![]() | This article has an unclear citation style .(July 2017) |
Gender and Welfare State Regimes is an organizing concept that focuses a country's traditional social welfare policies in terms of how it influences employment and general social structure. [1] Gender in terms of the welfare state regime varies based on how a nation perceives and acts on the value of gender. Within gender and welfare state regimes there are three central perspectives. The first perspective is the liberal welfare state, which is utilized in the United Kingdom and Ireland. This regime believes in minimal government intervention and promotes privatization of the economy in order to create equality. The second perspective is the conservative welfare state that is utilized in Germany, France, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Italy. This regime revolves around traditional family values and believes the economy should be structured around status differentiating programs that are earnings related. The third perspective is the Social Democratic welfare state that is utilized in the Scandinavian countries. This regime is characterized by universalism and believes in full employment, income protection and a strongly interventionist state. [2]
The three welfare state regimes highlight employment opportunity, wage gaps, and health status as differentiating factors when it comes to gender. In terms of employment opportunity, it is impacted by the feminization of poverty. This is when woman represent a disproportionate share of the poor population compared to men. [3] Varying beliefs between the three regimes on gender roles in the labor market effects the level of poverty pertaining toward sex. Wage gaps are affected by the differing beliefs on decommodification between the three welfare state regimes. The theory of decommodification looks to decommodify labor in order to substitute for wages, creating disparity between the pay of low-income earners (a category over-represented by women). [4] Lastly, health status is seen to be influenced by the promotion of gender equality. Those regimes, which believe in equality for all, were seen to have better overall health, compared to those regimes that do not promote gender equality. [5]
The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism written by sociologist Gosta Esping-Anderson, is the iconic work which developed the original opinions of different welfare state regimes among developed countries. Each has differing views on government intervention, citizen social capital, class equality, and other social factors. The three most commonly noted welfare state regimes are:
The liberal welfare state is a governing regime that ensures that citizens are taken care of socially and economically. The liberal belief is to accomplish this with minimal government interference, allowing a free market economy to create equality. The liberal regime believes that the government monopolizes the market which only enhances class inequality and creates inefficiencies. Free markets, with little government interference, allows for competitive exchange which maintains equal opportunity for everyone to contribute to the economy and be successful. The government only provides the necessary support to alleviate poverty. [6]
The conservative welfare state, also known as the Christian welfare state, highlights a government regime with the least centralized system of governing. The conservative welfare state believes that decision-making should be directed by local levels rather than a centralized form of governing. The conservative regime is built on the foundation that there should be an authoritarian control which governs a hierarchy to control the market economy. This hierarchy creates different classes of people, which the conservative minded people believe creates stability. The conservative regime believes strong leadership and traditional gender and family roles are what allow a society to function smoothly. [7]
The social democratic welfare state believes that by being a citizen of the nation, it grants access to universal services and state run benefits. The social democratic welfare state gives people more power in governance. The social democratic welfare state believes that improving social capital will mobilize power by making them less dependent on the market and employers. In order to positively create this, social democratic states believe that everyone requires social, health, and education resources to be efficient in society. By providing this to every citizen, it eliminates poverty, unemployment, and wage dependency, and in hand, creates a political unity with all citizens. [8]
Juha Kaariainen and Hekki Lehtonen comprised a study that focused on the relationship between social capital development and the welfare state. Two forms of social capital were looked at which were society-centered and institution-centered regimes. Society-centered social capital flourishes in societies with good family, community, and civic engagement values. Institution-centered social capital was thought to be formed through strong political support and public administration. All of the regimes seemed in favor of social capital. The conservative regime was more positive with the society-centered theory because they believe in bonding social capital through family and community ties. Voluntary civic engagement was seen to be most prevalent within liberal and social democratic state regimes. Universal trust was stronger in northern Europe who are considered social democratic, followed by the liberal and conservative regimes. These liberal and social democratic regime characteristics are said to be related to bridging social capital. This means that these societies value equal opportunity and social inclusion. [9] This study helps to show that social capital is seen in all regimes. With that being said, how people are handled and what society values differs. That is why it is important to note that social capital has its strengths and weaknesses in all regimes.
