Documents Social Politics 9 results

"This paper examines how motherhood is associated with occupational segregation, paying careful attention to how motherhood affects labor force withdrawal in ways that may obscure its relevance for occupational segregation. Using data on eleven countries from the Luxembourg Income Study (2000–2007), we find that mothers are more likely than childless women to be out of the labor force and both over- and under-represented in certain occupations. Variation in mothers' occupational segregation across countries is consistent with expectations derived from theoretical arguments about how states reconcile, or fail to reconcile, women's employment and motherhood. "

"Work/family reconciliation policies have increasingly become part of employment-led social policy at both EU and Member State levels. Given this trend, we expected to see more attention to policies that unequivocally promote women's employment: childcare provision and the promotion of flexible working, together with reform of leaves that permit labour market exit in order to care for children. Our examination of the nature of change in policy goals and instruments finds that developments have not been this straightforward, and that they can be related to existing (and differing) patterns of labour market behaviour and attitudes towards parental involvement in work and care."

"Analyses regularly feature claims that European welfare states are in the process of creating an adult worker model. The theoretical and empirical basis of this argument is examined here by looking first at the conceptual foundations of the adult worker model formulation and then at the extent to which social policy reform in western Europe fits with the argument. It is suggested that the adult worker formulation is under-specified. A framework incorporating four dimensions -the treatment of individuals vis-à-vis their family role and status for the purposes of social rights, the treatment of care, the treatment of the family as a social institution, and the extent to which gender inequality is problematized—is developed and then applied. The empirical analysis reveals a strong move towards individualization as social policy promotes and valorizes individual agency and self-sufficiency and shifts some childcare from the family. Yet evidence is also found of continued (albeit changed) familism. Rather than an unequivocal move to an individualized worker model then, a dual earner, gender-specialized, family arrangement is being promoted. The latter is the middle way between the old dependencies and the new “independence.” This makes for complexity and even ambiguity in policy, a manifestation of which is that reform within countries involves concurrent moves in several directions."

"“Post-neoliberalism” or “after neoliberalism”' is a term that is associated with forms of governance that emerged in the mid-late 1990s with the Third Way and social investment states in the UK, Canada, and Aotearoa/New Zealand. The post-neoliberal state combines features of both neoliberal and social-democratic welfare policies; significantly, it has introduced changes in areas conventionally noted by feminist scholars as having bearing on the lives of women, such as, in public-funded childcare, and women-centered approaches to governance. The core question posed in this paper is: is the post-neoliberal state also a feminist one? Based on a critical review of recent literature, the analysis focuses on the gender implications of post-neoliberal policies in four domains of society and polity: production–reproduction, the public–private, political participation, and the machinery of the state. The paper argues that whilst gains made by some women in these domains are noteworthy, the more fundamental ramifications of the post-neoliberal state are in the changing landscape of gender relations in these countries."

"After decades of promoting work–family reconciliation with the aim of advancing gender equality, European Union (EU) discourses around work and family have been reframed. This article distinguishes three currently paramount discourses: The social investment approach, the transitional labor market model, and the individual life-course model. Respectively, they propose investing in, facilitating, and individualizing the new social risks, including the resolution of tensions in the relationship between work and family life. Each has particular assumptions about risk-sharing, public and private responsibility, and the position of the individual vis-à-vis the state and the community. These paradigms have been analyzed in relation to EU policies on the reconciliation of work and family life. We find some traces of these paradigms in the Lisbon agreements, its amendments, and in the National Action Plans that are regularly submitted by the member-states. We conclude that the gender-equality agenda has been subordinated to the focus on creating competitive knowledge-based economies in the EU. Social investment is the most prominent of the three paradigms in this new agenda, yet because it is mixed up with elements from the other paradigms, current policy agendas lack coherence."

"The social investment perspective is replacing standard neoliberalism in Latin America as well as Europe. With it come ideas about social citizenship that reconfigure the citizenship regimes of the three regions. The responsibility mix is equilibrated to give a greater role for the state, although as investor rather than spender; access to citizenship rights shifts to incorporate the excluded and marginalized; and governance practices alter to emphasize decentralization to the local and the community. The main idea of the social investment perspective is that the future must be assured by investing in children and ending the intergenerational transmission of disadvantage. With this set of child-centered policy ideas, the equality claims of adult women and attention to their needs are sidelined in favor of those of children, including girls."

"During the 1960s–1990s, a gradual yet definite shift in the organization of gender politics in the European Union (EU) and member states has become apparent. This shift began with the implementation of the early gender directives of the 1970s and has since evolved to include a partial "rescaling" of policy-making from national to transnational spaces and a gradual redefinition of gender regimes and policies at the national level. As a result, gender policy cannot be viewed as either predominantly transnational or national but arises through interaction of multiple and coexisting policy spaces. In this article, I use a multiscalar analysis to highlight this complex interaction. I draw on (West) Germany as a specific case study to offer a historical analysis of the implementation of the early European gender directives and the manner in which these developments have contributed to the redirection of the German gender regime and the emergence of a new "hybrid regime."

"A growing body of research has highlighted the disproportionately negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on women globally. This article contributes to this work by interrogating the lived realities of sixty-four women in the United Kingdom through semi-structured in-depth interviews, undertaken during the first and second periods of lockdown associated with COVID-19 in 2020. Categorizing the data by subgroup of women and then by theme, this article explores the normative and policy-imposed constraints experienced by women in 2020 with regard to paid and unpaid labor, mental health, access to healthcare services, and government representation and consideration of women. These findings highlight women's varied and gendered experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic and emphasizes the role that government can proactively play in attending to gender inequalities throughout its COVID-19 response."

"The European Union is facing a crisis of care due to demographic shifts, policies aimed at driving up women's employment while cutting state care expenditures, and marketizing public care provisions. This article combines feminist political economy approaches to reproductive labor as an essential part of the economy with theories of care ethics to explore the European Union's role in deepening this crisis. It concludes that the European Union fails to recognize the importance of care or address it holistically and is more preoccupied with the potential impact on public finances than finding a solution to the care crisis."