When the debate on gender equality arises, we tend to think about the inequalities that concern a great number of women in countries where religion is closely related to the state or the Law or countries where cultural, historical or economic factors are the main reasons why women don’t have any civil or political rights. We often forget that in our Western countries, many women experience gender inequalities on a daily basis because, even if they might enjoy the right to vote or to express their political believes on Twitter, their social rights are not met. Let’s take as an example the United States. In an article released in 2014 by the Times Magazine, “11 Surprising Facts About Women and Poverty From the Shriver Report” are presented. In this article, we learn that “Nearly two-thirds of minimum wage workers are women, and these workers often get zero paid sick days’’, that ‘’the average woman is paid 77 cents for every dollar a man makes, and that figure is much lower for black and Latina women’’ and that ’’1 in 3 American women, 42 million women, plus 28 million children, either live in poverty or are right on the brink of it’’. What is surprising about these facts is not that the data comes from one of the richest country in the world, or that this is still happening in the 21st century, the surprising thing is the elevated number of women in poverty, specially when we take into account the amount the USA government spent on Social Security in 2013, 813,551 million dollars.
So how is this possible? The answer to this question might be more complicated than the explanation that I could offer here, but the task is not impossible. The welfare offered by the State might be one of the reasons why many women still live in poverty and can’t enjoy some basic social rights. Yes, the same tool that can improve individual’s social conditions could also contribute to perpetuate a social, cultural and economic marginalization.
The critics on welfare are as numerous as the different types of feminist approaches, but what is generally highlighted is how some social policies continue to perpetuate an image of women in which she is primarily depicted as the caregiver of the family. A woman will be first seen by her role within the family, and then by the role she has in society. Women are perceived as mothers and wives, before being perceived as workers or individuals with specific needs.
Social policies also fail to recognize the unpaid work that women must carry because of their ‘natural role’ or their ‘maternal duty’. They are expected to take care of children and the elderly when they are sick, even when their leave is justified, but certainly not paid, as we saw. This allocation of ‘extra work’ is a clear division of labour between sexes that occurs in the private sphere, but that is also present on the public sphere, when women occupy low-wage service jobs, when they are not paid as men for the same work or when they are not considered capable of doing certain tasks associated with male characteristics, such as being CEOs of big companies or responsible of important ministers such as the Minister of Social Security, Education, or Economy.
In Québec, for example, those ministers constitute 80% of the government’s expenditure and are managed by men, compared to 9% of the expenditure budget administered by women.
So the exclusion of women in welfare policy making and the administration of it are another reason why these social policies are inefficient to improve gender equality.
However, it is important to recognize that historically the welfare State contributed positively to increase women’s independence through the access to a health system, children care and economic allocations, allowing women to join the workforce and to be less dependent on their husband’s wages and will. But the welfare policies failed to make care work attractive to men[1], they failed to change women’s representation in society and in the work market, and they certainly failed to promote gender equality.
Nevertheless, as I said earlier, welfare is only one of the many reasons why women still lack of social rights in our Western countries. Another important factor that complements the role of welfare and that might hide a possible solution for the inequality problem is the cultural dimension, or how we perceive gender, women and femininity in our daily lives.
It is now clearer that ever that women suffer from an economic injustice, but the cultural injustices that concern women are less obvious because this form of discrimination is normalized through the media, sexist jokes, our daily interactions and in a deeper level our socialization. Women’s characteristics are depreciated in economic or financial fields, for example and are often used as insults between men and women. [2]
This cultural marginalization contributes to construct the image of women we encounter in the making of welfare policies.
So what is the solution?
Again, there is not a simple answer. As proposed by Nancy Fraser in her work about social justice, we need politics of recognition and redistribution to improve the case of gender inequality. Women need to be recognized as individuals with special characteristics and needs. The gendered division of labour must also be eliminated to ensure equality of opportunities and chances between women and men. [3]
Can this utopian transformation be implemented?
It can’t, we cannot have the best of both worlds immediately, and that’s the ‘Wollstonecraft’s Dilemma’ (difference versus equality) [4] that many feminists face when proposing a solution. We cannot achieve a complete transformation of the society, but we can do some actions that would have an impact.
Working towards gender equality implies, among other things, collective political action; making the cause visible for the society and politicians, ask for changes and a greater representation of women in power, through the implementation gender quotas, for example.
We need more women as heads of ministers, as CEOs, and politicians, we need them to participate in the making of welfare policies. Even if the gender mainstreaming approach is largely criticized because it doesn’t attack the problem at its roots, it allows a greater representation of women and when we increase their visibility, we give them a voice and the power to make substantial changes. We give them the opportunity to transform the welfare state, to make of it a useful tool for women to improve their social condition and acquire the social rights they claim.
[1] Mala Htun (2005). What It Means to Study Gender and the State. Politics & Gender, , pp 157-166.
[2] Fraser, Nancy (1995) ‘From Redistribution to Recognition? Dilemmas of Justice in a “Post-Socialist” Age’, New Left Review pp. 68–93
[3] Ibid.