One of the central topics which relates to gender and welfare state countries is the access which every individual has to good employment. In saying good employment, it is implied that a person has equal opportunity for quality part-time or full-time employment, with the same chance of advancing to desired positions. Each regime (liberal, conservative, and social democratic) has different views on the amount of social capital a person should possess. The liberal welfare state believes in laissez-faire attitude towards the market economy. As contemporary economist Adam Smith believed, the liberal welfare state ideologies would eliminate inequalities and privileges in regards to employment by having minimal government interference. The conservative welfare state views on job opportunity wanted government interference in order to create hierarchal powers and class differentiation. To conservatives, it was natural to have people with lower employment status than the select people who were developed to be leaders. This ideology to the conservatives improved efficiency. Lastly, social democratic welfare states go out of their way to make all citizens employed. The belief of having everyone employed is that equality would mobilize power and diminish the social issues which trouble a lot of governmental systems. [10]
In order to analyze how gender is impacted under these three regimes, a study conducted by Bartoll, Cortes, and Artazcoz was done to discover how working conditions, job satisfaction, health status, and psychological issues were impacted by different genders in part-time and full-time employment. The study used Esping-Anderson's welfare states to divide the data from different countries into the different regimes. The results yielded that there were generally more women who had part-time employment than males, and more males with full-time employment than females across most regimes. ‘The lowest prevalence of females with part time employment was in conservative welfare state regimes, while the highest was with liberal welfare state regimes’. [11] This makes sense due to the fact that women have little employment protection from the government in the liberal regime. In general, part-time employment was seen to be associated with poorer working conditions than people with full-time employment. Among the three welfare state regimes, the conservative welfare state countries did seem to be an outlier from the results. What was found in these associated countries was that there was a higher psychological demand for men, there were lower salaries and chance for promotion for both men and women (liberal and social democratic states had lower salaries and lower chance for promotion for women than men), women were more likely to have permanent contracts, men were more likely to be dissatisfied with their job, and the only differences with job satisfaction with the regimes were noticed with the conservative welfare state (men more satisfied than women). [12]
What this study shows was that women tend to make up a majority of the low-income employment across all the regimes. Although working conditions, job satisfaction, health status, and psychological issues vary with genders in each regime, the general trend is that females face a disadvantage when finding good employment.
This phenomenon of having a disproportionate number of females in the lower-income bracket of the job market is called the feminization of poverty. The rates of females in poverty has become higher due to the fact that they are disadvantaged when it comes to good employment compared to men. Women also struggle with economic difficulties resulting from the high rates of abandonment, divorce, and widowhood which has been increasing in recent decades. [13]
As was highlighted by Hadas Mandel and Michael Shalev in their theoretical analysis looking at how the welfare states shape the gender pay gap, the theories of decommodfication and defamilialization underline the key differences. ‘Decommodification believes in decommodifying labour in order to substitute a workers wage with direct means of income transfers, or indirectly through free or subsidized goods and services (social insurance, cash benefits, public housing, free public services). Defamilialization is the state taking action for care work in order to allow more females to be able to join the work force as opposed to tending to the family all day’. [14] Both of these theories combine to allow the labour force to grow with a larger female population. The liberal welfare state regime and the social democratic welfare state regime both support these theories. The liberal welfare state looks to encourage the activity of people in a free market economy and to be able to support themselves with private social and family services. The liberal regime calls for women to join the work force in order to pay for these services and contribute to the economy. The social democratic welfare state believes in universalism which means that government provides public services, and thus allows more women to join the work force. In opposition to both of these regimes, the conservative welfare state mostly rejects decommodification and defamilialization. Conservative beliefs prefer a status differentiating society and value the traditional family roles to maintain that. Thus, women are expected to tend to the family, while men remain the primary breadwinners.
