Development of Culture, Welfare States and Women's Employment in Europe

Birgit Pfau-Effinger

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9780754616931
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351944717
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This refreshing volume introduces a theory for explaining cross-national differences in the social practice of women (and men) in the areas of family and employment. This provides a theoretical framework for the ensuing comprehensive cross-national analysis of the degree and forms of labour market integration of women in three European countries - Finland, West Germany and the Netherlands - from the 1950s until 2000. Cross-national differences are explained with a focus on cultural change and the development of welfare state, labour markets, the family and social movements. It is evident that change took place along different development paths that were based on deep-rooted historical differences in the cultural ideals of the family. Such historical differences and their explanations also form part of the analysis. The results of this survey contribute to the further development of cross-national sociology on social change, social and gender inequality, welfare state, labour markets and family structures.

Chapter 1
International Differences in Women’s Labour Force Participation: Theoretical Approaches

Comparative Analysis in Sociology

Since sociology has become a scientific discipline in its own right a whole host of studies have been conducted that compare societies in order to investigate individual issues. The comparison of societies was

... made an explicit method that was now regarded as the safe and ideal solution for the execution of the discipline’s concept of social history.¹

The works of the leading authorities in sociology (such as Marx, Durkheim, and Weber) that are concerned with comparative research were to a considerable extent influenced by classical evolution-theoretical concepts according to which countries experience the same sequence of historical phases in the process of ‘civilization’ (cf. Boudon 1986, Tominaga 1991, Wimmer 1996). The objective of comparisons in Émile Durkheim’s sociology was not the explanation of differences but the discovery of variants of universal phenomena in the societies compared. According to Matthes (1992),

... this method did not compare differences, but a variable that has been projectively abstracted from a certain societal context and turned in a universal ‘theoretical’ construct is tested in the real world for its variations.²

These variations were then categorized on the basis of the ‘central idea’ that social development progresses in steps from the ‘traditional’ to the ‘modern’ society; the yardstick for the ‘modern’ society, which was regarded as positive in the normative sense, were Western European industrial countries. Specific characteristics of individual societies were played down and marginalized by Durkheim as ‘cultural features’ and not made the subject of analysis or explanation. According to Matthes, this understanding of the ‘Operation called Vergleichen’ (the title of his essay) is also dominant in contemporary sociology; he also criticized the lack of theoretical approaches that take variety as the starting point.³

Quite early, however, a competing tradition of sociological comparison developed that explicitly concentrated on the differences between societies. The origin of this branch of research was in ethnomethodology, represented, for example, by Malinowski. This type of argumentation emphasized that societies were unique, coherent units that could be understood only in their respective uniqueness and entirety.

The relations of cultural values, social institutions, and the practice of social actors has always been a controversial matter, though. On the one hand there are ‘idealistic’ theories according to which the variations of phenomena in the comparison of societies are best explained by the influences of the cultural system. On the other hand, representatives of structuralistic and institutional theories generally assume that social structures and the influence of institutions are mainly responsible for such differences. This type of approach can primarily be found in theory formation with regard to comparative analysis of the development of women’s labour force participation (see also O’Reilly 1996). Two types of theories can be differentiated. One tries to explain cross-national differences in the behaviour of individuals with welfare state policy and distinguishes between different ‘welfare regimes’ or ‘regimes of government gender policy’. The other, also a structuralistic or institutional theory, deals with the relations of the various institutions or structures and the way the gendered division of labour is produced and reproduced on this basis. Here the structural dimension is either put before the dimension of cultural values, as in the patriarchal-theoretical approach, or culture and institutions are treated as a coherent unit.

In the following, the most important of the existing theoretical approaches to comparison are introduced and their contribution to an explanation is discussed.

Explanation with Differences in Welfare State Policy

The explanation approaches to cross-national differences in women’s labour force participation often come from the more recent international discourse in social policy research. Here the differences are explained with country-specific variations in welfare state policy.

In the early 1990s the sociological discourse gained new impetus from the influential works of Scandinavian resource theorists such as Gøsta Esping-Andersen and Walter Korppi, in which the connection between welfare state policy and gainful employment plays an important role. In this respect the book Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism by Esping-Andersen (1990) was met with a tremendous response. There the author investigates how welfare states in Western industrial societies influence the structures of social inequality. According to Esping-Andersen, various ‘welfare regimes’ can be identified in which the state – in different ways and with different objectives – intervenes in the market and affects the social distribution of resources. The differences are due to the fact that policy orients with the specific principles each welfare state is based on. These welfare regimes can be distinguished on the basis of three criteria: the quality of social rights, their effects on the structures of social inequality, and the way state, market and family are related.

