Care drain brings the traditional problem of carers' choice between paid work and family at a new level. Taking care drain from Romania as a case study, I analyse the consequences of parents' migration within a normative framework committed to meeting the needs of vulnerable individuals. The temporary migration of parents who cannot take their children with them involves moral harm, particularly the frustration of children's developmental and emotional needs. I use recent feminist work on justice and care in the (...) economy to address the question whose responsibility it is to fill the void of care created by temporary migration. I argue that the moral issues raised by care drain are also issues of social justice and therefore call for rectification by the states involved. (shrink)

I review three existing arguments in favor of having some childcare done by nonparents and then I advance five arguments, most of them original, to the same conclusion. My arguments rely on the assumption that, no matter who provides it, childcare will inevitably go wrong at times. I discuss the importance of mitigating bad care, of teaching children how to enter caring relationships with people who are initially strangers to them, of addressing children's structural vulnerability to their caregivers, of helping (...) children and parents contain the ambivalent feelings of the child-parent relationship, and of distributing the responsibility of care and the ensuing blame for bad care more widely. I conclude that nonparental childcare should be universal. (shrink)

I argue that, in the currently gender-unjust societies a basic income would not advance feminist goals. To assess the impact of a social policy on gender justice I propose the following criterion: a society is gender-just when the costs of engaging in a lifestyle characterized by gender-symmetry (in both the domestic and public spheres) are, for both men and women, smaller or equal to the costs of engaging in a gender-asymmetrical lifestyle. For a significant number of women, a basic income (...) would increase the costs of leading gender-symmetrical lifestyles because it would make it easier for both women and men to pursue gender-unjust preferences. I argue that preference satisfaction is distinct from justice. I conclude by showing why a basic income would lead to further privatisation of caregiving, and I outline the negative effects this would have on women. (shrink)

Some Romanian feminist scholars argue that welfare policies of post-communist states are deeply unjust to women and preclude them from reaching economic autonomy. The upshot of this argument is that liberal economic policy would advance feminist goals better than the welfare state. How should we read this dissonance between Western and some Eastern feminist scholarship concerning distributive justice? I identify the problem of dependency at the core of a possible debate about feminism and welfare. Worries about how decades of communism (...) have shaped citizenry feed feminists' suspicion of the welfare state and fears of paternalist policies. I criticize the arguments in favour of neoliberal policies and I suggest a crucial distinction between legitimate, universal forms of human dependency and dependencies that result from particular social arrangements. (shrink)

This paper discusses the question whether care work for dependent persons (children, the elderly, and disabled persons) may be entrusted to the market; that is, whether and to what extent there is a normative justification for the “commodification of care.” It first proposes a capability theory for care that raises two relevant demands: a basic capability for receiving care and a capability for giving care. Next it discusses and rejects two objections that aim to show that market-based care undermines the (...) caring motives essential to care, one of them because of its reliance on contracts and the other because of the corrupting influence of payment on motivation. If market care is in principle legitimate, the commodification question transforms into one about the appropriate combinations of market and non-market care. This question can be answered only by adding an additional complication: care is to be balanced against other activities, most notably work for the labor market. This brings in the problem of gender inequality, since paid work has been traditionally distributed to men and caring activities to women. I show how the capability theory of caring presented in this paper can help resolve the dispute between competing models for balancing work and caring. (shrink)

While Susan Moller Okin found much to celebrate in Rawls's earlier articulation of his theory of justice, she worried that his later turn to political liberalism evacuated his theory of its feminist potential. Here, I argue that we need not be so pessimistic: some of the strongest arguments for pursuing certain feminist projects can and should be made from within a politically liberal framework. In advancing this claim, I develop Rawls's idea of primary goods—namely those goods that all citizens need (...) qua citizens—as a key conceptual resource for arguing for the elimination of the gendered division of labor using public reason. Drawing on recent empirical literature, I point out that the gendered division of labor continues to distribute to women an unfair allocation of primary goods. I then advocate for a specific public policy, which I call Gender Egalitarian Daddy Quota—a parental leave policy that sets aside time specifically for fathers to encourage men and women to engage in childcare related leave-taking to similar extents—on the grounds that this policy would help secure a fairer distribution of primary goods, and thus is required as a matter of justice. (shrink)

