Brandon Walker Globalisation and Social Policy Globalisation, Gender Equality, Welfare States The concept of the welfare

state is deeply intertwined with sociological, economic, and philosophical principles. To fully grasp the concept of a welfare state, it is crucial to first identify certain prerequisites for the concept and define and acknowledge popular notions associated with it. This section of the paper will address a brief historical context, the definition of a welfare state (according to Esping-Andersen), and its purpose. Before its manifestation, early philosophical thinkers had their own understanding of what was needed for a society to function properly. Some scholars believed that the perpetuation of patriarchy and absolutism would sustain social needs, while others, like Adam Smith, a prominent philosopher and political economist, believed that the market was the best alternative to end inequality and privilege (Esping-Andersen 1990). The school of thought here, which was common among early liberal thinkers, was that maximizing free trade and minimizing state interference would establish equality and prosperity. Many liberals feared that full democracy would potentially jeopardize markets and lead to heavy state intervention, or simplysocialism. On the other hand, early social democrats believed that equality and socialism was premised on two factors. The first argued that workers require social resources, health, and education to participate effectively as socialist citizens (Esping-Andersen 1990). The second factor states that social policy is not only emancipator, but it is a precondition for economic efficiency (Esping-Andersen 1990). It was argued that both factors would result in the mobilization of individuals. The ultimate goal was to end suffering from unemployment, poverty, and wage dependency. However, what we discover is that market domination is not suitable because of its innate ability to cater only to those who are able to perform in it. For instance, maximizing markets can exclude certain groups (women, the elderly, and the unemployed) from participation. Therefore, the function of welfare should be appropriated by the nation-state (Esping-Andersen). In, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, Esping-Andersen defined a welfare state as activities devoted to serving the welfare needs of households (Esping-Andersen 20). Moreover, it involves state responsibility for securing basic, but essential, welfare for its citizens. Yet,

welfare states cannot be understood just in terms of the rights it grants, but also take into account how state activities are interlocked with the markets and familys role in social provision (Esping-Andersen 21). One goal of most welfare states is to de-commodify its citizens. Decommodification occurs when a service is rendered as a matter of right, and when a person can maintain a livelihood without reliance on the market (Esping-Andersen 21-22). Before this process, workers were considered commodities, in the sense that their survival was contingent upon the sale of their labor power. The first major welfare state initiatives occurred prior to democracy (Esping-Andersen 22). I found that this can partially explain the distinction in welfare state development between western countries. Nations with early democracy, such as the United States, Australia, and Switzerland, were overwhelmingly agrarian and dominated by small property owners who used their electoral powers to reduce (not raise) taxes (Esping-Andersen 15).The welfare state is more than a mechanism that intervenes in the structure of inequality; it is also a system of stratification as well. Esping-Andersen provides a typology of three distinct welfare state regimes. The first is the Liberal welfare state. In this regimeused by the United States, Canada, and Australiabenefits are means-tested and provide meek universal transfers, and social insurance plans are dominate. These benefits cater mainly to low-income, working class, and state dependents (Esping-Andersen 26). Furthermore, entitlement rules are strict, and recipients are typically stigmatized. Free market (with little intervention) is preferred and encouraged by subsidizing private welfare plans (Esping-Andersen 27). The consequence of the liberal regime is that it minimizes de-commodification effects and erects an order of stratification that is a blend of a relative equality of poverty among state-welfare recipients, market-differentiated welfare among the majorities, and a class-political dualism between the two (Esping-Anderson 26). The second welfare regime is Corporatist. Used in Austria, France, Germany, and Italy, this regime is shaped by the church and strongly committed to the preservation of traditional family-hood. As a result, private insurance and occupational benefits play a marginal role. Unfortunately, social insurance typically excluded non-working wives, and family benefits encourage motherhood. The underlying problem here is that it does not allow women the freedom to choose work rather than the household (Esping-Andersen 28). Women become dependent on their bread-winning husbands. The principle of subsidiarity serves to emphasize that the state will only interfere when the familys capacity to service its members is exhausted (Esping-Anderson 27). The last

