scholarly journals Nordic eldercare – Weak universalism becoming weaker?

2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 294-308 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marta Szebehely ◽  
Gabrielle Meagher
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Family Care ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Nordic Countries ◽  
Publicly Funded ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Care Services ◽  
European Social Policy ◽  
Six Dimensions ◽  
And Gender

This article builds on recent research on the fortunes of universalism in European social policy by tracing the development of eldercare policy in four Nordic countries: Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. Six dimensions of universalism are used to assess whether and how eldercare has been universalized or de-universalized in each country in recent decades and the consequences of the trends thereby identified. We find that de-universalization has occurred in all four countries, but more so in Finland and Sweden than in Denmark and Norway. Available data show an increase in for-profit provision of publicly funded care services (via policies promoting service marketization), and an increase of family care (re-familialization), as well as of services paid out-of-pocket (privatization). These changes have occurred without an explicit attack on universalism or retrenchment of formal rights. Nevertheless, the changes threaten the class- and gender-equalizing potential of Nordic welfare states.

The Impact of Modernisation and Social Policy on Family Care for Older People in Japan

2000 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
MAKOTO KONO
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Older People ◽  
Informal Care ◽  
Family Care ◽  
Family Values ◽  
Patriarchal Family ◽  
Care Services ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Welfare Model

In Japan the ideology of familism has reproduced patriarchal family values. It successfully retained family centred welfare provision and gender inequality in informal care work, and ensured formal care services were residual. However, the advancement of modernisation has weakened the effectiveness of the informal care sector, and the demand for care has increased steadily along with the ageing of the population. Moreover, informal care based on the self-sacrifice of family carers tends to be less popular. This tendency is especially evident in the opinions of the younger generation and females. Furthermore, structural shifts in their working circumstances, particularly of females, makes the continuation of the patriarchal approach to informal care more difficult. In the field of the care of older people, as part of the strategy for restructuring the Japanese welfare system, the emphasis is now more on market activities, which is in accord with the assumptions underlying ‘the residual welfare model of social policy’ (Titmuss, 1974).

Gender inequality, the welfare state, disability, and distorted commodification of care in Turkey

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-31
Author(s):  
Reyhan Atasü-Topcuoğlu
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Gender Inequality ◽  
Shadow Economy ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Care Services ◽  
Path Dependent ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Turkish Case ◽  
Care Regimes ◽  
The Welfare State

Abstract Reforming care regimes to cover the care deficit and enhancing the marketization of care to promote individualism and gender equality have been on the European agenda since the 1990s. However, both implementation and results have been path-dependent. This study first underlines some specificities in the Turkish case—namely, the limited welfare state, a large shadow economy, gender roles, patriarchal backlash, Islamization, and neoliberalism, all of which receive little treatment in the welfare state literature. It then analyzes how these specificities interact in the construction of the care regime in Turkey, conceptualizing the outcome as distorted commodification of care—namely, the continuing ambiguity of care services despite these activities producing precarity and positional suffering for caregivers and recipients. Finally, the study provides concrete examples from the less studied topic of long-term disability care. It presents a perspective on Turkey that foregrounds the connections between gendered care imagery and case-specific qualities of the commodification of care shaped by the long-standing shadow economy, the outsourcing of disability services to for-profit private companies, and the introduction of the cash-for-care policy. The study analyzes the outcomes of distorted commodification of care under these conditions in Turkey vis-à-vis visibility, valuation of work, working conditions, and gender inequality.