To help display the differences that these theories have on the gender pay gap, Hadas Mandel continued his research to discover how welfare state policies effect socio-economic positions. He did so using the Luxembourg Income Study from 21 advanced countries, looking at the gender pay gap with low and high income earners. When it comes to low income earners, the study found that there was not a significant wage gap between men and women in the liberal and social democratic regimes. Where there was a significant wage gap was in social democratic regimes and high income wage earners. The study found that this category of earners had a considerably larger gap than the liberal and conservative regimes for high income earners. Also, as was hypothesized in the study, the conservative welfare state had higher gender wage gaps than the other welfare states with low income earners and still had a recognizable gap with high income earners. The conclusion of the study was that the gender wage gap was determined by the advantage or disadvantage mothers faced with the welfare states interference. [15] A similar study done by Solomon Polachek and Jun Xiang, used the same Luxembourg Income Study, but looked at different factors that influence the gender income wage gaps. This study concluded that fertility rate, age gap between spouses in their first marriage, and the top marginal income tax rate are all factors which correlate with the results. [16] This states that there are external social factors which influence the pay gap between men and women, as well as the institutional factors which were noted previously.
Perceived health status is impacted in a couple of ways in regards the welfare state regimes. These factors include benefits received through differing ideologies and socio-economic disadvantages which groups of people face. When focusing on benefits which people receive, liberal welfare states have minimal access to benefits because of the minimal government influence. As well, privatized care requires means testing and strict criteria in order to be considered for care. The conservative welfare state has benefits which are earnings related and depend on what the employer decides to offer their employees. Conservative regimes also believe in family ties which impact the amount of personal care a person receives. The liberal and conservative welfare state regimes provide benefits depending on an individual's engagement in the workforce. As has been noted, women tend to face a disadvantage in employment opportunity and wages. [17] This makes it difficult to receive good health benefits in liberal and conservative regimes. The social democratic welfare state believes in universal public care services in return for full employment by society. The social democratic regime believes in creating equality for all with access to good health and health care. This regime is able to do this because it has a fully contributive market economy which agrees to decommidifying their labour for this care. [18]
A study conducted by Eikemo et al. depicts how welfare state regimes impact health issues caused by socio-economic disadvantages. The authors do so through the European Social Survey which focused on 21 different countries. The main findings were that liberal and social democratic regimes had a higher perceived health rating than the conservative regime. The study relates these findings to the decommodification theory. Liberal and social democratic regimes substitute worker wages and receive care service to compensate for that loss. [19] These services are seen to correlate with better health. On the other hand, the conservative view rejects decommodifiction, causing the access for necessary care to be lower. Socio-economic explanations for gender health also point to women being more vulnerable to health problems. Women disproportionally represent the poorer populations across the welfare state regimes. Women who are economically deprived are more vulnerable to infectious disease, arthritis, migraines, stress, mental illness (depression), and increased risk to heart disease. [20]
Even though countries are placed into these three welfare state regimes, many are very close in ideologies with one another. The nations which are identified under each welfare state regime can be classified as ‘prototypes’. This means that each welfare state regime identified should not be taken as an ideal type. This notion derives from Esping Andersen's decommodification and social stratification index. The index highlights that each country varies in the strength of how strictly they follow the welfare state it is categorized under. Due to the fact that many of the social issues which a country faces is intersectional, they may take on another welfare states ideology to target a certain issue. [21] For example, Esping-Anderson notes that, “European conservative regimes have incorporated both liberal and social democratic impulses. Over the decades, they have become less corporatist and less authoritarian.” [22] A lot of the scrutiny which Esping-Anderson's research concluded was due to the legitimacy of what each welfare state represented. It is important to realize this when looking at gender issues in the welfare state regimes.
The Swedish Social Democratic Party, formally the SwedishSocial Democratic Workers' Party, usually referred to as The Social Democrats, is a centre-left social democratic and democratic socialist political party in Sweden. Globally, it is a full member of the Progressive Alliance and the Party of European Socialists.