of the typology presented by Esping-Andersen is the Social Democratic welfare regime. Pressure is placed on the state to promote an equality of the highest standards, not an equality of minimal needs. This regime is common among the Nordic countries. In this regime we are introduced to a universalistic system, which promotes egalitarianism. All citizens are endowed with similar rights, irrespective of class or market position, everyone benefits, and everyone feels obliged to pay. The dominant force behind this social reform was social democracy. Manual workers enjoy rights identical to those of salaried white-collar employees because this welfare state is highly de-commodifying. Unlike the other two regimes, this welfare state supports full employment as a fundamental part of their welfare state commitment. Esping-Andersens The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, provides a framework for understanding notions of social policy, structures within the welfare state, and other concepts and ideas associated with it. It does not, however, conceptualize these same practices and institutions in a non-western context. Therefore, it is crucial to explore the role of welfare regimes under different sets of societal conditions. In, A Comparative Welfare Regime Approach to Global Social Policy, Wood and Gough shift attention away from western capitalism and towards peripheral capitalism. As a result, a new awareness about social policies and the circumstances of the country in which they are pertaining tois manifested. Here, practices concerning welfare regimes become more complicated. For instance, Wood & Gough argue that neither markets, not states, not communities alone can provide an adequate framework for meeting human needs. A mix of these three provides a more sustainable and flexible framework for enhancing human well-being (Wood & Gough 1697). According to Wood & Gough, the welfare typology expands beyond the three regimes developed by Esping-Andersen. The first is informal security regimes, which consist of institutional arrangements where people rely heavily upon community and family relationships to meet their security need (Wood & Gough 1699), which ultimately leaves people vulnerable. Second are insecurity regimes. Here, arrangements generate gross inequality and block the emergence of stable informal mechanisms to mitigate (Wood & Gough 1699). The result is a vicious cycle of insecurity, suffering, and vulnerability. These two regimes present a stark contrast between the infrastructures in western and peripheral countries. They illuminate the realities underdeveloped countries suffer, and allow us to acknowledge the daunting

repercussions of colonialism, neocolonialism, and globalization. Wood & Goughs account of welfare regimes also allow us to identify the privilege of western countries described in EspingAndersens welfare regimes. Unlike Scandinavia, the United States, and Canada, the state is not the key institutional factor in, for instance, sub-Saharan Africa. It works much differently for poorer countries. Many of these countries look to informal communities, civil societies, and local government for services and assistance. As a result, the objective is not to promote decommodifcation, but de-clientelization. This refers to the process of de-linking client dependents from their personalized, arbitrary, and discretionary entrapment to persons with intimate power over them (Wood & Gough 1708). It is pivotal to understand this process as a necessity to transform informal security regimes into welfare state regimes. Shifting away from the 1960s and 70s, Mkandawire introduces the concept of targeting in Targeting and Universalism in Poverty Reduction. Targeting was used to help transition from welfare to workfare. Demographic shifts and widespread unemployment in the 1980s led to the conclusion that there might be fiscal limitations within universalism (Mkandawire 4). Given the circumstances of the fiscal crisis, targeting, which aimed resources at the deserving poor, was seen as the most efficient solution. The privatization of social services helped relieve states of financial hardship, but it also forced those who could pay for private services to transition. Although targeting has helped alleviate fiscal burdens, it established an issue of under-coverage. Moreover, the discourse on targeting led to two important realizations. First, targeting is not effective in addressing issues of poverty. Lastly, targeting may not be a viable option for peripheral or developing countries because targeting requires extreme administrative sophistication, which does not really exist in developing countries. This limitation only reiterates the effect globalization and neocolonialism has on poor countries implementation of social policies. Echoing the same sentiment, in Globalization from Below: Social Movements and Altermundism Reconceptualizing Security from a Latin American Perspective, Spring articulates the social, political, and economic restraints that oppression, globalization and neoliberal policies have placed on poor countries. Latin America, for example, has experienced limited development due to the neoliberal polices placed on its government by multinational corporations such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Moreover, Africa is a country that has experienced more extreme longstanding colonial rule, late independence, and neocolonial control over its resources, deforestation, famine, and much more. It is therefore clear

