GV4D4 - week 9

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These are my notes from November 21 for GV4D4 at the London School of Economics for the 2017-2018 school year. I took this module as part of the one-year Inequalities and Social Science MSc program.

The usual disclaimer: all notes are my personal impressions and do not necessarily reflect the view of the lecturer.

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Gender and Generational Inequalities

Readings

The Religious Foundations of Work-Family Policies in Western Europe by Kimberly Morgan

An essay from Religion, Class Coalitions, and Welfare States (PDF), published in 2010.

• different approaches to encouraging natural pop growth in different European countries
  • Germany: held back by ideas that women should stay at home to take care of young children
  • Netherlands: similar, pushing the idea of part-time work so women can still take care of children
  • Nordic, France, Belgium: more pro-female participation (various state policies to encourage this)
• tracing these modern-day policies back to religious roots
• random thought I had while reading this: how much gender-equality-in-the-workplace sentiment is driven by financial pressures among households as a result of the shift in the capital-labour power struggle (especially post-70s), which necessitated the full proletarianization of households, as opposed to a real push for gender equality?
  • (note to self: Immanuel Wallerstein talks about this in Historical Capitalism though he’s addressing a slightly different point I think. Figure out how to reconcile the two)
• one theory behind female-friendly policies: driven by socdem parties (lots of caveats to this theory though)
• good quote about the link between religious conflict & contemporary religious political parties:
  • “The Reformation, the French Revolution, and the creation and expansion of the nation-state all challenged the hegemony of the Catholic Church and generated sectarian divisions in many countries. The resulting conflicts, and their resolution, shaped the structure of European party systems. Where religious conflicts were intense, parties of religious defense generally formed, whereas the absence of these divisions impeded the creation of such parties” (p64)
• summary:
  • in the Nordic countries, the level of gender equality (re benefits, work-family policies) comes down to secularism
    • due to early church/state merging but the strong state overshadowed religion
  • in France/Belgium, religion was more important and enduring, but there was also a strong anticlerical factor (the Catholic Church was challenged) thus the result was similar: work-family policies tended to be pragmatic rather than moralising

I also accidentally came across this review of her 2006 book Working Mothers and the Welfare State, from which I took the following notes:

• in Sweden and France, strong national govt overshadowed the national religion
  • thus there was no religious counterbalance
  • so society slowly became more secularised over time
  • thus social policy was more egalitarian (re: women)
• in the US/Netherlands, social policy was influenced by the (Christian?) idea of subsidiarity: that social services should be provided at a more local level (family, charity, church) instead of the state

How we Grow Unequal by Patrick Emmenegger et al

An essay from Age of Dualization published in 2012.

• defines dualization as an alternative hypothesis to Streeck’s theory of liberalisation (as a response to a changing global economy)
  • instead of one uniform process that affects everyone equally, states instead responded by widening the gulf between insiders/outsiders
  • results in a vicious cycle as outsiders tend to have less political representation (sometimes explicitly disenfranchised, as in the case of immigrants or youth)
  • ongoing process that is exacerbated with time
  • bifurcation of job creation: new high-paying professional jobs simultaneously with low-paying service sector jobs (sometimes specifically to address gaps in the market created by those same professional jobs)
• the authors take care to emphasise that political choices matter when it comes to this process—it’s not just a natural economic inevitability

The Age of Welfare (PDF) by Julia Lynch

From 2004. Proposes that the age-orientation of a welfare state isn’t explained solely by the political demands of senior citizens; instead, we can see it as the unintended consequence of early structural decisions + voter competition.