Women continue to be in charge of most childrearing; men continue to be responsible for most breadwinning. There is no consensus on whether this state of affairs, and the informal norms that encourage it, are matters of justice to be tackled by state action. Feminists have criticized political liberalism for its alleged inability to embrace a full feminist agenda, inability explained by political liberals’ commitment to the ideal of state neutrality. The debate continues on whether neutral states can accommodate two (...) feminist demands: to enact policies aimed at dismantling the feminization of caregiving, especially childrearing, and to compensate women for some of the disadvantages they incur by being primary care-givers. I contribute to this debate with three arguments in support of policies meant to de-gender care-giving and compensate care-givers. The first appeals to equality of opportunity to positions of advantage and justifies policies that prevent or mitigate statistical discrimination and implicit biases. The second draws attention to a possible causal relationship between the specialization of women in early childcare and misogyny; since the latter is incompatible with political liberal justice, it yields the conclusion that political liberals ought to further investigate the causal hypothesis with the aim of establishing or refuting it. The third argument concludes that legitimate childrearing prohibits adults from socializing children or, at least girls, into gender norms; it justifies duties of justice on the side of parents, educators, and economic agents, and state policies meant to offset foreseeable breaches of some of these duties. (shrink)

Rationing health care by ordeals is likely to have different effects on women and men, and on distinct groups of women. I show how such putative effects of ordeals are relevant to achieving gender justice. I explain why some ordeals may disproportionately set back women’s interest in discretionary time, health and access to health care, and may undermine equality of opportunity for positions of advantage. Some ordeals protect the interests of the worse-off women yet set back the interests of better-off (...) women in equal opportunities. I suggest how we can use ordeal design to advance particular aims of gender justice. (shrink)

Scholars who debate the cause of and solutions for the decline in civic engagement have suggested that Americans have increasingly withdrawn from community organizations, reducing their political activity such as voting and interest in the political world, and generally failing to place the common good over individual self-interest. Their analyses are steeped in a tradition that is largely gender blind and consequently ignores care work. We infuse feminist analyses of paid labor and citizenship, which emphasize the merits and burdens of (...) care work, into the civic engagement debate. We argue that care work, predominantly performed by women, paradoxically limits, enhances, and even constitutes a vital form of civic activity. We call for a fuller slate of social policies that will both redistribute the burden of care work and reinvigorate civic engagement. (shrink)

The article is based on the argument that labour market segregation is an important factor contributing to women’s inequality in the labour market. Therefore, any equal opportunities policy has to be combined with a policy to reduce segregation. But up to now segregation has been extremely persistent, as is shown in a short empirical overview of segregation in the Austrian labour market. It is argued that the roots of this phenomenon lie in the assignment of men and women to the (...) market area and the reproduction area according to the breadwinner model. Labour market segregation by sex can be seen as a transformation and continuation of the asymmetrical gender relation in the family to the labour market. Most of the mechanisms and processes that occur every day in the labour market work together to preserve sex segregation. Strategies to reduce segregation should look at these historical roots of segregation and at the connection with the overall gender division of labour. Different perspectives on a reduction of labour market segregation are presented. (shrink)

