Gender Inequalities, Households and the Production of Well-Being in Modern Europe

Tindara Addabbo, Marie-Pierre Arrizabalaga, Alastair Owens

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9780367602550
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317130178
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Work
• Index: Social Sciences

Feminist scholars have long pointed out the relevance of the unpaid work that goes on within European households in sustaining the well-being of the continent's populations. However, care work and domestic labour continue to be largely unremunerated and unequally distributed by gender. This unique volume of interdisciplinary essays casts new light on the roles that households play in securing the well-being of individuals and families, uncovering the processes of bargaining and accommodation, and conflict and compromise that underpin them. Contributors put gender at the centre of their analyses, demonstrating the uneven experiences of men and women as both providers and receivers of welfare in European households, in both the past and the present. As European states grapple with changing family forms, a growing population of dependent people, increased participation of women in labour markets and a profound shift in the nature and organisation of work, this book makes a timely contribution to our understanding of the critical role played by households in mediating processes of economic and social change. It offers new challenges to scholars, researchers and policy makers eager to address gender inequalities and enhance well-being. This book is the second of four volumes being published as part of Ashgate's 'Gender and Well-Being' series that arise from a programme of international symposia funded by the European Science Foundation under the auspices of COST (European Cooperation in the field of Scientific and Technical Research).

PART I
Gender, Work and Well-being: Orientations

Chapter 1
Introduction: Households, Gender and the Production of Well-Being

Tindara Addabbo, Marie-Pierre Arrizabalaga,
Cristina Borderías and Alastair Owens

Introduction

This book explores the role of the family household in the production of well-being through labour – both remunerated and non-remunerated – as well as through the use of public institutions. The family mediates the relationship between individuals and the economy and its organization is a key means by which people experience material well-being (Horrell, Meredith and Oxley 2009: 94). Thus the book also considers the ‘distribution’ of well-being among members of the family household. It explores these themes within a European context, with essays focusing on both historical and contemporary situations. Another key focus is on the role of gender in the production of well-being within the family. Feminist scholars have long pointed out the relevance of the unpaid work that goes on within the household to sustain processes of social reproduction. Care work and domestic labour remain unremunerated and unequally distributed by gender, so that women undertake the majority of this work. Some scholars have sought to identify, measure and value this labour and to see it as a significant contribution to well-being that is different from, but no less valuable than, market production (for example, Picchio 1992). Nevertheless, conventional approaches still tend to neglect the contribution of unpaid work to well-being and to interpret the family as a homogeneous and systemic unit – a haven of benevolence and altruism that stands in sharp contrast to the competition and selfishness of the wider economy. Such perspectives ignore or obscure conflicts and inequalities in the distribution of resources between family members or within households.

This volume of essays seeks to address some of these omissions. Although its contributors take a variety of approaches to this issue and cover a range of historical periods within Europe, one important agenda is the desire to fuse feminist analyses with elements of the Capabilities Approach – formulated by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum (see Chapter 2) – in order to assess well-being and to analyse and measure the persistence of the unequal gender division of labour. Many of the chapters are also concerned with how such inequalities might be overcome and raise questions about whether or not household members can or will negotiate their way to more socially just outcomes – a key issue in recent academic research on this theme. By presenting new empirical evidence, alternative theoretical frameworks and providing historical context to contemporary debates about well-being, a further aim is to inform ongoing discussion among European policy makers concerned with tackling gender inequalities and securing the well-being of individuals and households.

