WUNRN
UNRISD - UN Research Institute for
Social Development
WORK & WELFARE - REVISITING THE
LINKAGES FROM A GENDER PERSPECTIVE
Authors:
Sarah
Cook, Shahra
Razavi
Code: UNRISD Research Paper 7 - 2012
Project Title: Labour
Markets and Social Policy: Gendered Connections
No. of Pages: 40
A
number of key assumptions underpin most approaches to the reduction of poverty
and inequality (particularly in relation to the developing world): first is the
idea that market-led growth is sufficient to create employment and thus raise
the incomes of families and individuals, pulling them out of poverty; second,
that welfare policies (now widely termed social protection) are able to protect
those in need of (short-term) assistance due to contingencies that reduce
income and consumption below a basic level; and third, that the reduction of
inequalities will follow from growth and poverty reduction.
A
central flaw in these arguments over the translation of patterns of growth into
welfare outcomes concerns their assumptions about the nature of labour markets
and employment. Several premises can be questioned: (i) around the nature of
work (whether paid or unpaid), and the structure and functioning of labour
markets; (ii) the relationship between paid and unpaid work, and between the
productive and reproductive economies; and (iii) the links between work and
welfare, in particular, whether welfare entitlements are linked to or separate
from employment.
A particular set of insights into these relationships comes when analysed
through the lens of gender, which is the perspective adopted in this paper. The
different roles of men and women in paid/unpaid work provide an obvious entry
point for re-examining arguments about the relationship between work and
welfare. Given a gendered division of labour and the gendered nature of institutional
arrangements that differentially structure the access of men and women to
different opportunities and resources (including employment) in any particular
context, labour market outcomes are likely to vary between men and women. Under
these circumstances, different labour markets and/or social policies are likely
to generate different outcomes for men and women, with implications for welfare
outcomes.
Assuming or encouraging women’s entry into paid work as a basis for welfare
improvements and entitlements has implications for: (i) the functioning of
labour markets themselves as the supply of labour shifts relative to demand;
(ii) the relationship between the reproductive and productive economies (when
the former rely heavily on women’s unpaid labour); and (iii) access to welfare,
with the risk that employment-based hierarchies and exclusions become
replicated and accentuated in social policy. Alternatively, delinking welfare
from work creates its own challenges. At a macro level, a particular concern is
how to finance welfare programmes if not through high levels of employment; at
a micro level, if unpaid work is not valued as “proper” work with adequate
compensation and strong entitlements, those undertaking such work (currently
predominantly women) are at risk of depending on poorly funded and marginalized
components of the welfare system.
This paper examines the relationship between employment and social policy
specifically from a gender perspective. It first lays out, in section 1, the
conceptual ground, drawing on a range of heterodox economic and feminist
analyses to suggest alternative ways of understanding institutions and labour
markets as gendered structures. Indeed, the empirical evidence reviewed in
section 2, in terms of the persistence of gender hierarchies within both paid
(in terms of earnings/wages) and unpaid work (in terms of time), despite
significant “masculinization” of women’s working lives (that is, their
increasing participation in the labour force), does not fit comfortably within
the predictions of standard labour market models. Gendered stratifications are
also evident within the welfare system, where entitlements are linked to paid
employment (social insurance) and ability to pay provide stronger claims to
welfare, compared to needs-based (social assistance) entitlements delinked from
employment.
Given the gendered structures and processes that limit women’s formal
employment opportunities and weaken their labour force attachment, and in turn
compromise their access to social security and protection, section 3 goes on to
explore relationships and interactions between work, employment and social
policies. The concluding section draws out some of the policy implications from
the preceding analysis for more gender-egalitarian policy agendas. It also
connects the gendered analysis of welfare and work back to arguments about the
difficulties of fully delinking rights to social protection from employment.
From a gender perspective, the critical challenge is to rethink labour markets/work
to bring unpaid work, and particularly the reproductive sector, within the
frameworks of analysis of the economy and markets, while also addressing the
inequalities inherent in welfare systems that privilege market- and
labour-based “contributory” entitlements over “needs-based” claims to social
assistance.
Sarah Cook is the director of UNRISD. Shahra Razavi is research coordinator at
UNRISD, working on gender.