Austerity politics, war in the Middle East and at other borders of the European Union, the rise of nationalisms, the emergence of populist parties and politicians, Islamophobia and the refugee crisis are amongst the recent developments suggesting the need for discussions about the theories and concepts that academic disciplines provide for making sense of societal, cultural and political transformations. In this article, we focus on the capacities of feminist political theories to undertake this task. By assessing different feminist approaches to (...) political analysis that range from focusing on women and men, to analysing gender, to doing intersectionality and to adopting post-structural and new materialist approaches, we explore the contributions and the limitations of each framework. This allows us to consider where feminist theoretical debates on gender and politics currently are, to assess old and new developments and to address lacunae in the debate. Our argument is that dominant approaches in political science influence the emergence and marginalisation of particular feminist frameworks for political analysis, but also that feminist theorising of gender and politics, in striving for recognition within mainstream political science, reproduces its own hegemonies and marginalisations. (shrink)

The idea that healthcare should become more person-centred is extremely influential. By using recent English policy developments as a case study, this article aims to critically analyse an important element of person-centred care, namely, the belief that to treat patients as persons is to think that care should be ‘co-produced’ by formal healthcare providers and patients together with unpaid carers and voluntary organizations. I draw on insights from political philosophy to highlight overlooked tensions between co-production and values like equality and (...) liberty. Regarding equality, I argue that co-production compounds both problems of gender inequality in the distribution of care labour and the challenges associated with securing equal access to care. Turning to liberty, I identify important commonalities between co-production and republicanism in political philosophy, given their shared insistence on common citizens’ civic virtue. Then, I use against co-production some liberal arguments against republicanism, to highlight a problem of over-demandingness. In bringing my argument to a close, however, I wish to caution against hastily rejecting co-production as a policy programme. (shrink)

This paper presents an account of liberal feminism as a capacious family of doctrines. The account is capacious in the sense that it sweeps in a wide variety of doctrines, including some thought to be challenges to liberal feminism, and allows us to refer to doctrines with more than one label—so we can identify, for example, care-ethical liberal feminism, socially conservative liberal feminism, and liberal socialist feminism. The capacious account also provides a conceptual framework to allow us to think with (...) greater clarity about the scope of liberal feminist claims to justice, and about how that justice is to be secured and sustained. Since there is such variety within the liberal feminist family of doctrines, it makes little sense to criticize or defend liberal feminism simpliciter. The capacious account both requires and makes it possible for us to eschew such talk and focus instead on the particular doctrines we have in mind. (shrink)

In diesem Beitrag argumentiere ich, dass die Ermöglichung von Vereinbarkeit zwischen Erwerbsarbeit und Familienleben ein Erfordernis der Gerechtigkeit bildet. Eltern besitzen einen Anspruch auf Vereinbarkeit, der auf zwei Interessen gründet: Dem Interesse am Zugang zur Erwerbstätigkeit und dem Interesse an der Pflege der Eltern-Kind-Beziehung, durch die besondere Güter realisiert werden. Eine staatliche Politik der Vereinbarkeit lässt sich auch gegenüber denjenigen Gruppen rechtfertigen, die kein besonderes Interesse daran haben – gegenüber Erwachsenen, die keine Kinder haben, und gegenüber Eltern, die ein ‚Ernährermodell‘ (...) mit einer klaren Aufgabenteilung zwischen den Partnern bevorzugen. Eine entsprechende Politik muss allerdings die Dimension des Geschlechts beachten, um nicht zu einer Verschärfung der geschlechtsspezifischen Arbeitsteilung zu führen. (shrink)

My contribution intends to show that the traditional philosophical concept of work leaves out a crucial dimension. Work is reduced, for example, to the interaction with nature, the problem of recognition, or economic self-preservation. But work also establishes an ethical relation having to do with the needs of others and to the common good—a view of work that should be of particular interest for feminist and gender philosophy. This dimension makes visible, as socially necessary work, the so-called reproductive sphere pertaining (...) to giving birth and raising children, but it also generalizes the aspect of care, which plays a significant role in traditional woman's work. The ethical relation to the other is a characteristic feature of human work and in this sense, the possibility of working is a part of a good life. (shrink)