This introduction is organized around three thematic sections which also form a structure for the rest of the volume. The first section provides a critical assessment of different theoretical approaches to understanding the production of well-being and the gendered division of labour. This survey takes us from the neoclassical economic models that largely neglect household (re)production as a contributor to well-being, to perspectives, like the Capability and feminist approaches, which not only recognize the household and family as critical to the production of well-being but also seek to open it up and reveal it as a site of inequality and conflict. Such perspectives aim to uncover the tensions and responsibilities that surround the production of well-being within households and the multidimensional nature of gender inequality, through the unequal distribution of labour, consumption and resources. This is a key theme that runs through the other chapters in this book. The second section focuses on gender inequalities in care and care work within households. Several chapters in this part of the book deal with historical examples and in our introduction we draw attention to the comparatively limited investigation of this theme among historians of the family and historical demographers. Beginning with observations made by writers and social reformers on the role of families and households in ensuring the well-being of vulnerable and dependent individuals in past European societies, our discussion considers some of the ways that gender differences and inequalities arise in the provision of care. In an historical context, this means exploring the dynamics of intra-familial relations and systems of care, support and assistance when they become visible at key moments of household and family transition, such as at marriage or death. Contemporary analyses delve deeper into the multifaceted role played by women as care-givers and as care-receivers within households, exploring a variety of different institutional and economic contexts and drawing upon a wide range of statistical and qualitative sources. The third and final section of this chapter introduces the theme of gender inequalities and conflicts over the intra-household allocation of resources. It questions the assumption prevalent in the neoclassical literature that families and households can be treated as undifferentiated social or economic units. Considering issues such as consumption, decision making, resource allocation and the management of property and income – issues that feature in later chapters of the book – it examines patterns of inequality within households, exploring their implications for the well-being of different household members.

Gender, Work and Well-being: Orientations

A first aim of this book is to deal with the very definition of well-being and its production, acknowledging the wide range of approaches to conceptualizing wellbeing and the variety of methods used to study it. Neoclassical individual models of labour supply do not even account for the production of well-being through labour inside the household, conceiving of only two uses of time: leisure and work. The new home economics literature associated with scholars such as Gary Becker (1965, 1991) and Reuben Gronau (1977) recognize the existence of household labour and account for the different factors affecting its extent, which they argue were based on utility and preference. Such approaches imply a monetary definition of well-being and suggest that gendered divisions of labour are the outcome of the exercise of preferences and the identification of comparative advantages in the carrying-out of different productive activities (Becker 1965, 1991).

Nancy Folbre (2004) has shown how these models tend to overstate the role of individual decision making and the ‘efficiency’ of the observed outcomes. Her work is critical of narrowly economic conceptions of the family and highlights the value of interdisciplinary approaches to understanding the role of households in the production of well-being. Feminist studies have challenged the definition of the family as a harmonious economic unit and have criticized the idea that gender divisions of labour can be reduced to choices made by individuals in pursuit of their own personal well-being, independent of wider social relationships and structures (Hartman 1981, Whitehead 1981, Evans 1991, Kabeer 1994, Folbre, 1986, 1995). Indeed, feminist arguments about the need to analyse the household as a system of social relations, together with the evidence of gender-differentiated poverty outcomes, have been a stimulus to the development of new models of household behaviour which emphasise the importance of bargaining (Haddad, Hoddinott and Alderman 1994). A further problem of traditional models of household behaviour is that they assume a unitary utility function and preference motive for the definition and the allocation of time. Bargaining models depart from the unitary model of labour supply and time allocation by considering the family as being composed of different individuals with different preferences and different levels of power (Chiappori 1988, 1992, Apps and Rees 1997, Apps 2003, Bourguignon and Chiuri 2005).

Over the last two decades, several authors have attempted to revise models of household behaviour in order to take into account the differing situations of household members, arguing that treating the family as an undifferentiated unit masks inequalities and uneven living standards, particularly in relation to gender (Spalter-Roth 1983, Vogler and Pahl 1994, Pahl 1994, Nyman 1996, Sen 1983, Nelson 1989, Anderson, Bechhofer and Gershuny 1994, Fritzell 1999). The conflictual relations that characterize households have been placed at the forefront of analyses by feminist anthropologists who have drawn attention to the disadvantaged situation of women, introducing concepts such as the ‘conjugal contract’ (Whitehead 1981) and the ‘patriarchal bargain’ (Kandiyoti 1988).

