leave \i third, that she was content to change in 198 women's lives without pressing for 60 day concomitant changes in those of men. Not During the 1950s and 1960s, the labour partici force participation rates of women over 15 increa~ remained constant at about 30 per cent, with the 19. the low participation rates for married many< women in the childbearing years that were 89.8 P' consistent with the dual roles model. But per cer during the late 1960s and early 1970s, wereu Swedish Social Democratic governments took ofwoll conscious steps to bring all adult women into compa the workforce and to make 'the two- 1984,.' breadwinner family the norm' (Hirdman betwee 1989, my emphasis). As a result, the basis for 'house' women's social entitlements was transformed having GENDER AND WELFARE REGIMES 169 breadwinner model towards treating women as well as men as citizen workers, and then grafting on women's claims as mothers through parental leave schemes and the like. This dual-breadwinner model which makes social entitlements for all adults dependent on their labour market status would seem to offer more in terms of benefit levels (paid at market rates) and the level of social service provision, particularly in respect of childcare, than strong family-breadwinner models. It is easier to combine paid and unpaid work in Sweden, but this is not to say that it is easier for women to 'choose' to engage in paid work. Women have been 'forced' into the labour market, but they have retained their re~ponsibility for the unpaid work of caring; men's behaviour has not been changed. In terms of their labour market position, Swedish women are better off in the sense of finding themselves in less precarious employment than British women, for example. But it has been argued that the reorganization of women's labour together with policies such as parental leaves, which are taken by women rather than by men, have served to reinforce the sexual segregation of.t to care for children. The 1974 legislation gave paid labour, which is among the worst in the western world (Jonung 1984). In this sense, the Swedish model has less to offer than that of strong male-breadwinner states and considerablx less to offer than France, which provides almost as much for the working mother (parental leave is unpaid, but child care provision is better) and has also taken equal opportunities legislation further than either Sweden or the strong male-breadwinner ~ountries. The various ways in which modern welfare states have treated women as unpaid carers and as paid workers have thus been complicated and no one policy logic can be said to have the undisputed advantage. The outcomes for lone mother families provide a useful summary illustration of this point. Women with children and without men have Sweden may be seen as historically posed a particularly difficult problem for governments. In Britain, policies Journal of European Social Policy 19922 (3) JANE LEWIS way towards solving the first issue (because Leagw women get compensated at market rates for the lat caring work), but not to have touched the imporl second. France has also provided women with dayw: substantial, albeit indirect, rewards for thattr mothering as a by-product of the priority it partici' has accorded family policy, and arguably trade l women have greater choice than in Sweden as well h, to whether to work at home or in the labour paid" market. other I Many English speaking feminists have SUppOl remained at best ambivalent as to their moder expectations as to what state policy can female deliver. While recognizing that the outcomes parliar of social policies have changed familial and have n other structures in society such that male wornel power has been challenged, they have argued led to that the state has also served to perpetuate the rol patriarchal structures (Pateman 1988; Siim percen 1987). On the other hand, Scandinavian 1991, feminists have insisted on the possibility of a wornel 'woman friendly' state (Hernes 1987). eight.) Kolberg (1991: 144) has gone one step other ( further and dismissed any idea that the France Scandinavian welfare state might be labour patriarchal, insisting that it has increased Politic: women's 'independence, empowerment and so mll( emancipation'. for pU1 Yet it is noteworthy that in both France womel and Sweden women·played little part in of unp securing such advantages as accrued to them from the respective welfare regimes. In pre- war Franee feminists were forced to couch Note! their claims in pronatalist terms. Pedersen (1991) suggests that paradoxically it was in I am large part the strength of British feminism the ( compared to the French in putting forward a 2 The and claim to family allowances as a means of both 3 The paying women as mothers (as well as piece providing for children) and securing equal pay Gert for women at work (by abolishing the grounds for men's claim to a family wage) that resulted in such a weak measure. In Refer France, family allowances were never conceptualized as a gender i~sue and the Ashford matter of redistribution ,between men and Pragr. women was never articulated. State, Baker,] In Sweden, the Social Democratic Women's 1992 2 (3) 171 measure, in M. Hardey and G. Crow (eds) Lone Parenthood, Brighton, Harvester Wheatsheaf. Balbo, L. (1987) Family, women and the state: notes toward a typology of family roles and public intervention, in C. S. Maier (ed.) 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(1979) Family benefits and income redistribution in France and the UK, 1891-1971, size of the unpublished PhD thesis, York, York University. Deacon, A. (1976) In Search of the Scrounger. The Administration of Unemployment Insurance in Britain, 1920-1931, Occasional papers in Social Administration, No. 60, London, London School of Economics. Dex, S. and Walters, P. (1989) Women's occupational status in Britain, France and the USA: explaining the difference, Industrial Relations Journal, 20 (3): 203- 12. Ekerr, O. (1983) Activite Feminine, Prestations Familiales et Redistribution, Population 38 (3): 503-26. Esping Andersen, G. (1990) The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism Cambridge, Polity. Gordon, L. (ed.) (1990) Women, The State and Welfare, Madison, Wisconsin, University of Wisconsin Press. Gustafsson, S. and Stafford, F. (1988) Daycare Subsidies and Labour Supply in Sweden, Centre for Economic Policy Research Discussion Papers, No. 279, London. Hantrais, L. 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(1987) The Scandinavian welfare states- la Politique Familiale towards sexual equality or a new kind of male domination?, Acta Soci%gica 30 (3/4): 255-70. Sokoloff, N. (1980) Between Money and Love. The Dialectics of Women's Home and Market Work, New York, Praeger. Taylor Gooby, P. (1991) Welfare state regimes and welfare citizenship, Journal of European Social Policy 1(2),93-105. Thibault, M.-N. (1986) Politiques Familiales, Politiques D'Empioi, Nouvelles Questions Feministes 14-15, Winter: 147-61. Thmuss, R. M. (1963) The Social Division of Welfare, in R. M. Titmuss, Essays on the Welfare State, London, Allen and Unwin. Wilson, E. (1977) Women and the Welfare State, London, T avistock. and A. Chapman Journal of European Social Policy 1992 2 (3)

Gender and Welfare Regimes: A Comparative Analysis

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