Deborah Brennan

The marketisation of care: rationales and consequences in Nordic and liberal care regimes

The use of markets and market mechanisms to deliver care services is growing in both liberal and social democratic welfare states. This article examines debates and policies concerning the marketisation of eldercare and childcare in Sweden, England and Australia. It shows how market discourses and practices intersect with, reinforce or challenge traditions and existing policies and examines whether care markets deliver user empowerment and greater efficiency. Markets for eldercare and childcare have developed in uneven and context specific ways with varying consequences. Both politics and policy history help to shape market outcomes.

Convergent care regimes? Childcare arrangements in Australia, Canada, Finland and Sweden

This article is about the transnational movement of policy discourses on childcare. It considers whether the spread of neoliberal ideas with their emphasis on marketisation, on the one hand, and a social investment discourse on the other, are leading to convergence in childcare arrangements in Nordic countries (Finland and Sweden) and liberal Anglo-Saxon countries (Australia and Canada). We find points of convergence around both themes at the level of policy discourse and continued diversity in the way these ideas are translated into actual policies. In other words, convergence is mediated by institutions and political realignments.

Care, markets and migration in a globalising world: Introduction to the Special Issue

Over the past two decades three phenomena have grown in social, political and economic significance for welfare states in Europe and beyond: the development of care provision for young children and older and disabled adults; the promotion of markets and the widespread use of market mechanisms to deliver welfare services; and the migration of workers, an increasing number of whom are women, from poorer to richer regions of the world. In this Special Issue we look at these developments and the very specific ways in which these three phenomena have become increasingly intertwined, that is to say, how marketisation and migrant care labour have become central and interrelated features of care policy and provision. In situating this analysis within globalising processes, we extend the scope of our particular crossnational comparisons within Europe – here referring to England, Sweden, Finland, Spain and Italy – to include Australia, the US, Canada, Japan and Korea. (We do not cover Eastern Europe except in so far as, for a number of European countries, this has become a significant region of origin for migrant care workers.) This scope allows the articles to interrogate, in their different cross-national comparisons, the issue of how far, irrespective of regime or region, are there convergences in the development of care policies, in their marketisation and in their use of migrant labour, and how might we analyse and explain these? As such, this collection represents one of the first detailed and sustained cross-national analyses of care markets and migration in developed welfare states in Europe and beyond.1 Before outlining these developments and what the articles tell us about them, we briefly explain the genesis of this special issue. A core group was established in 2007 through funding from a British Academy/Academy of the Social Sciences of Australia Collaborative International Study Scheme which led to a conference in 2008 at the University of New South Wales, organised with the support of the Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth and the Social Policy Research Centre, University of New South Wales. In October 2009 a further conference on the ‘Political and Social Economy of 449777 ESP22410.1177/0958928712449777Williams and BrennanJournal of European Social Policy 2012

A Pregnant Pause: Paid Maternity Leave in Australia

Abstract It is more than 50 years since the International Labour Organisation recommended paid maternity leave for working women, yet Australia still lacks such legislation. This paper provides a context for the current debate about paid maternity leave in Australia. We argue that a discernible shift in locating the responsibility for paid maternity leave from the public arena to enterprise bargaining and further to the confidential domain of company policy has occurred in Australia. This shift is not improving the position of women in the workforce. The data presented demonstrates the limits of enterprise bargaining for equitably providing paid maternity leave. We also question the efficacy of a reliance on business case strategies. We suggest that to overcome this pregnant pause in the provision of paid maternity leave for Australian working women a broader-based approach is required. In this model, regulation strategies, both legal and industrial, play a part alongside business case strategies.

The Marketisation of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) in Australia: A Structured Response

The marketisation of early childhood education and care (ECEC) offers opportunities to test assumptions about the benefits of a market framework. In Australia, where marketisation included reshaping, extending, and increasing government subsidies, one major listed company (ABC Learning Limited) emerged to dominate child care. Child care prices increased rapidly to become an election issue, and government subsidies increased. ABC acknowledged its economic dependence on government policy and subsidies. Until its collapse in 2008, ABC was the worlds largest listed child care operator, and operating internationally. ABCs structured business model separated child care properties (propco) from child care operations (opco). ABC was the opco and leased the child care properties from propcos. As ABC grew and replicated its structured model to other forms of property including intangible assets, the rising child care prices and government subsidies supported a growing array of other enterprises all seeking profitable operations. This paper explains the structured opco‐propco model, identifies its interaction with accounting and lessons to be learned from marketisation.

