Projects

Project Nine: Tackling Inequalities in Work and Care: Policy Initiatives and Actors at the EU and UK levels

Principal Investigator: Jane Lewis (London School of Economics)
Principal Investigator: Ceridwen Roberts (Oxford)

Aims
This project will provide analysis of policies developed to address an issue that is key to the empirical research of the network: the gendered divisions of work and care. Policymaking in this area has been considerable in recent years, and the study will explore the way in which the problems have been framed and how far they address the real issues that exist. It will do this through three inter-linked studies (i) of policy trajectories in respect of gender equality at the UK and EU levels; (ii) by an examination of the way in which equality has been conceptualised by the three statutory bodies in the UK: the EOC, the CRE and the DRC, and (iii) by detailed investigation of a similar policy initiative at EU and UK levels: that of promoting work/life balance.

The aims are: (1) To review and compare the trajectory of EU and UK policies designed to address gender inequality over the last decade; (2) To explore the approaches taken by the UK statutory bodies on equality and the extent to which these have been key players in setting the 'equality agenda'; (3) To investigate the way in which the issue of work and care has entered the policy arena at the EU level and in different UK government departments. (4) To take further conceptual work in relation to work and care; (5) To analyse policy goals in relation to the findings from the theoretical work and in relation to the issues highlighted by empirical work.

At both the EU and UK levels, more attention has been paid to gender equality in relation to employment than in relation to care (in the case of the EU, this reflects in part its legal competence). In 2000, the Lisbon Summit foregrounded the issue of social inclusion, which has been translated primarily as inclusion via the labour market. Welfare state restructuring had recast the work/welfare relationship with a firm emphasis on labour market activation and making work pay (CEC 2000a, b; DSS, 1998; Goodin, 2001; Lewis, 2002). The first report on gender mainstreaming (CEC, 2002) suggests that little has yet occurred and that there has been even less activity to combat the inequalities faced by black minority ethnic women (and men). In particular, there has been very little recognition accorded to the dynamics of work and care or to how the unequal way in which these are shared between men and women fundamentally impacts on gender equality, although the Commission's Social Agenda Report for 2002 and its new EQUAL initiative made the gender division of care a priority.

The pursuit of equality has long been recognised as encompassing tensions between 'same treatment' on the one hand, and recognition of difference on the other; and between the individual and the group. These issues are central to the problem of addressing the gendered divisions of work and care. While the EOC and the CRE were set up to work with equality as sameness and with the individual as the reference point, as Fredman (2002) has pointed out, the DRC has taken a rather different approach. These tensions become additionally important given the debate about the possibility of a single statutory equality body in the light of the new EC Directives and Human Rights legislation.

As more emphasis has been placed by policymakers on the importance of achieving an 'adult worker model family' (Lewis, 2001), so the need to address care work has been increasingly recognised (cf. the Belgian Presidency Report: Esping Andersen et al., 2002). But this involves major choices between policies that 'de-familialise' and 'commodify' carework; gender-neutral policies that value informal care; and policies that promote the sharing of care work by, for example, addressing working hours or by 'forcing' men to take parental leave. In addition, intra-gender equality issues are raised when class and ethnicity are put into the equation, for example by the growing numbers of low-paid women in the formal care sector (whether in respect of children or elderly people), who are disproportionately from minority ethnic groups, and who often facilitate the work of highly educated women. Historically and in comparison with other continental European countries, the UK has focused more on caring for elderly people than for children. Recent policy has focused primarily on childcare, but it is increasingly recognised in the empirical literature and within the Commission that the gendered division of informal care for older people seriously affects women's capacities to remain in the workforce.

Key research questions include: How have equality issues been framed at the EU and UK levels? To what extent has EU policy influenced UK policy? How have the different statutory bodies in the UK framed equality in respect of gender, race and disability? To what extent are there tensions and ambiguities in policy developments - between policies, between levels of government, between different policy actors and government departments, in respect of the concept of equality policy and of policies designed specifically to address work and care? Both the EU and UK have employed the concept of social inclusion to guide policy development in recent years. Do other conceptual frameworks provide better leverage on the complicated issues raised by work and care? In particular we will explore the potential of Sen's (1999) work on 'capabilities', which offers a rather different approach to welfare as well-being, and provides a means of directly addressing carework. What has driven the inclusion of work and care issues on the policy agenda at the EU and UK levels? To what extent have these issues emanated from structural changes (in labour markets and family formation), or from the demands of particular (privileged or protected?) segments of it, or from agencies championing disadvantaged groups (particularly the EOC, CRE and DRC)? What has the balance been between attention to care for children and care for elderly people and why?

Project Contact
Professor Jane Lewis
Department of Social Policy
London School of Economics
Houghton Street
London
WC2 2AE
J.Lewis@lse.ac.uk
+44 (0)20 7955 6754