The welfare state of the United Kingdom began to evolve in the 1900s and early 1910s, and comprises expenditures by the government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland intended to improve health, education, employment and social security. The British system has been classified as a liberal welfare state system.
A welfare state is a form of government in which the state protects and promotes the economic and social well-being of its citizens, based upon the principles of equal opportunity, equitable distribution of wealth, and public responsibility for citizens unable to avail themselves of the minimal provisions for a good life.
Economic inequality is an umbrella term for a) income inequality or distribution of income, b) wealth inequality or distribution of wealth, and c) consumption inequality. Each of these can be measured between two or more nations, within a single nation, or between and within sub-populations.
In political economy, decommodification is the strength of social entitlements and citizens' degree of immunization from market dependency.
Gøsta Esping-Andersen is a Danish sociologist whose primary focus has been on the welfare state and its place in capitalist economies. Jacob Hacker describes him as the "dean of welfare state scholars." Over the past decade his research has moved towards family demographic issues. A synthesis of his work was published as Families in the 21st Century.
Workfare is a governmental plan under which welfare recipients are required to accept public-service jobs or to participate in job training. Many countries around the world have adopted workfare to reduce poverty among able-bodied adults; however, their approaches to execution vary. The United States and United Kingdom are two countries utilizing workfare, albeit with different backgrounds.
Social welfare, assistance for the ill or otherwise disabled and the old, has long been provided in Japan by both the government and private companies. Beginning in the 1920s, the Japanese government enacted a series of welfare programs, based mainly on European models, to provide medical care and financial support. During the post-war period, a comprehensive system of social security was gradually established. Universal health insurance and a pension system were established in 1960.
Active labour market policies (ALMPs) are government programmes that intervene in the labour market to help the unemployed find work, but also for the underemployed and employees looking for better jobs. In contrast, passive labour market policies involve expenditures on unemployment benefits and early retirement. Historically, labour market policies have developed in response to both market failures and socially/politically unacceptable outcomes within the labor market. Labour market issues include, for instance, the imbalance between labour supply and demand, inadequate income support, shortages of skilled workers, or discrimination against disadvantaged workers.
In Italy, unemployment benefits are guaranteed by the Constitution. Article 38 states "[...] workers have the right to the provision of financial support sufficient to meet their needs in case of accidents at work, ill health, disability, old age and involuntary unemployment [...]". Esping-Andersen traces in this persistency the origins of the chronically high Italian unemployment rates.
The Nordic model comprises the economic and social policies as well as typical cultural practices common in the Nordic countries. This includes a comprehensive welfare state and multi-level collective bargaining based on the economic foundations of social corporatism, and a commitment to private ownership within a market-based mixed economy – with Norway being a partial exception due to a large number of state-owned enterprises and state ownership in publicly listed firms.
The effects of social welfare on poverty have been the subject of various studies.
The modern welfare state has been criticized on economic and moral grounds from all ends of the political spectrum. Many have argued that the provision of tax-funded services or transfer payments reduces the incentive for workers to seek employment, thereby reducing the need to work, reducing the rewards of work and exacerbating poverty. On the other hand, socialists typically criticize the welfare state as championed by social democrats as an attempt to legitimize and strengthen the capitalist economic system which conflicts with the socialist goal of replacing capitalism with a socialist economic system.
The breadwinner model is a paradigm of family centered on a breadwinner, "the member of a family who earns the money to support the others." Traditionally, the earner works outside the home to provide the family with income and benefits such as health insurance, while the non-earner stays at home and takes care of children and the elderly. The breadwinner model largely arose in western cultures after industrialization occurred. Before industrialization, all members of the household—including men, women, and children—contributed to the productivity of the household. Gender roles underwent a re-definition as a result of industrialization, with a split between public and private roles for men and women, which did not exist before industrialization.