A radical change in the definition of well-being was proposed by Amartya Sen (1985, 1987b, 1993) through his Capability Approach. This extends the definition of well-being to non-monetary dimensions and shifts the focus away from commodities to individuals and to their freedom to achieve different levels of well-being. The multidimensional definition of well-being introduces new analytical concepts: things that individuals achieve in their life (functionings), their opportunities to achieve (capabilities), as well as individual, social and environmental factors that can affect the very development of capabilities and/or their conversion into functionings. The focus on functionings and capabilities avoids the emphasis in mainstream approaches on market work and material goods, along with the associated androcentric bias and devaluation of unpaid caring work. Sen’s approach recognizes the existence of individual and social differences and the importance of unpaid work, and it has been enormously influential in development economics, providing a powerful underpinning to the human development paradigm. It has been suggested that the Capability Approach also provides a better framework for the analysis of gender inequality – in work and consumption – than utilitarianism, commodity-focused analysis, the social contract tradition, or even some accounts of human rights (Agarwal, Humphries and Robeyns 2005; for a critique, see Dean 2009). Sen’s approach can be considered as ethically individualistic, in that it is the individual who ultimately matters, but it is not methodologically individualistic in that outcomes do not need to be explained solely as a result of individual behaviours. The approach acknowledges the ways in which social structures and institutions impact differently on different individuals and mould and influence their behaviour. Therefore, in Sen’s Capability Framework, the gender division of labour is not seen as a consequence of free individual decision making – a theme that is registered in several of the chapters of this book.

Bargaining models of labour supply and time allocation suggest that family members’ power increases as income increases. Therefore, as a woman’s income increases, the more power she should have within the household. However, the Capability Approach as well as gender and feminist perspectives show that in a discriminatory context women’s perceived interest can limit their actual income contribution to the family. Moreover, ideological and cultural factors can influence the actual power of income. The ‘value’ of income is not the same in the case of men and of women. Some feminist researchers have pointed out that women’s control over family budgets is higher in poorer families, because in such instances money management is a burden rather than a source of power (Vogler, Brockmann and Wiggins 2006; see also Chapter 14). In using the Capability Approach to evaluate bargaining power among couples, one must take into account not only monetary resources and their type (in kind, market or non-market) but also the ‘perceived interest response’ of household members (Sen 1990). This, in the case of women, might imply the perception that in a given discriminatory context their situation is best served by subordinating their own well-being to that of others. Ultimately, this can erode women’s power to negotiate their own well-being. However, since in this setting female-earned income can be perceived to be a contribution, whereas housework cannot, an increase in women’s monetary resources (either through wages or other means) can improve women’s perception of their contribution to a household’s well-being and can prevent the erosion of women’s negotiating power inside the household. This, as is demonstrated in Chapter 15, can also lead to an increase of women’s autonomy in case of marital breakdown.

One key reason why there has been limited acknowledgement of the role of unpaid domestic work in the production of well-being is that it is undocumented in official statistics. However, the amount of time devoted to unpaid work activities is sometimes recorded through specialist surveys and time budgets. These data can be used to estimate the value of unpaid domestic work in the production of well-being (Apps and Rees 2005, Gershuny 1990, 2000, Bittman et al. 2004, Prats i Ferrer, García Ramón and Cánoves Valiente 1995, Izquierdo 1988, UNDP 1995, Istat 1994, Camporese, Freguja and Sabbadini 1998, Sabbadini and Camporese 1998, Stiglitz, Sen and Fitoussi 2009), and different criteria can be used to evaluate them by assigning a monetary value to unpaid work activities (Folbre 2004, Borderìas 2001). In some countries, efforts have been made to develop more systematic statistical surveys in order to provide an evaluation of domestic work and its contribution to production (see, for example, Australian Bureau of Statistics 2000, Carrasco and Serrano 2007, Duran 2000, Holloway, Short and Tamplin 2002, Statistics Canada 1995).

Another issue in analysing the impact of unpaid work on well-being outlined by chapters in this volume relates to its dynamic nature: the distribution of labour between unpaid work in the household and paid work not only changes across different contexts but is also sensitive to the family life cycle and to the strategies enacted by family members with regards to their allocation of time over the different phases of their own life course.