[4] Carole, Pateman (1987) ‘The Patriarchal welfare state’, The welfare state reader, pp. 1-50
Social Policy UPF 
I completely agree that there needs to be more discussion about the status of women in “developed” countries; the West seems to have become complacent in the belief that equality has apparently been realized. It is interesting to see how this ongoing marginalization of women mirrors the gender discrimination implicit in policies that are being implemented in developing countries. Considering that the Western industrial states are the driving force behind the dominant development paradigm, many of their biases against women have been carried over to supposedly welfare-enhancing programs in developing countries.
One of the programs that is growing in popularity in the development field are Conditional Cash Transfers. In these programs, funds are directly transferred to families provided they meet certain goals, like sending their children to school or taking them to a health clinic. Many of the programs require that the funds be transferred to women in the household, as it is perceived that they will use the funds more “responsibly” to be invested in their household’ wellbeing. Although this article from the World Bank found that this gender bias had many positive effects, like helping women get more access to health care or increasing their sense of empowerment, it was also a large time burden on many over-worked women (see article here: https://www.rbfhealth.org/sites/rbf/files/cct%20and%20women.pdf). Conditional Cash Transfer programs demonstrate the entrenched assumption that women are more suited to care work, whether in developed or developing countries.
I completely agree with you. The only way to regender the state and other institutions is by increasing representation and reaching a tipping point. Kenney claims that “political institutions produce, reproduce, and subvert gender” and therefore we have to change the make up of said institutions. Indeed even in Britain informal institutions consistently discriminate against women. The tradition of late night meetings, the full time nature of the job and lack of childcare facilities mean that mothers are almost unable to enter Parliament. It is important we make sure that women feel comfortable to be themselves when in government. There is lots of evidence that women have to masculinize themselves in order to fit in and this doesn’t help to solve the problems of gender equality- it perpetuates them. However, I’m worried that the shift from welfare to workfare in Western Europe could act as a barrier to gender equality. The focus on work at all costs diminishes the importance of stay-at home mothers and keeps childcare de-incentivised for fathers. This is a big problem and cannot just be overcome by more women in politics, we need an ideological shift to achieve gender equality in terms of welfare and beyond.
Welfare states generate policies to improve the social welfare of its citizens while intended to increase equality between individuals. But like any other system, welfare states are not perfect and make mistakes that can be seen in society. As the author of the post says, it’s true that sometimes social policies generated by the states, are not efficient. Instead of improving the equality of opportunities they perpetuate an unequal system. One case is gender inequality resulting from public policies. But I think we have to search for more guilty people.
Gender roles established by society, stereotypes created the result of a socialization process, also perpetuate gender inequalities. For this reason we should change the mentality and start a path to create gender equality.
I think men should be aware that we need to change the mentality. They also must be responsible for housework and childcare, roles currently associated with women. This change of mentality should not occur for solidarity towards women as Connell says, they should do this for themselves, to get rid of a toxic masculinity that does not produce anything good for them.
So it’s not only fault of the states that don’t promote enough gender quotas or promote the rise of women into work, it’s also fault of the mentality of the society, specially of the mans, that need to be changed.
It is alarming that in the contemporary US society there are still so many people on the verge of poverty and even worse. As this article talks about women, it is even worse that some people still doubt gender (in)equality and make fun of feminists movements. (As the article states, more women than men are in poverty, also due to the 77 cents-per-dollar ratio, and even more black and Latina women). Welfare offers a way out, but the key word here is MARGINALIZATION. If we keep separating women, blacks and latinas (actually true for both genders), inequalities will continue to exist. If we keep treating a certain group of people differently based on very unimportant external feature (skin color, nationality), they will eventually start feeling as they indeed are something different (in the negative way) and less worth.
In this way I feel that welfare should be a helping hand, not a tool to distinguish the unworthy “poor” from the rest of the society. It should not brand people shameful if they are restricted to food stamps, neither should it make them undeserving (because in some cases, they really have no other chance. If states were truly welfare states, people with these needs wouldn’t even exist). Welfare should offer a way out without the adverse connotation of people sucking money from the state; neither should it push the people dependent on it farther and farther from the goal of being independent from it.
Furthermore, by marginalizing these “different people”, meaning women, by not allowing them to be a part of the “normal society”, no matter what they achieve in their respective lives they will never be let in. Social stigma concerning poverty and any (however irrelevant) differences is extremely strong and the good, hard-working middle blue collar class, in most cases, wouldn’t be caught dead being with the other, lower people. It is incredibly ridiculous how for some people one human life is worth more than another human life.
I agree with the points the writer has included in this blog post concerning the reasons of why women experience inequality and even discrimination in Western societies. I also agree with her statement, that a conclusion for this is in no way unambiguous. For women to be equal with men there is a lot of gender mainstreaming to be done and also a lot of reconstruction of various concepts to be put into action.
In addition to writer´s solutions I would like to discuss a bit about the solutions for this matter. First of all, I think that it is extremely important to include women in the political sphere, to give them power to decide about matters that concern them, such as family policies, health policies, housing policies, employment policies, etc. To do this, I stress the importance of national and international pressure to be put on governments and parties to raise women’s representation.