Information provision to grandparent kinship carers: responding to their unique needs

Abstract Grandparent kinship care is a growing policy concern in Australia. Availability of appropriate, timely, and up-to-date information on payments and allowances, support services, and childrens needs, is an important factor in determining whether grandparent carers, and the children in their care, receive the support they need. While it is known that custodial grandparents in Australia have trouble gaining access to information and support, relatively little attention has been paid to the causes of this difficulty. Drawing from interviews with 55 service providers and policy makers from New South Wales, South Australia, and the Northern Territory, this article identifies two salient issues: the characteristics of this group, which results in special communication and information needs; and the difficulties grandparent-headed families face due to their unique relationship to the state.

Women and gender

As a trickle of books on women and politics began to emerge in the 1970s, Australian labour historian and student of politics Baiba Irving predicted that academic work on these topics was likely to burgeon. But to what end? Irving was concerned that ‘Lady Political Scientists’ (an allusion to a critique of ‘Lady Novelists’ by George Eliot) would engage in ‘criticism without purpose’, using the study of women to advance their own careers but failing to challenge the foundations of the discipline or to work with the women’s movement to encourage radical social change (Irving 1975, 77). Studies that merely pointed to instances of bias, or illustrated gaps in the literature, she contended, would be of little use to the broader movement. Feminist students of politics should invent new tools, devise fresh concepts and engage with political struggles in the world around them.

Out of kilter: changing care, migration and employment regimes in Australia

The authors show that care migration is increasingly being promoted to meet predicted labor shortages in aged care and child care in Australia. Under current migration policy settings, it is virtually impossible for low-skilled workers to enter Australia in their own right. This chapter examines current debates about care migration in Australia, drawing on submissions made to public inquiries into aged care and child care in the last five years. It analyzes the sources of support for, and opposition to, care migration and the policy context that frames these debates. This chapter situates Australia within an international context.

Introduction: Gendering the Intergovernmental Relations Agenda

Intergovernmental policy processes in federal and multi-level states have neglected women’s and gender equality issues. Policy areas specifically related to women’s concerns, such as violence against women and reproductive rights, have rarely been addressed through intergovernmental policy making machinery. At the same time, the social and economic policies prioritised in intergovernmental processes are seldom analysed for their gender dimensions. Paralleling this neglect, with a few exceptions (Haussman et al. 2010; Vickers et al. 2013), social and legal policy researchers attentive to gender have yet to systematically explore the impact of intergovernmental relations on policy development and outcomes. As a result, the challenges of co-ordinating many policy areas directly relevant to women’s lives across jurisdictions remain poorly understood while little effort is made to take account of the specific and often separate needs of men and women or to understand the differential gender impacts of ‘mainstream’ intergovernmental policy responses. In 2012, we wrote a chapter in Tomorrow’s Federation (Kildea et al. 2012) together with our colleague Kim Rubenstein, in an effort to redress the neglect of gender analyses in the study of Australian intergovernmental relations (Chappell et al. 2012). We argued that these mechanisms, including Council of Australian Government (COAG) deliberations, have rarely included women’s policy issues. We noted that – violence against women and childcare – had sporadically appeared on the COAG agenda, but other key issues such as reproductive rights and equal pay had been ignored. We also drew attention to the fact that COAG reports failed to provide gender disaggregated data about the impact of its National Agreements which cover vital areas such as education, skills, healthcare, disability, housing and Indigenous reform. In each of these areas, there is a wealth of scholarship and provider knowledge about the importance of gendered analysis. Policy makers, practitioners and citizens are short-changed when major policies are developed, implemented and reported upon without any concern to acknowledge and monitor gendered impacts. For example, while ‘social inclusion’ was featured in the National Healthcare agreement, the only reporting required by COAG was for the category of ‘Indigenous people’. No gender breakdown of Indigenous people was required and thus no data were made available that would enable researchers, practitioners or policy makers to track the gendered impacts of the COAG measures. Likewise, although COAG-initiated policy directions increasingly rely upon ‘community care’ there is no acknowledgement by COAG of the impact this has on women as (low paid) workers in this sector, or as family carers.