This chapter discusses gender in relation to the most influential current accounts of distributive justice. There are various disparities in the benefits and burdens of social cooperation between women and men. Which of these, if any, one identifies as indicative of gender injustice will depend on the theory of distributive justice that one endorses. Theoretical decisions concerning the role of personal responsibility, the goods whose distribution is relevant for justice, and the site of justice - institutions-only or individual behaviour, too (...) - all influence how one thinks about gender justice. (shrink)

This article seeks to sketch the contours of a good society, distinguished by its gender justice and the plural recognition of egalitarian difference. I begin by reconstructing Nancy Fraser’s arguments highlighting the link between distributive justice and relations of recognition, in particular as it applies to gender justice. In a second step, I show that the debate on the politics of recognition has confirmed what empirical analyses already indicated, namely that Fraser’s status model takes too reductive a stance towards the (...) identity-constituting effects of relations of recognition. The simple demand that identities be recognized, however, glosses over the paradox of recognition, which arises out of the ambiguity between the demand for equal respect and the demand for the recognition of difference. This paradox cannot be resolved unless one takes into consideration the compensatory effect of value pluralism, that is, the inherent pluralism of recognition, well captured in the notion of ‘egalitarian difference’. (shrink)

Work—family policy strategies reflect gendered assumptions about the roles of men and women within families and therefore may lead to significantly different outcomes, particularly for families headed by single mothers. The authors argue that welfare states have adopted strategies based on different assumptions about women's and men's roles in society, which then affect women's chances of living in poverty cross-nationally. The authors examine how various strategies are associated with poverty rates across groups of women and also examine more directly the (...) effects of specific work—family policies on poverty rates. They find that while family benefits and child care for young children unequivocally lower poverty rates, particularly for families headed by a single mother, long parental leaves have more ambivalent effects. The findings suggest that it is critical to examine the gendered assumptions underlying work—family policies rather than viewing all work—family policies as the same. (shrink)

This paper presents a poststructuralist, postcolonial and feminist interrogation of the ‘Girl Effect’. First coined by Nike inc, the ‘Girl Effect’ has become a key development discourse taken up by a wide range of governmental organisations, charities and nongovernmental organisations (NGOs). At its heart is the idea that ‘girl power’ is the best way to lift the developing world out of poverty. As well as a policy discourse, the Girl Effect entails an address to Western girls. Through a range of (...) online and offline publicity campaigns, Western girls are invited to take up the cause of girls in the developing world and to lend their support through their use of social media, through fundraising and consumption. Drawing on a wide range of policy documents, media outputs and offline events, this paper explores the way in which the Girl Effect discourse articulates notions of girlhood, empowerment, development and the Global North/south divide. (shrink)

In this article, I examine the legal position of those who perform caregiving work within the context of a cohabiting relationship through a novel relational vulnerability lens. I argue that the state, through privatising and devaluing caregiving labour, situates carers within an unequal and imbalanced relational framework, exposing them economic, emotional, and spatial harms. Unlike universal vulnerability, which is inherent and unavoidable, relational vulnerability can be avoided and reduced if the state were to acknowledge that humans are embodied and relational (...) rather than self-sufficient and rational. Law’s treatment of cohabiting carers reflects the state’s broader tendency to value economic self-sufficiency, while confining caregiving to the private family. I argue that the state has a duty to respond directly to relational vulnerability and should aim to make cohabiting carers resilient. Resilience must involve the provision of material resources but should also have a normative commitment to achieving autonomy and equality for those marginalised by law and state policies. (shrink)

the arguments in their favour are weak. Arguments based on reciprocity fail to explain why only means-tested public benefits should be subject to work requirements, and why unpaid dependant care work should not count as satisfying citizens’ obligations to reciprocate. Argu- ments based on promoting the work ethic misattribute recipients’ nonwork to deviant values, when their core problem is finding steady employment consistent with supporting a family and meeting dependant care responsibilities. Rigid work requirements impose unreasonable costs on some of (...) the poor. A welfare system based on a rebuttable presumption that recipients will work for pay, conjoined with more generous work supports, would promote justice better than either unconditional welfare or strict requirements [1]. (shrink)