How do welfare states change? Institutions and their impact on the politics of welfare state reform in Western Europe

2000 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 333-352 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giuliano Bonoli ◽  
Bruno Palier
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Insurance ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Special Role ◽  
Unemployment Compensation ◽  
European Social Policy ◽  
Overall Resistance ◽  
The Uk

In the 1980s and 1990s West European welfare states were exposed to strong pressures to ‘renovate’, to retrench. However, the European social policy landscape today looks as varied as it did at any time during the 20th century. ‘New institutionalism’ seems particularly helpful to account for the divergent outcomes observed, and it explains the resistance of different structures to change through past commitments, the political weight of welfare constituencies and the inertia of institutional arrangements – in short, through ‘path dependency’. Welfare state institutions play a special role in framing the politics of social reform and can explain trajectories and forms of policy change. The institutional shape of the existing social policy landscape poses a significant constraint on the degree and the direction of change. This approach is applied to welfare state developments in the UK and France, comparing reforms of unemployment compensation, old-age pensions and health care. Both countries have developed welfare states, although with extremely different institutional features. Two institutional effects in particular emerge: schemes that mainly redistribute horizontally and protect the middle classes well are likely to be more resistant against cuts. Their support base is larger and more influential compared with schemes that are targeted on the poor or are so parsimonious as to be insignificant for most of the electorate. The contrast between the overall resistance of French social insurance against cuts and the withering away of its British counterpart is telling. In addition, the involvement of the social partners, and particularly of the labour movement in managing the schemes, seems to provide an obstacle for government sponsored retrenchment exercises.

Theorising Differences in Patriarchy

1994 ◽  
Vol 26 (8) ◽  
pp. 1177-1194 ◽  
Author(s):  
S Duncan
Keyword(s):  
Gender Inequality ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Gender Divisions ◽  
Six Dimensions ◽  
Institutional Variation ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Realist View

The concept of patriarchy gives a necessary causal basis to the study of gender divisions and gender inequality. However, it has often been employed in a deterministic way, where variation is unexplained and agency is underplayed. This paper reviews Walby's reconceptualisation of six dimensions of patriarchy, based on a realist view of causation, which attempts to reintroduce empirical complexity and institutional variation into the concept. The author suggests that this reconceptualisation does not go far enough. Similarly, models of gendered welfare states, though descriptively quite detailed, are analytically weak. It is suggested that an integration of Walby's theory of patriarchy with Scandinavian ideas of the gender contract provides the best means of conceptualising difference in gender divisions.

scholarly journals The worlds of welfare: illusory and gender blind?

2004 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 201-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clare Bambra
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
Welfare Capitalism ◽  
Individual Welfare ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Policy Variation ◽  
Welfare State Regimes

The nature of welfare state regimes has been an ongoing debate within the comparative social policy literature since the publication of Esping-Andersen's The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (1990). This paper engages with two aspects of this debate; the gender critique of Esping-Andersen's thesis, and Kasza's (2002) assertions about the ‘illusory nature’ of welfare state regimes. It presents a gender-focused defamilisation index and contrasts it with Esping-Andersen's decommodification index to illustrate that, whilst individual welfare states have been shown to exhibit internal variety across different policy areas, they are both consistent and coherent in terms of their policy variation by gender. It concludes, in contrast to both the gender critique of Esping-Andersen, and Kasza's rejection of the regimes concept, that the ‘worlds of welfare’ approach is therefore neither gender blind or illusory, and can, if limited to the analysis of specific areas such as labour market decommodification or defamilisation, be resurrected as a useful means of organising and classifying welfare states.

European and National Social Policy

2021 ◽  
pp. 396-416
Author(s):  
Manfred G. Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Social Expenditure ◽  
Soft Governance ◽  
European Social Policy ◽  
Distribution Of Power ◽  
The Eu

This chapter portrays the development of social policy managed by the European Union, focuses on principles of steering in the EU’s social policy, and explores the distribution of power between national social political action in the member states and European social policy since 1957. The data show that the EU has been able to gain influence through regulatory social policies and soft governance instruments. As pertaining to social services, social expenditure, and redistributive concepts, however, the EU only plays a marginal role. The predominance of national social policy and the limited role of European social policy have been largely due to socio-economic diversity of the EU’s member state, heterogeneous welfare states, institutional obstacles of policymaking in the EU, and powerful national constraints.

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