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. 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.[Eikemo, Terje Andreas, Claire Bambra, Ken Judge, and Kristen Ringdal. 2008. “Welfare state regimes and differences in self-perceived health in Europe: A multilevel analysis”. Social Science and Medicine. 66(11). 2281-2295]
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.[Ball, Jennifer and Lorne Tepperman. “The Stacked Deck: An Introduction to Social Inequality”. Canada: Oxford University Press. 2016. p.40-42.] 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).[Mandel, Hadas and Michael Shalev. 2009. “How Welfare States Shape the Gender Pay Gap: A Theoretical and Comparative Analysis”. Social Forces. 87(4). 1873-1911.] 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.
Welfare State Regimes 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:
Liberal welfare state 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.[Esping-Anderson, G. 1990. “introduction” in The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Princeton university Press. pg. 9-10]
Conservative welfare state 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.[Esping-Anderson, G. 1990. “introduction” in The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Princeton university Press. pg. 10-11]
Social democratic welfare state 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.[Esping-Anderson, G. 1990. “introduction” in The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Princeton university Press. pg. 11-12]
Social capital 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. 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. Social capital has its strengths and weaknesses in all regimes.
Employment opportunity 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.[Esping-Anderson, G. 1990. “introduction” in The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Princeton university Press]
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’.[Bartoll X, Cortes I, Artazcoz L. 2014. "Full- and part-time work: gender and welfare-type differences in European working conditions, job satisfaction, health status, and psychological issues". Scand J Work Environ Health 40:4, pg. 373] 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).[Bartoll X, Cortes I, Artazcoz L. 2014. "Full- and part-time work: gender and welfare-type differences in European working conditions, job satisfaction, health status, and psychological issues". Scand J Work Environ Health 40:4, pg. 370-379]
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.[Ball, Jennifer and Lorne Tepperman. “The Stacked Deck: An Introduction to Social Inequality”. Canada: Oxford University Press. 2016. p.40]
Wage gaps