How welfare states care : Culture, gender and citizenship in Europe

Abstract

Women's employment patterns changed drastically the last decades. But they are still different across Europe. Welfare state scholars often presume that diversity and change in women's employment across Europe is based on financial (dis) incentive structures embedded in welfare states (Esping-Andersen 1990, 1999, 2002; Sainsbury 1996, 1990; O'Connor et al. 1999; Lewis 1992, 1997). In other words: if childcare is available and affordable. Most mothers will work. If tax and benefit schemes have no financial employment obstructions, most mothers will work. This book shows, by in depth analyses of women's (and men's) employment and care patterns as well as child care services, taxation, leave schemes and social security in four different welfare states (the UK, the Netherlands, Denmark and Belgium) that this logic does not hold. It is based too much on the misunderstanding that women's decision making is exclusively based on economic self-interest. But a mother is not primarily the homo economicus welfare state scholars tend to presume. 'to work or to care 'is above all a moral predicament. A more suitable understanding is to study what march and Olsen (1989) call 'the logic of appropriateness'. This is also very different point of departure of human behaviour than the 'preference person' which is also used the explain differences in Europe (Hakim 2000, 2003). What explains better the differences in Europe is the cultural analysis of welfare states. In the case of caring and paid employment, welfare states send culturally-defined moral images of good-enough caring in the form of ideals of care. An ideal of care implies a definition of what is good care and who gives it. These ideals of care are embedded in welfare states and their regulations, laws and implementation processes. Each welfare state promotes specific ideals of care. Cultural explanations (such as Hakim 2000, 2003 and Pfau-Effinger 1998) downplay the role of the state too much. Culture, as is shown, is located within rather than outside the welfare state. Studying ideals of care not only gives insight into the outcomes of policy, but also into the origins of care policy. Ideals of care are not so much linked to the dominant ideologies that are said to explain the development of welfare states (such as Liberalism, Christian Democracy and Social Democracy) but to what the women's movement (in the broadest sense of the word) proposed, in alliance with more powerful actors, such as a political party in government, professional organisations or women in trade unions. Five ideals of care are distinguished: full-time motherhood, surrogate motherhood, parental sharing, intergenerational care and professionals care. Each of these ideals has consequences for women's employment patterns and differences between women. In Belgium, for instance, mothers' employment levels have historically been relatively high. The last decades they hardy increased. Many mothers even turn to part-time employment. The study of ideals of care shows that in this country surrogate motherhood is promoted by the welfare state. This ideal means that children are cared for well by someone who closely resembles the real mother, such as a childminder. Even though this gave mothers the moral comfort to enter the labour market, this ideal perpetuates the notion that mothers' care is still best. Childminders are just surrogate. In Denmark, in contrast, the ideal of professional care is dominant: children are cared for best by well-educated professionals, which is even better than when they stay at home with their mother. This ideal of care turns out to be the best guilt-reduction strategy: Denmark has the highest level of women working and nearly all of them work full-time. This book tries to show, by studying care policy in welfare states, that social policy has an impact on women's and men's division of labour and care. But especially when welfare states are not seen as a financial structures only, but as cultural catalysts.

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