According to this theory, the quality of social rights depends to a considerable extent on the degree of decommodification in a society that is caused by the welfare state. Esping-Andersen hereby refers to the degree to which individuals are enabled by social security provided by the welfare state to secure their livelihood by other means than through gainful employment:

... the degree to which individuals, or families, can uphold a socially acceptable standard of living independently of market participation. (1990: 37)

The extent of decommodification of labour on the other hand, as Esping-Andersen argued, affects the conditions under which individuals have to sell their labour, the size of wages, the welfare and security of the workers, and their opportunities to organize themselves collectively for their own interests.⁴ Thereby the state also creates different settings for the gainful employment of women (see also Kolberg/Esping-Andersen 1991). On this basis Esping-Andersen (1990) ideal-typically differentiates between the social democratic, the conservative-corporate, and the liberal welfare regime.

The social democratic welfare regime, which according to the author can be found especially in the Scandinavian countries, is characterized by universal social citizen rights and a high degree of decommodification. It typically tends to promote an evening out of social inequalities. This type of welfare state policy – the Swedish welfare state is the prototype for Esping-Andersen – is based on the idea that men and women should both be fully integrated in gainful employment and that the state is primarily responsible for the production of social welfare. Hence the welfare state provides a wide range of social services. It thereby also becomes one of the most important employers for women. A prerequisite for the realization of this type of welfare state is the heavy taxation of incomes. As this requires the participation of the middle classes in the consensus, welfare state benefits are provided on a qualitatively high level that meets the demands also of the middle classes.

In the conservative-corporate welfare regime on the other hand – which according to the approach of Esping-Andersen (1990) is typical especially for continental Western Europe, e.g. West Germany, Austria, and France – the state plays an important role in the distribution of welfare, and decommodification is an important policy element. In contrast to the Scandinavian welfare regime, however, social policy does not orient with the principles of solidarity or try to even out social inequalities but rather tends to reproduce the existing structures of vertical inequality. Accordingly, the entitlements to benefits from the social security system vary with the size of income. The family is of particular importance for the production of social services. Government transfer payments and services come into effect only when the family is unable to generate these itself. At the same time, gainful employment of women is not promoted, for example the state does not provide any special services that support the entry of mothers into the employment system. This restriction of employment creates a fundamental problem: according to Esping-Andersen, a relatively small part of the population has to generate the wage and salary income that is to secure the livelihood also of those parts of the population who are not gainfully employed.⁵

The liberal model of the welfare state, realized especially in the Anglo-American countries, is based on liberal ideals according to which the ‘free play of the market forces’ is the best guarantee for a fair distribution. Here the state tries to interfere in the market as little as possible and to maintain the commodity character of labour to a large extent. The function of the state in this welfare regime is more a residual one, i.e. to cushion the worst effects of poverty. Here the degree of decommodification is particularly low and all adult individuals are generally forced to provide for themselves through gainful employment. The benefits granted by the social security systems are relatively low. With this policy, as Esping-Andersen argues, liberal welfare regimes reinforce the existing structures of social inequality. A special policy for the promotion of women’s gainful employment, for example by providing an extensive supply of public kindergarten places, is not intended, ‘concepts of gender matter less than the sanctity of the market‘ (Esping-Andersen 1990: 28).⁶

According to Kolberg and Esping-Andersen (1991) three labour market regimes can be differentiated, complementary to the three welfare regimes, with respect to the extent the welfare state assumes the function of an employer. In countries where the full employment of women is an element of welfare state policy the state plays an important role as an employer, especially with respect to female employment. Where the state’s function is only a residual one, however, it fulfils this role only to a very limited extent. Esping-Andersen’s principal explanation of the differences between the welfare states is that social democracy’s capability to form class coalitions varied historically (Esping-Andersen 1990).

His argumentation contains an important idea although it has not been theoretically pursued in all respects: this idea is that the attitude of the welfare state to female gainful employment is an important distinguishing feature of welfare regimes. Nevertheless, some objections to this theory can be raised.