Moreover, I would like to address a couple of factors which are a drag for women trying to get into politics (some were also noted by the writer of this text) and which need to be corrected. Firstly there are factors such as culture, education, time-use and gender roles. In some cultures women are not seen in the political sphere or at least they are an unusual sight on that field. Governments should promote women politicians and also use quotas to achieve higher participation of women in decision-making bodies of government. Second factor is education: women should be encouraged to educate themselves and to break free from the housewife/caregiver-model. Time-use-wise women are victims of gender roles and they are expected (somewhere more than other places) to use their time on children and taking care of the family´s elderly and also the home. Through political decisions that promote universal breadwinner –model or caregiver parity –model (Fraser, 2012) governments can promote gender equality.
In addition to these few, there are many existing reasons for why women experience inequality and in my opinion one of the best ways to correct it is by the means of political decisions to which women have had their saying to. But to do this, governments first need to make political sphere more accessible to women.
You had good and justified option how to promote equality. We indeed need more women as ministers who would participate in the making of welfare policies. This would be the first step to alleviate the current situation. The voters can’t hide glass ceiling so women have potential to be powerful on government level. I think also that other human groups and minorities share the same inequalities that can be found from gender inequal welfare legislation. We are heading away from tradition breadwinner culture and the job markets are changing fast. This will also change how people do unpaid and paid job, it will change traditional gender roles and it will change attitudes on people who stay at home. Confrontation of men and women and blaming is not the answer. Achieving equality will mean co-operation from both genders.
New kind of family models in sexual minority groups also demands focus when deciding new welfare models and benefits. This type of individuality in policies will be vital in equal future. At the time when part-time jobs, divorces, downshifting, unemployment and same sex marriages are increasing, the welfare state should also be reformed because to be a citizen within patriarchal standards will be more and more impossible. Welfare state and other state policies should reflect state’s own citizens.
Self-respect and respect as a citizen are achieved in the public world by participation to the capitalist market and active women are the fastest contributor of these change. To achieve gender equality day care services, education options and women’s jobs in powerful positions should be increased. I think wage issues will be solved after women participate more at CEO and government level. Employment market is changing at the same time with changing societies. These societies include also huge variety of people who could have never fit to current patriarchal system. In modern European society, women don’t have to be mothers and other traditional roles are changing. Why should the society on government level still reflect this traditional time when the people are not? “Natural role’ and ‘maternal duty’ of women will be disappear if mechanisms, presented by you, will be taken under future government policies.
Gender equality is and will be an essential tool for further developing our cultural as well as economic values. I strongly agree with the argument made that cultural injustices that take place regularly are far less well perceived in the public than economic injustices are. Gender, a socially constructed term, implying all different connotations, has a very different meaning from sex for example. Many languages only have one word for both expressions whereas in English, a difference is made. While sex mainly refers to your physical appearance, gender has a much more cultural reference. Gender refers to your role within society one of which might be caregiver and mother. Women´s role within society has been presupposed in a certain way, which can be felt every day. Women have to make far more concessions when it comes to job aspirations or career developments than men thereby having to restrict their opportunities. Further, they are subject to public assault and discrimination.
Quotas have been mentioned as one possible solution to the prevalent gender inequality. However, I don´t believe that they will prove a sufficient instrument to achieve full gender recognition. In economics, you learn that quotas distort people´s behaviour and might create wrong incentives. In the case of gender inequality I think that quotas are not helpful if the underlying structures of the system are not valid. If for example many firms still hold their meetings late at nights or do not allow their worker to work from home or part-time, it will be difficult for women to fully participate in the labour market even if quotas allow them to do so. It is important to point out that women do want to care for their families deliberately and work at the same time, which is what has to be made easier. I think that as soon as the structures underlying not only the public but also the private realm are changed towards more gender equality, there will be no need for quotas anymore since women will be able to attain jobs much more freely and with their personal efforts.
I could not agree more with the arguments exposed by the writer when it comes to the de current situation of women in Western societies. Undeniably, there is still a very long path to follow in order tk achieve complete gender equality. While the welfare state plays an important role in this regard in certain States such as the Northern European ones, much work still needs to be done in a global scale.
It was indeed very appropiate to mention the need of women in what could be called privileged social positions such as CEOs or high politics. However, this seems rather hard to achieve if governments do not focus on what can arguably be the begining of the ultimate solution to gender equality; education. But not only superior and technical education, alsoand maybe more importantly, primary education.
If the welfare state served as a tool to acknowlege how in spite of men and women being equal by law there are still inequalities in practice, such inequalities would be easier to overcome. Focusing on a primary school education that was more gender aware and that provided children the tools to understand how unfairness against women still existis, not only would be positive for these children and future generations, but also for their parents. At the same time, it would show that governments have a true will to end gender inequality once and for all.
Nevertheless, it seems unlikely that any government would persue a gender equality policy in primary schools by itself, unless another actor pushed it to the agenda.