Commodification, vulnerability, risk: gendered social policy developments in the United States, 1980–2018

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie Laperrière ◽  
Ann Shola Orloff ◽  
Jane Pryma
Keyword(s):  
Parental Leave ◽  
Labour Force ◽  
Self Regulation ◽  
Labour Force Participation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Social Risk ◽  
Social Risks ◽  
The Us ◽  
The 1960S

AbstractOver the last few decades, the position of women vis-à-vis the welfare state has changed dramatically. Welfare states have adapted to women's increased labour force participation and to the “new social risks” that characterize postindustrial societies. In this paper, we examine gendered policy developments in the US, focusing on conceptions of vulnerability that inform policies meant to mitigate gendered social risks. Focusing on three policy areas: parental leave, domestic violence and disability, we show that policies increasingly target women's integration into the workforce and self-regulation as strategies to mitigate gendered social risk. We also discuss how these policies rely on individual interventions implemented by what we call punitive therapy practitioners, who encourage women's workforce participation and psychological self-regulation. Finally, we argue that enduring gendered conceptions of vulnerability have shaped the specific designs of policies that emerged in the 1960s–1970s, intensified through the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s, and persist today.

scholarly journals Dirty tricks on the underground press

1981 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 47-50
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Rips
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Freedom Of Information ◽  
Underground Press ◽  
General Terms ◽  
The Us ◽  
Psychedelic Drugs ◽  
Us Constitution ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
The 1960S

What was known in the United States as the ‘underground press’ – self-published newspapers of the youth counterculture sold at street corners and around campuses in American cities during the 1960s and early 70 s – was once a significant network estimated at over 400 publications. Their hallmark was opposition to US involvement in the Vietnam War, criticism of the authorities, of uncontrolled technology and big business, advocacy of sexual freedom and artistic experimentation and, frequently, the advocacy of marijuana, LSD and other psychedelic drugs. Few of these publications have survived the past ten years, and their disappearance has been variously attributed to the cooling of radical interest after the American withdrawal from Vietnam, as well as to the vague and shifting nature of the ‘hippie’ scene. Complaints by their publishers during the early and mid-seventies that printers refused their business, that office rents suddenly doubled, that advertising was cancelled, that papers were lost – these were seen as local accidents and were rarely reported by the established media. Claims of official or officially-sanctioned harassment were dismissed – even by fellow radicals – as paranoid. Recent research by Geoffrey Rips of the PEN American Center has revealed the extent and variety of official pressure exerted against alternative publications during the Vietnam War period. Using evidence from government hearings like the Church Committee, which reported in 1976, actual FBI documents released to American PEN under the Freedom of Information Act, and other sources, Mr Rips argues that such harassment contributed materially to the closure of certain publications and in general terms constituted a gross infringement on the protection afforded to dissenting opinion and to a free press under the US constitution. We publish edited extracts here from Geoffrey Rips' report which will be published in full by the PEN American Center and the City Lights Press.

scholarly journals Towards gender equality in the labour markets of Canada, USA and Russia: an overview of progress in achievement of international commitments

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-50
Author(s):  
Maria Yu. Beletskaya ◽  
Elena A. Zotova
Keyword(s):  
Gender Equality ◽  
Gender Gap ◽  
Labour Force ◽  
Labour Force Participation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Work And Family ◽  
Policy Action ◽  
Family Responsibilities ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Employment Of Women

In 2019, the International Labour Organization (ILO), together with the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), prepared and presented to the G20 leaders a report entitled “Women at work in G20 countries: Progress and policy action”. According to the report, Canada, the United States and Russia show the lowest results among the G20 countries in reaching the goal of reducing the gender gap in labour force participation by 25 percent by 2025. This is largely due to the relatively high levels of gender equality that have already been achieved in these countries. The article analyzes the policy of Canada, the USA and Russia towards women at work in four directions: 1) measures taken by national Governments, in cooperation with social partners, to increase women’s participation in the labour force and to overcome cultural and behavioural barriers to the employment of women; 2) measures to increase women’s ability to earn decent wages, including through lifelong learning, upgrading qualifications and skills development; 3) measures to reduce the proportion of women employed in the informal sector and in low-paid jobs; 4) measures to protect women in labour market in order to encourage men and women to combine work and family and share family responsibilities equitably.