1. Although Esping-Andersen’s typification of welfare states is convincing, his assumption that the general principles of welfare state policy he identified were linked to a respective specific policy as to women’s participation in gainful employment does not seem plausible to me. It is difficult to see why basic cultural principles of a policy that attaches particular value to the decommodification of labour and pursues the objective of an egalitarian social structure (as in the social democratic model) were to be logically linked to the idea of women’s full integration in the labour market. Empirically, this is the case for Swedish model, the one Esping-Andersen refers to, and even more so for the Finnish welfare state (see Chapter 6). In Norway, however, a society whose welfare state policy also corresponds to the social democratic regime, policy did not orient with the idea of full employment of women until well into the 1980s; this is also evident from the data on women’s labour force participation (see Figure I.1 and Leira 2002, Ellingsaeter 1999, Pfau-Effinger 2001). The discrepancy between the general principles of welfare state policy and policy regarding women’s labour force participation in gainful employment is even clearer in the development of the Dutch welfare state. According to Esping-Andersen (1990), the general cultural principles that policy has been based on in recent decades corresponded to a significant extent to those of the social democratic welfare regime. With respect to the familial and gendered division of labour, however, practical policy tended to support the housewife marriage and promoted opportunities that allowed women to stay at home as long as their children lived in the household (see Chapter 5). In Esping-Andersen’s theory the promotion of the housewife marriage is a feature of the conservative-corporate welfare regime. Hence his close theoretical connection of welfare regime and gender policy of the welfare state proves problematic. It should rather be assumed that for every ‘regime type’ there is a certain range of policies with respect to women’s gainful employment, as also Duncan (1998a) has argued.
2. Even though Esping-Andersen has declared the attitude of the welfare state to female gainful employment an important distinguishing feature of welfare regimes the explanatory value of this approach is limited with respect to women’s labour force participation. The emphasis of the theoretical argumentation is on the relationship of state and market. The family and the fact that women use some of their labour to do unpaid family work are not sufficiently taken into account (Leitner 1999, Orloff 1993). In this sense, Orloff has argued:
   Provision of welfare ‘counts’ only when it occurs through the state or the market, while women’s unpaid work in the home is ignored. Furthermore, the sexual division of labour within states, markets, and families also goes unnoticed. (Orloff 1993: 315)
   This also ignores that women’s position on the labour market and the welfare state differs from that of men⁷ although this can have significant consequences for the decision of women to be gainfully employed during the period of active motherhood.
3. There is also too much emphasis on the working class and its history in the socio-historical explanation of the differences between welfare states. If cross-national differences in the gender policy of welfare states are to be explained, it does not suffice to analyse the development of the welfare state only as the result of conflicts and negotiation processes between the state, employers, and employee representatives. They also have to be seen as the result of negotiation processes between the genders.

Due to such limitations of its explanatory power suggestions have been made for an extension of Esping-Andersen’s approach. Orloff (1993: 307) suggested two further indicators for the classification of welfare states: the opportunity individuals have to live autonomously as parents, and access to paid employment since access to the labour market enables women to secure their livelihood and therefore has an emancipatory effect. It therefore has to be analysed in how far the state promotes gainful employment of women, ‘the right to be commodified, if you will’ (ibid.: 318). Such suggestions for an extension of Esping-Andersen’s approach, however, face the dilemma that they are implicitly based on his theoretical foundation although that had been criticized as ‘gender blind’ (see also Duncan 1994, 1998a).

Suggestions that type welfare states on the basis of the ‘gender’ structure category go a step further. Jane Lewis and Ilona Ostner (1994) developed a concept for the classification of welfare regimes from the gender perspective on the basis of the feminist critique of the resource-theoretical approach. The basis of their classification is welfare state policy with respect to women’s position between family and employment system. Their typification orients with the extent to which the family model of the male breadwinner marriage is developed. Lewis and Ostner assume that the male breadwinner marriage, with a dependent wife doing unpaid work and with dependent children, is an element of the welfare state that varies in degree from country to country; this has consequences for women’s labour force participation (ibid.: 1). The main difference is in how far women are treated not only as mothers but also as gainfully employed persons. On this basis the authors distinguish between welfare states with strong, modified, or weak male breadwinner orientation. The classification depends on the relation between the public sphere of paid work and the private sphere of unpaid caring and on the assignment of men and women to these two spheres as well as on the role the welfare state plays in assuming tasks of social care. The authors cite a number of examples to show how variations in the degree to which policies oriented with the male breadwinner model cause differences in the welfare states’ gender policies.

This approach provides important starting points for the development of a theoretical model for an explanation of the differences in the institutional frameworks of female gainful employment. Its scope, however, is limited to welfare state policy; the connection with family and labour market structures is not covered. Moreover, the existing behavioural patterns of women are regarded as the result of welfare state policy while the question of the influence of other institutions and cultural values and notions is not pursued any further. Finally, the question should be asked whether the male breadwinner model is indeed the generally underlying pattern for gendered division of labour in European societies as this approach assumes. I will investigate these issues in Chapters 4 through 7 on the basis of an empirical survey.

The argumentation of Christel Lane (1993) takes a similar direction as the approach by Lewis and Ostner. The author has studied the reasons for the differences in the patterns of female labour force participation between the three largest Western European societies: the United Kingdom, Germany, and France. Lane concentrated on t...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 International Differences in Women’s Labour Force Participation: Theoretical Approaches
• 2 Constructing a Theoretical Framework for the Cross-national Comparison: The Gender Arrangement Approach
• 3 Designing the Empirical Analysis
• 4 Germany
• 5 The Netherlands
• 6 Finland
• 7 Developing Paths of Gender Arrangements and Labour Market Integration
• 8 Exploring the Differences in the Development of Gender Arrangements
• 9 Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index