Citizenship and Welfare - Essay Example

Citizenship as the Ideal Basis for an Inclusive Access to Welfare The idea of welfare is a dynamic concept, which has been evolving over the years. The basis of welfare is the freedom of the individual to make choices. During the days of absolute rulers, whether they were sovereigns or self-proclaimed heads of states, the idea of welfare was rather a Hobson's choice. The ruler and his coterie somewhat decided what constitutes welfare for the general populace. As most civilized parts of the world moved to democracy as the most acceptable form of government, what constituted welfare, increasingly came to be decided by the people who had a role in the democratic process. Since the role of women in the democratic process is a recent phenomenon, the idea of welfare for women was more or less decided by men. The UN Human Development Report of 1998 unequivocally states that there is no country in the world in which women's quality of life is equal to that of men. The UN report has come to this unsavory conclusion by using a set of complex benchmarks that include longevity, health status, educational opportunities and political rights. The plethora of research literature that is churned out by the academia has established the strong correlation between the character of the welfare state and class (Esping Anderson 1990, Korpi 2000) as well as gender disparity (O'Conner et al 1999, Orloff 1993, Sainsbury 1994). The flow of welfare benefits is highly significant for women's chances of becoming and/or continuing poor (Casper et al 1994, Christopher 2000). The in depth study of the way of organizing welfare by each nation reveals the interplay of subtle ingredients of culture, religion, philosophy and inherited attitudes that linger unabated in the ethos (1) of a nation. The cross-national variations can be understood by probing the gendered content of some of the vital components of the welfare states like family, maternity, and childcare policies. Take the case of three East European states. The idea of welfare in these states has taken three different directions after they have given up the communist ideals. If we consider the case of three countries, Poland, Hungary and Rumania they differ radically in the ways in which they handle parenthood and figure out gender relations. The Polish welfare state is conspicuous for their denial of family and maternity benefits. Thus the state compels women out of the labor force and perpetuates their dependence on their spouses for short as well as long term, welfare, while the Hungarian state, is more obliging to women seeking a sense of balance between paid work and family. The Romanian welfare system is different from the Polish _____________________________________________________________ 1 Ethos means the shared fundamental traits. The fundamental and distinctive character of a group, social context, or period, typically expressed in attitudes, habits, and beliefs do not change. Most East European countries when they said adieu to the defunct ideal of communism and came to their own, started asserting their welfare priorities based on their ethos which is somewhat intertwined in their psyche. One, because it allows more freedom for women to pursue work outside the home and cannot expect much provision from state welfare. Consequently, they have hardly any independence to stand on their own. This has resulted in increasing Rumanian women marrying very late and a significant number of them having children out side the wedlock. From the example of these three countries, it can be concluded that the cross-country variations in poverty can be explained by the nature of welfare provision of each country. As a first step for emancipation, it is imperative that access to welfare should not be gender based but qualification based, the only qualification being the citizenship. Women do superlatively well in welfare states where claims are made on the basis of general citizenship and do most awfully in states where claims are made on the basis of employment in paid work. The capacity to survive outside the market was the focal point to Esping-Andersen's perception of liberation. The term de-commodification brings out the crux of the idea of welfare. The right to exist decently fulfilling reasonable human needs irrespective of the capacity of a person to contribute to the society is the essence of de-commodification. The effort by Orloff (1993) to offer a single gendered continuum, that of women's ability to form an independent household, is a remarkable endeavor to develop a formulation of the meaning of true welfare. The chaos in Esping-Andersen's (1990) use of the concept decommodification in different ways for men and women has generated lot of unabated controversy. The pension in welfare states emancipates man from the market, which is de-commodification. In the case of women, their labor is a move from household to market, which is commodification and this, gives them the emancipation. Feminist literature in Europe generally debunk the notion that welfare as the availability of a certain set of services. Their analysis of the British welfare state is that the male breadwinner model has been a vital part of the structure used for investigating and understanding the nature of welfare provisions. Pascall (1997: 25) observes: "A continuing theme through feminist critiques of social policy . . . has been the dependent position of women within the family and the impact of social policies in sustaining it ... Support for the breadwinner/dependent form of the family has entrenched the dependency of women within marriage." Thus the thrust of femininist argument is not about ensuring welfare in terms dwelling, food, clothing and provision for health care, it is more about the attitude that emphasize the significance of independence in family relations. Apart from the ability to form and keep an independent household (Orloff 1993), two other options to evaluate social rights and their emancipatory prospects have been recommended: 'insulation from dependence, both personal dependence on family members and/or public dependence on state agencies' (O'Connor 1993: 514), and defamilialization--the competence for individual adults to maintain a socially suitable standard of living without the help of family relationships. In conclusion, we do well to remember that the influence of the past in the policy making is bound to appear. The present rate of change in the society is so amazingly fast, that we might as well establish a permanent mechanism to accommodate the provisions of welfare in tandem with the emerging shape of the society. One of the features of present day Europe is the increasing number of solo mothers with their children. A solo mother, having a child to bring up, is likely to drift into poverty faster than one with a partner. Similarly, the idea of family as the primary unit of society is increasingly under criticism. Many question the inclusion of the factor family in the context of welfare. Some countries have given up the family related concessions in levying tax. Another feature of modern Europe is the tendency to circumvent the institution of marriage and voluntary childlessness practiced by increasing number of women. The possibility of welfare for individuals merely on the basis that they are citizens seems to be in the cards in the not distant future. Works Cited Casper, Lynne, M., Sara S. McLanahan, and Irwin Garfinkel. 1994. "The Gender- Poverty Gap: What We Can Learn from Other Countries." American Sociological Review, 59 (4): pp. 594-605. Esping-Andersen, Gosta (1990) "The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism" Cambridge, Polity Press. Families: Gender, Liberalism and Social Policy in Australia, Canada, Great Britain, and the United States. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Korpi, Walter. 2000. "Faces of Inequality: Gender, Class and Patterns of Inequalities in Different Types of Welfare States." Social Politics, Summer, vol X, number X, pp. 127-191. Korpi, Walter. 2000. "Faces of Inequality: Gender, Class and Patterns of Inequalities in Different Types of Welfare States." Social Politics, Summer, Vol X, number X, pp. 127-191. O'Connor, Julia, Ann Shola Orloff and Sheila Shaver. 1999. States, Markets, Families: Gender, Liberalism and Social Policy in Australia, Canada, Great Britain, and the United States. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Orloff, Ann Shola (1993) 'Gender and the social rights of citizenship: The comparative analysis of gender relations and welfare states', American Sociological Review, 58, 303-328. Sainsbury, Diane (ed) (1994) Gendering Welfare States. (London: Sage). Pascall, Gillian and Nick manning. 2000. "Gender and Social Policy: Comparing Welfare States in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union." Journal of European Social Policy, vol 10 (3): 240-266. =========== Read More