Anália Torres

Women, Gender, and Work: The Portuguese Case in the Context of the European Union

In this article we discuss changes in the relationships among gender, paid work, and unpaid work in Portugal in the context of the European Union. Based on a research program developed since 1997 on the relationship between family and work, and exploring data from several national and international surveys, such as the European Social Survey, the analyses focus on several topics: changes in demographic indicators; the substantial growth of womens participation, especially mothers, in the labor market; paid work, unpaid work, the welfare state, and existing policies; care solutions and arrangements and social networks; the relationship between womens activity rates and fertility rates, womens attachment to work, and finally, values and attitudes about work and family life. The main goal was to understand and explain specific features of the Portuguese case in a European comparative perspective.

Bridge over troubled waters

ABSTRACT How can we explain that same-sex marriages have been approved in countries like Portugal (2010) and Spain (2005), where the majority of the population identifies with the catholic religion, when they are not recognised in countries with more liberal traditions? Assessing social, economic and legal changes this paper aims to explain the transformations on family, gender and public policies in Portugal in the context of the welfarestate. Two main lines of analysis are pursued. First, changes in practices, attitudes and laws, such as the approval of gay marriage in Portugal (2010), are discussed and related to social, economic and institutional processes. The remarkable fall of catholic marriage in Portugal and the huge growth of children born out of the wedlock, just in one decade (2000–2010), are only some of the examples of these transformations. Secondly, the development of social, family, care and gender equality policies are analysed in order to put the welfare pathway of change in perspective: from a late start in the 1970s and 1980s to the expanding coverage, highlighting welfare-state insufficiencies and limitations as well as, more recently, with ideological and financial pressures for retrenchment. Bridges and troubled relations between social practises, values and public policies are also debated. Our research results are based in data from several sources, namely, European Social Survey (2004, 2006, 2008, 2010), Eurostat and National Statistics.

Anália Torres - Portugal João Ferreira de Almeida - Portugal

The crisis we are living through seems the logical outcome of a development of capitalism foreseeable since the beginning of the 1980s when neo-liberal policies, the huge growth of inequalities, the concentration of capital and global finance combined to dictate politics and dominate regions and nation states. But analysing post facto, and agreeing with all those that have been writing for long about it, does not prevent from a sensation of being completely overwhelmed by the fastness of events and, most of all, by witnessing the total incapacity of political leaderships to take any kind of action to impose some limits or contributing to regulate financial markets. Financial capital, with its extraordinary mobility, acts globally, political leaderships act nationally or locally. In that sense, capitalism is assuming its most ‘savage’ face reminding us of other dark historical periods. In the so-called rich countries the erosion of the welfare states and of some kind of social contract is inducing the ‘shrinking’ of the middle classes and, with it, also of a kind of ‘pillow’ that used to smooth social protest. To foresee the future requires considering the development of some contradictions: between industrial and financial capital (with its structural huge profits), between national or regional political powers and the pressures from financial markets; between civic players fighting against a tremendous attack on their social rights and political powers cutting public funds to guarantee private interests.