to understand the structural disadvantages that some countries are subjected to, and the intersectionality between regressive globalization and developing countries. On the other hand, Springs article alludes the agency that poor people in developing countries are able to establish through spaces such as the World Social Forum. This demonstrates the resilient nature of developing and poor countries when certain infrastructures are not present. According to Dingeldey in Between workfare and enablement The different paths to transformation of the welfare state: A comparative analysis of activating labor market policies, activation involves a mix of the enforcement of labor market participation, the conditioning of rights and growing obligations of the individual at one side, and an increase of services in order to promote employability and restore social equity at other (Dingeldey 823). Activation is also regarded as positive and based on the idea of seeking economic opportunity and activity for everyone in order to combat poverty, dependency, and social exclusion (Dingeldey 826). Activation is accompanied by a paradigm shift in welfare state policies where activating labor market policy places a central role. What I find to be activating about this concept is the emphasis placed on the pressure for the unemployed to enter (or re-enter) the labor market. Dingeldey argues that the focus on labor force participation and individual responsibility constitutes a new form of citizenship. The individual is supposed to be involved actively in the production of social welfare and participate in decision making processes (Dingeldey 825). One characteristic of activation that is worth mentioning is its special emphasis on support for women seeking to enter the labor market. Fostering the inclusion of women sets the foundation for more women-friendly policies, which shall be discussed later. To gain a firm understanding of activation, Dingeldey provides examples for labor market reform in Denmark, the United Kingdom, and Germany. One implication of activation that I found to be productive was the development of training programs. Education and training programs had a profound effect on individuals entrance into the workforce. This can potentially be the result of apprenticeships and vocational qualifications that followed. What is more interesting is the reverse effect training had in Germany. There has been a steady decline in training provisions since the adoption of activating labor market policies. Another promising outcome of activating labor market policies is the economic empowerment it has granted women. In Denmark, women are able to stay home with their child six months after birth. This is possible because activation has allowed for the expansion of childcare facilities. As a result, Denmark has the highest employment rate of

women with children (Dingeldey 842). In the United Kingdom, the development of working tax credit (WTC) and child tax credit (CTC) has helped eliminate poverty traps for individuals on benefits and to increase disposable market income by transfers that vary according to the number of children to be maintained. Consequently, I believe the increase in the activity rate of single mother (to over fifty five percent in 2004) to be attributed to this policy (Dingeldey 842). I found that Yeates article, Globalization and Social Policy: From Global Neoliberal Hegemony to Global Political Pluralism, focused on activation techniques deployed by poorer countries, primarily because many of them lack the economic capacity and political clout to position themselves to benefit from globalization. It is crucial to keep in mind that globalization can be an oppressive force if countries are ill equipped to handle its repercussions. Although globalization causes a shift in welfare systems from being controlled by states to external economic constraints, the vocal presence and actions of civil society groups may in certain instances strengthen the hand of the state (Yeates 74). Furthermore, Yeates article explains the

relationship of activation between international actors and political action. In sum, activation in social policy can be understood as a reformation of ideas about the need for a new balance of rights and responsibilities between the welfare state and benefit recipients. So far, the structure of this paper mirrors the evolution of social policy discourse. Therefore, it is appropriate to conclude with a discussion on gender equality, and its impact, rather significant or marginal, on welfare states and social policies. I argue that gender equality has been a vital component to social policies, especially within the past three decades. Majority of the discussion concerning gender equality has been centered around care and womenfriendly policies. Before an analysis is conducted, it is pivotal to define both of these concepts. Found in Woman-friendly policies and state feminism: Theorizing Scandinavian gender equality, Borchorst and Siim define women-friendliness as: A state [which] would enable women to have a natural relationship to their children, their work and public life . . . A woman-friendly state would not force harder choices on women than on men, or permit unjust treatment on the basis of sex. In a woman-friendly state women will continue to have children, yet there will also be other roads to self-realization open to them. In such a state women will not have to choose futures that demand greater sacrifices from them than are expected of men. (Borchorst and Siim 4-10, 209).

Adding Hernes assertion that a woman-friendly welfare state was a state where injustice on the basis of gender would be largely eliminated without an increase in other forms of inequality, such as among groups of women (Daly and Lewis 283). Most feminists would agree with Hernes view on woman-friendliness, especially as a ideal mode of thinking. Care, on the other hand, as explained in Daly and Lewis paper, The concept of social care and the analysis of contemporary welfare states, is a well discussed woman specific concept that was understood in relation to the unpaid domestic and personal services provided through the social relations of kinship and marriage. The concept then turned attention on the material and ideological processes that made up care and at the same time confirmed women as carers (Daley and Lewis 283). While researching, one area of uncertainty was how did womens entry into jobs in daycare centers, schools, hospitals, and old peoples homes, represent a form of public patriarchy? After careful deliberation, I concluded that womens participation in paid care work, still limited them to the confines of their expected roles by men. In other words, women were doing the work they had traditionally done in the home in the public sphere (Daly and Lewis 284). Daly and Lewis suggest that there are two factors that have been instrumental in propelling gender to the forefront of welfare state policy. The first asserts that the social and political engagement around gender equality has put welfare states on the defensive and made gender equality an explicit policy consideration in all developed welfare states. This assertion did raise the question of gender equality consideration in poor or underdeveloped countries. The second claim is that as women have come to be defined increasingly as paid workers, welfare states have had to take on board the consideration of how their policies affect female labor, both paid and unpaid (Daly and Lewis 285). Returning to Borchorst and Siim, we discover the advances made by women in the 1980s. When women were integrated into the labor force, a number of policies were adopted to strengthen womens access to the public sphere. These policies included parental leave and extensive public care services for children and the elderly. One can conclude that this was a direct result from a high political representation of women that allowed them to influence political decisions (Borchorst and Siim 208). Moreover, the political wins for women explained by Helga Hernes validates the claim that women as political actors makes a difference in whether or not feminist policies are present on a political agenda. From feminist scholars such as Helga Hernes, Yvonne Hirdman, and Nancy Fraser, we discover that that the heart of the feminist movement was in the 1970s and 1980s, with the idea that womens integration in politics and in

