Feminist
scholars have long examined the welfare state, looking at how policy outcomes
affect women and men, especially those related to labor and care work. Nordic welfare
states hold a long history of policies which have transformed labor and care participation. The region is often considered to have created the most successful model in raising gender equality. Nevertheless, gender gaps are still reported. Where has this welfare system gone wrong?
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| telegraph.co.uk |
Labor vs. Care in Europe
As
an ideal model, the welfare state refers to a state system where the state is
responsible for the universal welfare of its citizens. However, in practice,
provision for its citizens can be organized through a combination of government, voluntary, and private entities, such as in
Western Europe and the Nordic region.
Feminist
scholars have looked for examples of the ideal model of the welfare state in
Nordic countries. For the past years, Nordic countries, such as Sweden,
Denmark, Norway, Finland, and Iceland—which using Esping-Andersen’s
categorization of welfare states are grouped as social-democratic countries—have
been leading in the Global Gender Gap Report with high female labor
participation and leadership. Other European countries still lag behind this region. Some believe that the key to Nordic success is founded in their
design of “family-friendly state policies” which sees labor and care as a right
and which has done away with the male breadwinner family model.
In
countries like Germany, Italy, and Spain, the male breadwinner model remains
strong and the states are less supportive of female labor participation. A
strong male breadwinner model and the principle that families have the right to
choose how to care because caring is a private matter, have guided the UK to
implement policies that are less family-friendly and with less recognition to
unpaid care work. While the Netherlands, on the other hand, has the dual
earner/dual carer model intact by encouraging women and men to work part-time
in order to share care work in the home. However, in practice, it is older men
who tend to work part-time.
Central and Eastern European countries
during the Soviet regimes had also brought women into the labor force. Like the
social-democratic countries, Soviet regimes provided state support for women’s
care work; however, a great difference lies in the fact that while women were
conceived as workers, no attempt was made to transform the traditional division
of labor. With the collapse of the Soviet regimes, Central and Eastern Europe
has had a strong male breadwinner model in place.
In
contrast to other European countries, the Nordic countries—with their history
of strong labor and feminist movements—have long been considered pioneers of
care policies which were able to secure women’s participation in the labor
market and at the same time promote the dual earner/dual carer model.
The Nordic Model of Labor and Care
Policies
in the Nordic region have more recently included cash for care and mandatory
paternal leave in combination with earlier policies on maternity leave and state-mandated
parental leave. Studies
confirm that generous parental leave in Nordic countries has positive effects
on women’s labor participation, making it one of the highest among the OECD
countries. In addition, a highly expensive scheme which provides access to
subsidized day cares equipped with professional care workers is another reason,
as studies also confirm, for the high rate of female participation in the labor
force. Moreover, Nordic countries have gone beyond “women-friendly policies” as
the aim of shared parental leave was not only to encourage higher female labor
participation, but also to increase men’s contribution to caring. In fact,
Sweden was the first country in the world to transform caring roles by
replacing maternity leave with parental leave in 1974.
However,
even the best models are not without flaws. Nordic countries have had a highly
gender-segmented labor market as a result of generous parental leaves, with
Sweden having the most flexible 480 days which entitles parents 80% of their
wages. The lack of flexibility in the private sector and the inconvenience of
career interruptions tend to make the option of taking longer leave unfavorable
for workers in this sector, who are—by no coincidence— predominantly men. In
contrast, the public sector, which holds more women, provides more flexibility
for long-term leave, however for lower wages. Because men tend to be private
sector employees with better pay, families cannot afford to let husbands take
longer leaves—thus, men’s take-up of parental leave has been generally low. The
overall result is a high female concentration in the public sector and male in
the private, and less men doing unpaid care work.
As
a solution, the father quota was introduced by Nordic governments in the 1990s
in response to men’s low take-up of leave and to prevent statistical
discrimination against all women in the workplace. The success of this policy
differed in different countries (even abolished in Denmark), but men had since
increasingly used their leave. Nevertheless, leave take-up differs along class
lines. For example in 2011, it was men with a high level of education and
good income that took most parental leave rather than the opposite; it was highly
educated women with good income and a high position on the labor market that took the least parental leave compared to women with low education and income and
weak association to the market. Moreover, while men used their leave to care for
children, seldom used it to do housework, suggesting that women carry a double
burden because they were the ones attending to it after work.
Studies
in the past decade also show that the glass ceiling phenomenon existed for
educated women in the upper wage distribution level. This is due to the effect
of the gender-segmented labor conditions which—supported by the existing gender
division of labor in the household—have resulted in turning women into primary
carers who have less worth in the labor market. Thus, while narrowing class
inequality, Nordic social-democracies have encountered a wider intraclass
gender inequality gap at the upper end.
The
more recent cash for care policy which was rolled out in the 2000’s, where
parents can obtain cash in replacement of day care provision, came as a
response to the view that families should have the right to choose different
caring practices as well as to provide municipalities with policy flexibility.
This policy has been considered by some as being in contradiction with policies
that aim to transform gender roles because it may encourage mothers to stay
longer at home caring for children and maintaining the household and in return
will affect their status in the labor market.
Trade-offs and Challenges
The Nordic countries have gone beyond
women-friendly policies to family friendly-policies that transform gender
roles and support the dual earner/dual carer family model. In this model,
participation in labor and care is considered a right. However, triggered by
labor conditions, there are trade-offs for women. Labor market segmentation
based on gender has developed due to women’s concentration in the public sector
because of the sector’s flexibility to cater long-term leaves. In addition, class
located gender inequality as a result of the welfare-based glass ceiling has
developed for women in higher positions in the labor market. Because of all
these, the male breadwinner family model may still somewhat remain in the
Nordic region. Still, the father quotas are considered to be the first
significant measure taken by Nordic governments to transform men into carers and
not just women into workers, and thus challenge the traditional breadwinner
model.
Key to the Nordic success is the
states’ perception on gender relations and a strong civil society which was
able to influence the approaches and objectives of welfare initiatives. Nevertheless,
the municipalities also play an important role in shaping policy as there is a
need to accommodate local flexibility. This could mean that practices may not
always be fully in line with wider national goals or may raise the need to
revisit these goals. In addition, the view that family matters are private continues
to challenge the state’s role in directing care policies. Discourses which
support the family’s right to choose caring practices seem to have been gaining
influence in recent years and may set barriers to efforts in narrowing the
gender gap and other inequalities.
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