Western Europe and the collapse of Bretton Woods

2019 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 282-300
Author(s):  
Michael De Groot
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Rate System ◽  
Bretton Woods ◽  
The Us ◽  
Exchange Rate System ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Impact

This article contends that Western Europe played a crucial and overlooked role in the collapse of Bretton Woods. Most scholars highlight the role of the United States, focusing on the impact of US balance of payments deficits, Washington’s inability to manage inflation, the weakness of the US dollar, and American domestic politics. Drawing on archival research in Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States, this article argues that Western European decisions to float their currencies at various points from 1969 to 1973 undermined the fixed exchange rate system. The British, Dutch, and West Germans opted to float their currencies as a means of protecting against imported inflation or protecting their reserve assets, but each float reinforced speculators’ expectations that governments would break from their fixed parities. The acceleration of financial globalization and the expansion of the Euromarkets in the 1960s made Bretton Woods increasingly difficult to defend.

The Democratic Deficit of United States Federalism? Red State, Blue State, Purple?

2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 645-667
Author(s):  
Vicki C Jackson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Legislature ◽  
Democratic Deficit ◽  
The Us ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Us Senate ◽  
The One ◽  
Over Time

Aspects of an entrenched constitution that were essential parts of founding compromises, and justified as necessary when a constitution was first adopted, may become less justifiable over time. Is this the case with respect to the structure of the United States Senate? The US Senate is hardwired in the Constitution to consist of an equal number of Senators from each state—the smallest of which currently has about 585,000 residents, and the largest of which has about 39.29 million. As this essay explains, over time, as population inequalities among states have grown larger, so too has the disproportionate voting power of smaller-population states in the national Senate. As a result of the ‘one-person, one-vote’ decisions of the 1960s that applied to both houses of state legislatures, each state legislature now is arguably more representative of its state population than the US Congress is of the US population. The ‘democratic deficit’ of the Senate, compared to state legislative bodies, also affects presidential (as compared to gubernatorial) elections. When founding compromises deeply entrenched in a constitution develop harder-to-justify consequences, should constitutional interpretation change responsively? Possible implications of the ‘democratic’ difference between the national and the state legislatures for US federalism doctrine are explored, especially with respect to the ‘pre-emption’ doctrine. Finally, the essay briefly considers the possibilities of federalism for addressing longer term issues of representation, polarisation and sustaining a single nation.

The Watergate Crisis

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dafydd Townley
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Confidence ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
Richard Nixon ◽  
The Us ◽  
National Headquarters ◽  
Post War ◽  
The 1960S

The Watergate affair has become synonymous with political corruption and conspiracy. The crisis has, through fact, fiction, and debate, become considerably more than the arrest of five men breaking into the Democratic Party’s national headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington DC in the early hours of Saturday, June 17, 1972. Instead, the term “Watergate” has since come to represent the burglary, its failed cover-up, the press investigation, the Senate enquiry, and the eventual resignation of the thirty-seventh president of the United States, Richard Nixon. Arguably, Watergate has come to encompass all the illegalities of the Nixon administration. The crisis broke when the Vietnam War had already sunk public confidence in the executive to a low ebb, and in the context of a society already fractured by the turbulence of the 1960s. As such, Watergate is seen as the nadir of American democracy in the 20th century. Perversely, despite contemporaries’ genuine fears for the future of the US democratic system, the scandal highlighted the efficiency of the US governmental machine. The investigations that constituted the Watergate enquiry, which were conducted by the legislative and judicial branches and the fourth estate, exposed corruption in the executive of the United States that stretched to the holder of the highest office. The post-war decades had allowed an imperial presidency to develop, which had threatened the country’s political equilibrium. Watergate disclosed that the presidency had overreached its constitutional powers and responsibilities and had conspired to keep those moves hidden from the electorate. More significantly, however, the forced resignation of Richard Nixon revealed that the checks-and-balances system of government, which was conceived almost 200 years before the Watergate affair, worked as those who devised it had planned. Watergate should illustrate to Americans not just the dangers of consolidating great power in the office of the president, but also the means to counteract such growth.