breadwinning was seen as the primary route to achieve gender equality. Conversely, this agenda was challenged and criticized by non Scandinavian feminist scholars as being narrow and not exploring other routes to gender equality (Borchorst and Siim 211). Nancy Fraser identified three different visions for achieving gender equality: universal breadwinner model, caregiver parity model, and the universal caregiver model. The model I find to be the most affective is the latter because it acknowledges that equality must be constructed around the woman; women must be the cornerstone for gender equality. The goal is to remove gendered segregation by making womens life pattern the norm and principles of shared parental role-playing are encouraged (Borchorst and Siim 211). Denmark, Sweden and Norway serve as examples to demonstrate how the adoption of these models is manifested. It is apparent that Scandinavia serves as a leading model for gender equality, but what is unclear is the effect migration has on gender equality. Does ethnic diversity now pose as a threat to equitability? In Sweden, the DPP seldom supports policies of gender equality because it claims that gender equality has already been achieved for the majority population. Their claim is that gender inequality only exists among the immigrant minority (Borchorst and Siim 213). Then shall we assume fragmentation is acceptable? Although equability for immigrant women may not be a top priority on the political agenda, the presence of this group certainly created a platform for matters gender equality to be discussed. For instance, increased migration, growing inequalities among women and the lack of immigrant women in political parties have inspired debates about representation from the perspective of ethnic minorities. Moreover, distinction in equality between women and ethnic minority women creates fragmentation within feminism; there is no longer a unified womens movement that speaks for all women (Borchorst and Siim 218). Borchorst and Siims comments regarding the communal change among women, increased immigration, and presence of ethnic diversity allow for a smooth transition into Hassims critique of the western view of gender equality. Hassim claims that despite womens increasing participation in paid work, labor markets still produce inequalities and reproduce gender-based segregation. In the context of developing countries, Hassim explores hurdles that prevent them from establishing gender equality. For instance, poorer countries have very small formal economies where job security and benefits are privileges reserved for men. As a result, many women enter the informal economy, which is not covered by labor legislation for social

protection and earn far less (Hassim 9). Revisiting Frasers universal caregiver model, she claimed that daddy leave quotas were designed to be gender-neutral, but to the contrary, Hassim reveals that while women have added paid work to their existing responsibilities of care, men have decreased the amount of paid work they do and increased their care-work only slightly (Hassim 10). Because women occupy employment in informal by the masses, there is a huge demand for informal services, which are granted through family and ties of kinship. It is pivotal to gender equity then, that this process be reversed and the degree, to which individual adults can uphold a socially acceptable standard of living independently of family relationships either through paid labor or through social security provision, should be the standard. Hassim refers to this process as defamilialization (Hassim 24). Since many developing countries lacked institutions established by colonialism, institutions that could have expanded the legitimacy of the state and its captivity to represent women were either severely restricted or actively repressed (Hassim 28). This lack of infrastructure demonstrates its importance for establishing equality.

In Gender and Social Policy in a Global Context: Uncovering the Gendered Structure of the Social, Hassim reveals the inevitability of gender inequality among poor and developing countries with histories of colonial rule. He provides specific barriers to equality that is only present in poor countries, and thus, creates different realities for women in western countries and women in developing countries. Furthermore, his work points to that fact that certain institutions and infrastructures that are needed in order to ensure equalitymany of which are not present in developing countries. For instance, both economic and political rights are important prerequisites for gender equality, but they are often nonexistent for women. Yet Hassim reveals how women establish agencydespite the many adverse conditions they are placed under. For example, women have successfully made claims on the state, very often by harnessing their maternal roles to political claims-making advocacy for better conditions and social support for women (Hassim 31). In order to ensure to long-term equality of women, states must continue to improve its infrastructures (electricity, multi-party elections, pipes, and roads, childcare) because the state is a key institution as an organizer and provider of social protection, provisioning, and change.