Ingrid Robeyns’ contribution to this volume (Chapter 2) discusses the limits and advantages of using the Capability Approach to explain the gendered division of labour. In her analysis of this division, she shows how women bear a higher working load both in terms of undertaking more hours of unpaid domestic and care work and in assuming a greater responsibility for it (see also Budig and Folbre 2004). In her introduction to the Capability Approach and its methodological tools, Robeyns stresses its open-ended nature and shows how its focus on functionings and capabilities in their multidimensionality, as well as the attention to diversity and its relationship to individualism, can make it a gender-sensitive evaluative framework, useful to assess the gendered division of labour. She argues that the Capability Approach also can be used as a tool to address the question of whether the gendered division of labour is unjust. This is because the Capability Approach values both paid and unpaid work activities, offers an interdisciplinary and rich language to describe inequalities and injustice, and questions the efficiency and rationality of the observed division of labour. However, according to Robeyns, to complete the normative analysis that leads us to judge the actual gendered division of labour unjust, the Capability Approach needs to be supplemented by other principles and to elaborate why women and men hold unequal bargaining positions in household situations when they decide on the gendered division of labour. Further analyses are needed on the way that gender shapes the social structures that affect these decisions since, as Robeyns (2007b) notes elsewhere, the conditions for achieving a more equitable division of labour are not present in most societies. Investigating the roots of unjust divisions of labour offers a fruitful axis of enquiry that can bring together the concerns of feminist economics with the Capability Approach.

There are limits in the use of the Capability Approach for historical analysis, most of which can be linked to the quality and availability of historical sources. As we argue further below, it is often difficult to see inside households and families in order to get at the intra-household allocation of resources, since most sources provide information and data about the family as a collective unit. Moreover, available historical data tend to cast light on functionings and not on capabilities (an issue that also applies to contemporary data when it is analysed using a Capability Approach). While it may be possible to infer capabilities from observed functionings, the extent of individual agency – whether or not choices have been exercised – remains opaque. It is also difficult to understand complete decision-making processes from historical sources that are often one-sided and the recovery of women’s agency can be a particularly challenging methodological problem. There is also a more general risk that ideologically saturated sources can obscure the ‘real’ experiences of men and women in household contexts.

In many European countries, the ‘male breadwinner’ household, where the male head went out to work in the formal labour market, while his wife undertook domestic and social reproductive work in the home, was regarded as an ideal model of social organization which guaranteed the well-being of family members. Among nineteenth and twentieth-century social reformers concerned with the impact of industrialization on the standards of living of the working class, for example, there was recognition of the importance of domestic labour to sustaining and reproducing the family. Care and domestic work were seen as key to improving family living conditions and even socialist reformers such as Cerdà (1856) in Spain or Webb and Webb (1965) in England, defended the male breadwinner model as the most efficient in economic and social terms. But while social statistics might demonstrate that most breadwinner families managed to stay just the right side of the poverty line, within those households meagre resources were not always shared equitably to the detriment of some of its members, notably women. The breadwinner system was also one that was frequently under pressure, particularly among those families who lived at the economic margins. Jane Humphries’ contribution to this volume (Chapter 3) offers a pessimistic assessment of the male breadwinner model as it existed in nineteenth and twentieth-century Britain. She shows that the gender differentiation of family roles carried contradictions and that reduced the security of the family: breadwinning inevitably separated fathers from the families that were dependent upon them, increasing the likelihood that in times of strain their support may falter. Taking cues from contemporary problems of a growth in the number of fatherless households, the high incidence of child poverty in lone-parent families and children caring for their ill parents, Humphries’ chapter presents a critical assessment of different perspectives on the family. It analyses evolutionary theories of the family, the rise and fall of the male breadwinner family, and recent insights into the changing role of families in Britain derived from Jan de Vries’ (2008) account of the ‘industrious revolution’. Her survey considers the way that, throughout history, families have responded to changes in the market (including new consumption possibilities) and to the growing desire to invest in human capital in order to create a disciplined, trained and physically competent labour force. Households reacted to these changing circumstances by altering the allocation to time given to undertaking paid and domestic work and by differentiating economic roles by gender. Drawing upon working-class autobiographies from the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Humphries’ chapter also presents empirical evidence to examine the functioning of different household structures and assess their impact on well-being. This reveals the way that contemporary concerns about the balance between working-class family life and working time are more deep seated than is often recognized, leading he...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Notes on Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• PART I GENDER, WORK AND WELL-BEING: ORIENTATIONS
• PART II GENDER CARE AND WORK
• PART III GENDER INEQUALITIES IN THE INTRA-HOUSEHOLD ALLOCATION OF RESOURCES
• Bibliography
• Index