Developments in the provision of care and support services for disabled and older people across developed welfare states have led to the expansion of personalisation (sometimes called cash-for-care, direct payments, care payments, etc.) schemes, whereby cash is paid in substitute for care services and support. Although these schemes vary considerably in their scope and operation (sometimes paying carers directly, sometimes enabling disabled and older people to act as direct employers, sometimes mixing paid and unpaid care), they share the characteristics of (...) commodifying care and support services and will have a potentially profound impact on the relationship between individuals, families, communities and the welfare state. Although the schemes have been evaluated within their own national contexts, little work has been done so far to explore the theoretical implications of their development and extension, particularly from an ethics of care perspective. This paper intends to fill that theoretical gap by drawing on comparative evidence from several schemes across different national contexts to develop an analysis which draws on feminist theory and an ethics of care approach to examine (a) the gendered policy outcomes and impact of such schemes; (b) a feminist analysis of the governance implications of personalisation; (c) the implications for the gendered division of work, particularly between paid and unpaid care work and between different groups of paid and unpaid carers; (d) an ethics of care analysis of the impact of personalisation over the lifecourse of disabled and older people, and carers; and (e) a discussion of the relationship between commodification, empowerment, citizenship and choice drawing on the work of care ethicists. It will draw conclusions about the outcomes of a range of types of personalisation schemes and thus have implications for theory, policy and practice. (shrink)

Can feminists count on welfare states—or at least some aspects of these complex systems—as resources in the struggle for gender equality? Gender analysts of "welfare states" investigate this question and the broader set of issues around the mutually constitutive relationship between systems of social provision and regulation and gender. Feminist scholars have moved to bring the contingent practice of politics back into grounded fields of action and social change and away from the reification and abstractions that had come to dominate (...) models of politics focused on "big" structures and systems, including those focused on "welfare states." Conceptual innovations and reconceptualizations of foundational terms have been especially prominent in the comparative scholarship on welfare states, starting with gender, and including care, autonomy, citizenship, dependence, political agency, and equality. In contrast to other subfields of political science and sociology, gendered insights have to some extent been incorporated into mainstream comparative scholarship on welfare states. The arguments between feminists and mainstream scholars over the course of the last two decades have been productive, powering the development of key themes and concepts pioneered by gender scholars, including "defamilialization," the significance of unpaid care work in families and the difficulties of work-family "reconciliation," gendered welfare state institutions, the relation between fertility and women's employment, and the partisan correlates of different family and gender policy models. Yet the mainstream still resists the deeper implications of feminist work, and has difficulties assimilating concepts of care, gendered power, dependency, and interdependency. Thus, the agenda of gendering comparative welfare state studies remains unfinished. To develop an understanding of what might be needed to finish that agenda, I assess the gendered contributions to the analysis of modern systems of social provision, starting with the concept of gender itself then moving to studies of the gendered division of labor and of gendered political power. (shrink)

Neoliberalism, we are told, has “seduced” feminism. What is meant is that the libertarian and democratic hopes that have scoped this radical social movement have been reconfigured and re-energised by neoliberal project that models all our freedoms upon the market. Misgivings about “seductions” and “betrayals” require that feminist theory adopts the role of the arbiter on goals and meanings and this puts strains upon its deep commitment to democratic epistemologies. The following paper finds that the leading theorist of feminism as (...) critique in a neoliberal age has failed to fully grasp the normative tension that is involved. Nancy Fraser fails to rethink the tasks of critique in terms that is sufficient to its role as arbiter on meanings. I suggest that this rethinking might be done without betraying the demands of a democratic epistemology if we reconstruct the emancipatory idealisations that underpin Fraser’s account of a democratic epistemology. While this rendering of feminism as critique retrieves a representation of feminist ideals that might unmask neoliberal distortions, it does so without betraying the responsiveness to self-interpreted needs that is also claimed by a critical and democratic feminist theory. (shrink)