• it’s the quality of democratic competition that is the biggest determinant, not ideological factors
• graph of elderly skew: Japan worst, then the US; Denmark, Sweden best
  • (I acknowledge that I have an extremely normative take on this issue)
  • UK/France/Canada somewhere in the middle
• when considering the concept of decommodification, we should ask: for whom?
• no easy correlation between the 3WWC model and elderly skew—LMEs run the gamut
• the power resources theory also fails to explain elderly skew, because coalitions tend to be cross-generational, at least historically
• though that may be changing soon given the age-based polarisation of recent elections, especially in the US & UK
• family structure more likely to an effect of elderly skew than acause of it
  • the focus on the family as caregiver, as opposed to the state (in line with the principle of subsidiarity) is likely a result of diminishing state provision, not something exogenous
  • that’s her theory anyway. idk if I fully agree with this—surely there’s some cultural/religious element as well
• the “gray power” hypothesis: large populations of elderly citizens have more political power
  • this doesn’t hold up comparatively, though: Sweden has the largest % of senior citizens and yet the most youth-oriented welfare state
  • this also doesn’t hold up over time: some countries became more youth-oriented between 1980-2000 despite their ageing pop
• there’s a spectrum of universalist -> occupationalist welfare states
  • Sweden/UK -> France/Denmark -> Italy/Japan
• programmatic competition: politicians claim to benefit all (or most) of society
• the alternative is patronage/clientelism/particularism, when one small group or industry is catered too
• she proposes some watershed moments in the history of welfare state development
  • the first has to do with the choice between citizenship-based (outsider-protecting) and occupational (insider-protecting)
  • the former led to more youth-oriented welfare state (whether it was universalistic or means-tested)
  • for the later, there was another watershed moment: the split between programmatic vs particularistic systems
    • programmatic -> age-neutral (mix between occupational and universalistic)
    • particularistic -> elderly-skewed (pure occupationalist)
  • examples of particularistic: US, Austria, Belgium, Greece, Italy, Japan, Spain
  • examples of programmatic: Nordic, Canada, Antipodes
  • not a perfect typology, though
    • Belgium is more youth-skewed but still occupational
    • the citizenship-based Anglo countries (basically all except the US) are closer to the middle (except Ireland, which is more youth)
• the reasons behind age orientation
  • a combination of generous public pensions back in the day + recent austerity measures / other public sector cuts -> fewer new hires, so more is spent %-wise on the old
  • a factor behind youth-orientation: private insurance markets for pensions so fewer elderly rely on the state
  • thus insider-protecting systems (where the old, who were once working “insiders”, now have state pensions) are more elderly-oriented today
  • these choices involve a large degree of path-dependency
    • in Italy, the occupationalist social programs are “stuck due to particularistic competition
    • in the US, it’s hard for any politician to propose signifcantly revamping social security since people have paid into it and thus expect to get “benefits” out of it
    • universal systems are quite sticky as well

Lecture

• inequality typically considers households to be units
  • today, looking at inequality within households, particularly gender
  • there’s also a generational divide potentially within households
• gendered assumptions in implementation of the welfare state
  • mostly result of women having different patterns in the labour market
    • being paid less for same job
    • taking up diff kinds of jobs (more part-time, low-wage)
    • more interruption of careers (due to children) which has implications for contribution-based pensions
    • traditionally saddled with childcare responsibilities which means they’re more likely to need externally-provided childcare to enter labour market in the first place
  • Bismarckian welfare state model typically assumes women will stay at home, so don’t provide much in the way of family benefits (childcare, familial leave)
    • so women more financially dependent on male partners
  • plus ofc women expected to take up more of the domestic work
• link between work/family policy, and pop growth:
  • higher female employment rate (somewhat weakly) correlated with higher birth rate
• chart showing public spending on familiy benefits as % of GDP
  • LMEs/Southern Europe at bottom
  • continental all around the middle (except Belgium, a little higher at #4)
  • Scandi all near top
  • surprisingly, France #1 (with a traditionally natalist policy), UK #2
• chart showing gender-based policies, showing parental leave (plus portion at full-rate equiv)
  • Scandi in the middle; continental on top; Southern Europe and UK near bottom
  • USA not present in the chart, though apparently the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 guarantees 12 weeks unpaid, but only applies to some companies (60% of private sector workers)
• another chart showing family-friendly workplace practices (varying the work day)
  • scandi on top, Southern europe bottom, UK in the middle; no other LMEs
  • recall that birth rates in Southern Europe are quite low
    • incidentally, the employment/birthrate trends don’t always hold up within nations; in Italy, birth rate higher in South, but female employment lower
• chart on childcare spending as % of GDP (which combines public/private sector presumably)
  • scandi conclusively on top, UK/US scattered (US very low down), continental near middle
  • this data misses some aspects, like the fact that in Italy/France/others there is state-provided pre-school starting at a young age
  • Germany is quite low down (lowest after Portugal), recent trend towards a more hostile env for women remaining in workforce after having children
• chart of full-time employment by gender 35-39 (from 2005)
  • male: pretty high across the board, not much variation
  • female:
    • Scandi all in top half, though not clustered
    • Portugal top for some reason
    • US high up there, also Greece and Canada
    • lowest: Netherlands, Germany, UK
  • could mask the fact that women move into part-time work after having children
  • there’s also variation resulting from variation in unemployment rates
• chart showing essentially the gender pay gap
  • Scandi on top (also Australia), then the other Anglo countries
  • lower half: continental, Southern
  • recall that if childcare isn’t provided, then low-wage childcare is needed, which only really works in countries with high inequality (i.e., LMEs)
  • mixes multiple factors: women wanting to (or needing to) work vs structural factors influencing gap pay?
• criticisms of 3WWC: doesn’t really go into work/family policy
  • also neglects gender for the most part
  • one variation suggests typology based on degree of “male breadwinner” regime
    • France, moderate: state compensates cost of children; primarily concerned with making it easier for households to have children
    • UK, strong: women depend on social benefits of husbands because they provided domestic care rather than salaried income
  • Esping-Anderson responded by incorporating these features, Liberal/Social democratic/Conservative
    • conservative solution assumes family will take care of services (small role of state)
    • whereas for socdem, it’s the state
    • for liberal, it’s ofc the market
• in socdem, female participation in workplace mostly in service roles, which didn’t threaten traditionally-male manufacturing jobs
• in conservative, women less welcome in workforce
  • employers wary of hiring women who may leave after having children (investment in training lost) or require flexible hours
  • (male) workers may be worried about depressed wages due to competition from women
• now on the generational gap
  • contemporary troubles with pension systems (basically ponzi schemes now)
  • demographic pressures due to ageing pop + declining native birth rates
  • older population becoming a “political risk” in his words
    • in the UK: older voters more likely to vote Leave, but also just more conservative voters in general
    • also age splits in Trump, Bernie votes
  • solutions to pension issues differ by type of welfare regime
    • liberal: small baseline public option but mostly private provision (which is threatened by recent low interest rates)
    • social democracies: pensions are public (universalistic, generous) but ofc this thrives only when employment & pop growth are high (thus a lot of attention is paid to youth as well, less elderly-skewed than others)
    • conservative: insider/outsider distinction (based on contributions), for continental + southern europe
  • when a welfare regime is skewed towards elderly, it exacerbates existing pressures on welfare system in the long run
    • vicious circle as the young are saddled with costs, harder for them to start families, and higher labour costs to pay benefits -> disincentivises job creation
  • ratio of public spending on elderly varies across OECD but doesn’t map onto 3WWC (but does re: post-tax inequality)
    • lowest elderly skew: low inequality
  • interesting age dimension to political power that’s neglected in Meltzer-Richard model
    • younger people less likely to vote
  • two main ways of determining approach to pensions
    • either contribution-based (the non-socdem countries, some of which only shifted recently)
    • or citizenship/minimum-age based (which ofc gets bumped up every year, as in the UK)
    • recall that pensions only really became a thing in 20th century—previously, people just didn’t live long enough for it to be a serious concern