The gender pay gap or gender wage gap is the average difference between the remuneration for men and women who are working. Women are generally found to be paid less than men. There are two distinct numbers regarding the pay gap: non-adjusted versus adjusted pay gap. The latter typically takes into account differences in hours worked, occupations chosen, education and job experience. In other words, the adjusted values represent how much women and men make for the same work, while the non-adjusted values represent how much the average man and woman make in total. In the United States, for example, the non-adjusted average woman's annual salary is 79–83% of the average man's salary, compared to 95–99% for the adjusted average salary.
The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism is a book on political theory written by Danish sociologist Gøsta Esping-Andersen, published in 1990. The work is Esping-Andersen's most influential and highly cited work, outlining three main types of welfare states, in which modern developed capitalist nations cluster. The work occupies seminal status in the comparative analysis of the welfare states of Western Europe and other advanced capitalist economies.
Denmark has been noted as having one of the lowest income inequality ratings in the world and has been known to maintain relative stability in this metric throughout decades past. The OECD data of 2016 gives Denmark a Gini coefficient of 0.249, below the OECD average of 0.315. The OECD in 2013 ranked Denmark with having a 0.254 Gini coefficient, ranking third behind Iceland and Norway respectively as the countries with the lowest income inequality qualifications. Eurostat ranked Denmark with a Gini coefficient of equivalised disposable income of 27.0 in 2022, having fallen for three straight years from a high of 27.8 in 2018. The Gini coefficients are measured using a 0–1 calibration where 0 equals complete equality and 1 equals complete inequality. "Wage-distributive outcomes" and their effect on income equality have been noted since the 1970s and 80s. Denmark, along with other Nordic countries, such as Finland and Sweden, has long held a stable low wage inequality index as well.
Welfare in Peru began on a base of democratic views. Its political system is a multi-party system that includes having a President and Prime Minister. The economy of Peru has expanded substantially throughout the years making it one of the fastest growing economies. As described by Gøsta Esping-Andersen, in his book The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, the Peruvian welfare system would most commonly fit in with the liberal model, since Peru mostly attempts to emancipate the less fortunate from poverty, through means of state-cultivated programs. In accordance, the welfare system has shown great expansion, with the focus primarily on education, healthcare, and the creation of a social safety net.
Even in the modern era, gender inequality remains an issue in Japan. In 2015, the country had a per-capita income of US$38,883, ranking 22nd of the 188 countries, and No. 18 in the Human Development Index. In the 2019 Gender Inequality Index report, it was ranked 17th out of the participating 162 countries, ahead of Germany, the UK and the US, performing especially well on the reproductive health and higher education attainment indices. Despite this, gender inequality still exists in Japan due to the persistence of gender norms in Japanese society rooted in traditional religious values and government reforms. Gender-based inequality manifests in various aspects from the family, or ie, to political representation, to education, playing particular roles in employment opportunities and income, and occurs largely as a result of defined roles in traditional and modern Japanese society. Inequality also lies within divorce of heterosexual couples and the marriage of same sex couples due to both a lack of protective divorce laws and the presence of restrictive marriage laws. In consequence to these traditional gender roles, self-rated health surveys show variances in reported poor health, population decline, reinforced gendered education and social expectations, and inequalities in the LGBTQ+ community.
A property-owning democracy is a social system whereby state institutions enable a fair distribution of productive property across the populace generally, rather than allowing monopolies to form and dominate. This intends to ensure that all individuals have a fair and equal opportunity to participate in the market. It is thought that this system is necessary to break the constraints of welfare-state capitalism and manifest a cooperation of citizens, who each hold equal political power and potential for economic advancement. This form of societal organisation was popularised by John Rawls, as the most effective structure amongst four other competing systems: laissez-faire capitalism, welfare-state capitalism, state socialism with a command economy and liberal socialism. The idea of a property-owning democracy is somewhat foreign in Western political philosophy, despite issues of political disenfranchisement emerging concurrent to the accelerating inequality of wealth and capital ownership over the past four decades.