scholarly journals Beyond the ‘train-first’/‘work-first’ dichotomy: How welfare states help or hinder maternal employment

2016 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Kowalewska
Keyword(s):  
Maternal Employment ◽  
Parental Leave ◽  
Female Parent ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Lone Mothers ◽  
Social Risks ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Unemployed ◽  
Work First

Since the mid-1990s, welfare states have introduced various ‘activation’ policies designed to promote employment. Most typologies distinguish between a Nordic-style ‘train-first’ approach focused on developing jobseekers’ employability and an Anglo-Saxon ‘work-first’ approach that instead emphasises quick job (re-)entry. These typologies tell us what activation means for the unemployed (male) worker. However, by ignoring the family, they overlook what activation means for the (female) parent-worker with childcare responsibilities. To contribute to filling this gap, this article uses fuzzy-set ideal-type analysis to compare 22 countries representing five ‘worlds’ of welfare by how (de-)activating their labour market policies, parental leave provisions, childcare services and the scheduling of primary education are for lone mothers. It reveals that cross-national variations in support for maternal activation are not well captured by the Nordic-style ‘train-first’/Anglo-Saxon ‘work-first’ dichotomy. Hence, despite the greater attention to gender and ‘new social risks’ within comparative social policy scholarship in recent years, the activation literature remains gender-blind.

Lower workforce will impair global GDP trend growth

2015 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Labour Force ◽  
Labour Force Participation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Transport Systems ◽  
Hysteresis Phenomenon ◽  
Job Seekers ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Us Economy ◽  
Discouraged Workers ◽  
The Impact

Subject Changing demography and socio-economic trends in the labour force. Significance Changes in immigration and societal factors are causing labour supply shifts in the EU and the United States. Alongside the debate over the state of the US economy, there has been discussion over the persistent decline in US labour force participation and the impact on the economy of discouraged workers, who may never go back to the labour force. The United Kingdom has experienced population gains and an acceleration in the birth rate due to net immigration over the last decade. Impacts A rising UK population will pressure an already tight housing market and transport systems. High social benefits paid to younger people while actively job-seeking will encourage registration, boosting the UK labour force. Higher cyclical unemployment might become structural through the 'hysteresis' phenomenon, as job seekers get discouraged.

scholarly journals Policy Pathways to Gender Power: State-Level Effects on the US Division of Housework

2007 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-260 ◽  
Author(s):  
LYNN PRINCE COOKE
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Child Support ◽  
Labour Force ◽  
State Level ◽  
Labour Force Participation ◽  
The Us ◽  
Division Of Housework ◽  
Gender Power ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Laws And Policies

Across industrialised countries, men contribute one-third of the household time in domestic tasks despite women's rising labour force participation. Like a Russian doll, however, the private sphere of the household nests within broader socio-political institutions. Proposed here is a relative gender power model incorporating both individual and policy-derived resources to explain differences in the division of household tasks. The sensitivity of the model to state-level policy differences is tested using data from the second wave of the US National Survey of Families and Households. After controlling for women's individual resources, laws and policies enhancing women's economic circumstances in the event of a divorce such as receipt of transfers, child support and property settlement predict that men in couples perform a greater share of domestic tasks. This evidence confirms that the state can ameliorate gender hierarchies and inequality.

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