Work and Welfare: Revisiting the Linkages from a Gender Perspective

This paper examines the relationship between employment and social policy specifically from a gender perspective. It first lays out, in section 1, the conceptual ground, drawing on a range of heterodox economic and feminist analyses to suggest alternative ways of understanding institutions and labour markets as gendered structures. Indeed, the empirical evidence reviewed in section 2, in terms of the persistence of gender hierarchies within both paid (in terms of earnings/wages) and unpaid work (in terms of time), despite significant “masculinization” of women’s working lives (that is, their increasing participation in the labour force), does not fit comfortably within the predictions of standard labour market models. Gendered stratifications are also evident within the welfare system, where entitlements are linked to paid employment (social insurance) and ability to pay provide stronger claims to welfare, compared to needs-based (social assistance) entitlements delinked from employment.