User:AmandaFarias/sandbox

Welfare State
Basic Elements of Liberalism:
 * Liberty or Freedom- Fundamental political value
 * Equality- core philosophical value
 * Natural or Human Rights
 * Limited Government

Aristotalian Concepts
Humans have the right to flourish and the aim is to keep freedom.

There is a moral dimension to the state, where the purpose of the government is to grant a protection of rights.

Types of Welfare States
Classical Liberalism
 * Portrays negatives liberty.
 * Property rights are primary.

Revisionist or Welfare State Liberalism
 * Portrays positive liberty.
 * Property rights are secondary.
 * Sometimes referred to as Progressive Liberalism

What is a Welfare State?
A welfare state is a state that works to protect and promote the economic and social well being of its citizens. The Welfare State develops because of demographics, life expectancy increases, population booms, etc.

Two Types of Programs
 * Universal
 * Means-Tested

Normative Principles
 * It is based on the principles of equality of opportunity, equitable distribution of wealth and public responsibility for those unable to avail themselves of he minimal provisions for a good life.

History of the U.S. Welfare State

 * 1908 Workers Comp
 * 1935 Social Security, Unemployment, and Aid to Family w/ Dependents
 * 1946 School Lunch Program
 * 1950 Disabled Persons Aid
 * 1965 Medicare
 * 1972 Medicaid

Gender stratification and the Subjection of Women through Welfare State Action
Welfare states can offer provisions promoting female employment or offer provisions to promote female absenteeism (implying the maintenance of the traditional family structure) effectively. Essentially, the welfare state may be viewed theoretically as a de jure method of reinforcing gender differences and illustrate the state’s (active) interest in maintaining traditional social organization structures (that favor men).

Esping-Anderson's work offers one such example of a welfare state typology geared at maintaining traditional household organizational structure. This model was epitomized by German welfare state, which becomes formally recognized by Bismarck’s developments in the late 19th century. Today, the welfare state model that has developed in Germany and other "conservative" cultures is one that has been shaped by historical institutional factors. Conservatism, in the development of the German welfare state, was marked by “loathing of the combined social leveling and class antagonisms brought about by capitalism” (Esping-Anderson 1990; 50-65)).

Thus, the typical "conservative" welfare state favors the maintenance of traditional status relationships, such as strict social hierarchy, the concept of corporatism, and an emphasis on familialism. One major unifying theme of all Conservative welfare state regimes is that traditional status relationships must be retained for the benefit of society. Esping-Anderson calls these welfare states, correctly, “authoritarian paternalist conservatism”. The true origins of this ideology are found in both feudal manorial society and absolutist monarchical regimes. Their guiding principles of hierarchy, authority, and support and encourage the direct subordination of the individual (or family) to the patriarch or state. In modern Germany, it may be said that these values continue to guide the persistent evolution of its welfare state. (Esping-Anderson 1990)

For example, an issue that women are facing in welfare states are, “The central claim is that the Romanian welfare states in its current form mostly provides well-paid state jobs and social security nets for men, with money collected from taxes that are mainly paid by women (this argument is further developed and explored in the fourth section of this paper). As a result, the redistribution is deeply unjust to women and precludes them from reaching economic autonomy. At the same time, according to this argument, a redistribution of poverty – rather than wealth – precludes women from developing a feminist consciousness and setting the basis of a feminist grass-roots movement. The upshot of this argument is that a more laissez-faire economic policy would advance feminist goals better than the welfare state by encouraging the formation of a class of successful, independent women” (Gheaus 2008, 185-6).

A New Typology for Gendered Welfare State Scholars
Many works have emphasized the need for new typologies in welfare state studies that take into account the gendered nature of such welfare states (see Sainsbury 1994, 1996; Lewis and Ostner 1994; Orloff 2008). Without an examination of how welfare state development has been shaped by gender relations or how it has affected gender equality, a full understanding of welfare state development seems futile.

Several scholars have emphasized the importance of care giving and care work in their analysis of gendered welfare states (Lewis and Ostner 1994; Sainsbury 1994). Caregiving is viewed by the authors as unpaid economic activity in a sense, one not worthy of macroeconomic computation or consideration by means-tested programs. Thus, gendered welfare state typologies, as reviewed by Sainsbury, focus on the gendered division of labor and care giving as a central cause and effect of the gendered division of labor. The typology includes the strong breadwinner model, found primarily in the United States, Britain, Germany and the Netherlands. “In a nutshell, the argument in favour of redistributing care is that justice requires a fair sharing of all burdens of social cooperation; conceptualized as a form of work, caregiving is a central, indispensable type of social burden. Its redistribution, then, is a matter of justice (and not merely of humanitarian concern, or charity, as welfare is often depicted by conservatives), and given the historical association between women and care, a matter of gender justice” (Gheaus 2008, 187).

The breadwinner model, and the either strict adherence or departure from it, is the independent variable in Sainsbury's analysis of gendered welfare states. The breadwinner model essentially is typified by a strong conviction that the "proper" social order is one where household organization is characterized by relations in which "men are the providers and women are homemakers and caregivers". The development of a breadwinner-focused typology focused on several different dependent variables in order to rank welfare states in relation to their adherence to the breadwinner model. These variables included "women's treatment in the social security and tax systems, the level of social service provision, especially childcare, and marred women's position in the labor market" (Sainsbury 2012; 103).

Central to these typologies is the importance of care. The dimension has evolved "from emphasizing the nexus between unpaid work, paid, work, and welfare...to developing an encompassing concept of care (Sainsbury 2012; 103). Barbara Hobson (1996) offers two alternative care regimes, or theoretical frameworks for developing the welfare state on the basis of distributing care.  The first model assumes all mothers are carers and calls for a social wage for caregiving work.  This would essentially recognize the difference between men and women biologically and the way their roles have evolved socially and providing public provision for the maintenance of such roles.  However, public social protection against hardship would be provided by such a model.  On the other hand, the second model assumes mothers are workers, and calls for making services available to allow female participation in paid employment.  This model fits more along the lines of the dual breadwinner model (Hobson 1996).

Another scholar that has focused on the gendered welfare state is Ann Orloff (1993). She offers an analytical framework for future scholarly analysis of the gendered welfare state. Three institutional factors-the state, market, and family relations-form the basis of her framework. The framework focused on such factors as "the role of the family and women's unpaid work in providing welfare, the gendered nature of care provided by other institutions, and how state policies affected women's and men's unequal power in the family.

In a later article, Orloff (2008) developed a model dubbed the "Universal Caregiver" model. In this article, she also asserts that the key to gender equality and women’s emancipation is allowing and encouraging men and women to work for pay and participate in family caregiving in equal measures. She advocates such policies that provide or promote individual entitlements to paid leaves, well-developed state care services offered as a right, and restructuring of employment to reduce work time. In any event, it seems these developments in the analytical methodology of gendered welfare state studies will have a lasting impact on scholarly work in the field of comparative welfare state studies.

A way that has been proposed to promote equality and encourage social cooperation because of the incomparable levels of distribution when dealing with caregiving in the family realm, is through universal caregiving initiatives, which can take the place of or be mandated like military service within communities. “Bubeck’s practical proposal is the creation of a state-run social service of caregiving, which would be similar to, or even replace, military service. The service would be mandatory for all citizens who, at some point in their lives, would have to provide care to others. It would entail that each citizen of a given community has to work for a couple of years – typically in one’s youth – as a caregiver in one of the institutions which provide care: hospitals, day-care centres, homes for the elderly and so on” (Gheaus 2008, 187). This shows that all people will be able to fully understand the dilemmas that women face when dealing with inequality and can also promote the overall better standing of individuals.