Basic Income Grants or the Welfare State: Which Better Promotes Gender Equality?
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Barbara R. Bergmann
The implications for gender equality of three regimes are compared: a low tax-low benefit regime, a regime of Basic Income Grants (BIG), and a welfare state offering a generous menu of in-kind and cash benefits concentrated on people with special needs, but not including lengthy paid parental leave. It is argued that the special needs of women, particularly lone mothers, make the welfare state regime superior in promoting gender equality to a regime with BIG benefits, which spreads its cash benefits equally to all citizens. Further, the reductions in labor force commitment that BIG fosters (and which lengthy paid parental leave also fosters) would reverse the progress women have made in the labor market. That progress is the main basis for women's improved status, and undermining it may even make a BIG regime inferior to the low benefits regime in its effect on gender equality.
©2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Front Matter
- Content
- List of Contributors
- Research Note
- Introduction: Revisiting the Feminism and Basic Income Debate
- Basic Income and the Gendered Division of Labour
- Basic Income Grants or the Welfare State: Which Better Promotes Gender Equality?
- All Things Considered, Should Feminists Embrace Basic Income?
- Institutionalizing the Universal Caretaker Through a Basic Income?
- Basic Income, Gender Justice and the Costs of Gender-Symmetrical Lifestyles
- Can a Basic Income Lead to a More Gender Equal Society?
- Book Review
- Review of Amilcar Moreira, The Activation Dilemma: Reconciling the Fairness and Effectiveness of Minimum Income Schemes in Europe
- Review of Erik Christensen, The Heretical Political Discourse: A Discourse Analysis of the Danish Debate on Basic Income
Articles in the same Issue
- Front Matter
- Content
- List of Contributors
- Research Note
- Introduction: Revisiting the Feminism and Basic Income Debate
- Basic Income and the Gendered Division of Labour
- Basic Income Grants or the Welfare State: Which Better Promotes Gender Equality?
- All Things Considered, Should Feminists Embrace Basic Income?
- Institutionalizing the Universal Caretaker Through a Basic Income?
- Basic Income, Gender Justice and the Costs of Gender-Symmetrical Lifestyles
- Can a Basic Income Lead to a More Gender Equal Society?
- Book Review
- Review of Amilcar Moreira, The Activation Dilemma: Reconciling the Fairness and Effectiveness of Minimum Income Schemes in Europe
- Review of Erik Christensen, The Heretical Political Discourse: A Discourse Analysis of the Danish Debate on Basic Income