Seminar

• the citizenship-based model was initially skewed towards the old (since they were initially outsiders) but became more youth-oriented later on compared to occupationalist model (as a result of demographic change)
• Beveridgean model: citizenship-based, means-tested welfare state
• on the diff between US/UK: UK spends more overall (and on family benefits) thus less elderly-skewed than the US
• critiques of Esping-Anderson:
  • concept of decommodification too broad; doesn’t go beyond the assumption of a male breadwinner
  • plus it’s not just about decommodification; after all, in the Nordic countries one of the goals is to get more women into the labour market
    • the difference is that it’s a matter of choice in this case and not individual economic necessity (though perhaps cultural necessity)
    • there’s a case to be made for high female participation in the workforce being a matter of collective economic necessity—perhaps it’s the only way to sustain their strong welfare state?
    • I kind of disagree out of principle (depends on, among other things, how much labour time is actually socially necessary) but maybe idk
  • segue into whether the labour market is a good route for achieving greater gender equality
    • I personally disagree for a bunch of reasons
    • this is falling into the trap of Lean In feminism—you don’t achieve true gender equality if it’s limited by other factors (class, race)
    • pushing more women to become CEOs is the liberal dream and thus the leftist nightmare because it obscures the fact that we shouldn’t have CEOs at all (but that’s a much more controversial topic which I’ll leave as an aside)
  • another segue on how the market was, for Smith et al, conceived as this emancipatory vehicle for liberation from the hierarchy of feudalism
    • funny cus now it’s ossified and became a way of transmitting existing inequalities
    • maybe all we can ever do is move from one hierarchy to another
• on family leave rights:
  • in general, they’ve been getting more progressive with time (by law in most places, but based on market pressures in e.g. the US)
• on dualisation
  • this isn’t always just due to choices made by politicians
  • sometimes, employers proactively make the distinction on their own, by trying to work around existing laws
    • the gig economy may be the ultimate example of this (distinction betewen full-time, overpaid employees vs “contractors”)
  • we can see dualisation as a factor in the rise of Corbyn (or even Trump/Brexit) as outsiders feel increasingly disenfranchised?

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