Sheila Shaver

States, Markets, Families: States, Markets, Families

The defining characteristic of the liberal social policy regime is state intervention which is clearly subordinate to the market and the family. But, to a significant extent, liberal policy works through the market, as in the case of tax credits for the purchase of services such as child care, and regulation of the market, for example through anti-discrimination legislation or the setting of minimum standards for market-based services such as child care. It has a relatively strong emphasis on income and/or means-tested programs and while there may be a commitment to universalism, it is universalism with an equal opportunity focus. The implications of these arrangements for families and households and for gender relations have received little attention in comparative welfare state analysis. There are significant cross-national differences in the balance between market and family in providing benefits and services for individuals and households, and, specifically, there are significant differences in terms of gender and class consequences depending on which of the two forms of private responsibility, market or family, is supported by public policy. Does a liberal political tradition have a congruous set of consequences for gender relations across the three policy areas of income maintenance, labour market participation and reproductive rights in Australia, Canada, the United States and Britain? The concept of policy regime refers to institutionalised patterns of welfare state provision establishing systematic relations between the state, the market and the family. Our analysis of policies relating to labour markets, income maintenance and regulation of reproduction in Australia, Canada, Britain and the United States identified significant similarities in policy orientation but also some noteworthy differences across the four countries.

Arguing about the welfare state : the Australian experience

Part 1 Arguments: welfare for citizenship - the emergence of ideals welfare as social security - from citizenship to provision. Part 2 Institutions: finding the welfare state - from arguments to institutions establishing the national welfare state in Australia. Part 3 Administration: locating welfare in administration changing the institutions of social administration.

Universality or Selectivity in Income Support to Older People? A comparative assessment of the issues

This article reviews the issues involved in policy choices with respect to universality and selectivity in income support to older people. It considers four questions: the practical meaning of universality and selectivity in the income support systems of various countries, the effectiveness of universal and selective arrangements in the alleviation of poverty among this group, the role of universal and selective arrangements in redistributing income among elderly people and the relative generosity of universal and selective arrangements. The article draws on data from the ‘second wave’ of the Luxembourg Income Study for six countries: Australia, (West) Germany, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States, concerning the incomes of elderly couples and single (non-married) women. It concludes that while selective income support arrangements achieve greater redistribution in favour of low income elderly people for the same expenditure than do universal ones, selective arrangements do not necessarily perform better in other respects, and, in particular, are associated with low levels of benefit income.

Gender Down Under: Welfare State Restructuring in Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand

Beginning in the mid-1980s, the governments of both Australia and New Zealand embarked upon programmes of economic reform. In the same period, they have also undertaken extensive, if incremental, restructuring of their social policy gender models, away from the male breadwinner family form and towards dual-earner partnerships based on individualized entitlement. This paper examines and compares this restructuring. It aims to identify those respects in which similarities and differences in this restructuring express enduring cross-national differences in social policy, and in what respects simply reflect differences in the timing of otherwise similar developments.

How a study lost its funding: Jean Martin and public knowledge of the refugee experience

In 1975 the Whitlam Labor government invited Professor Jean Martin, then Australia’s leading sociologist of migration, to conduct a five-year study of the settlement experience of the first refugees from Vietnam. She had barely begun the study when the incoming Fraser government terminated its funding. Drawing on internal government documents, this article tells the inside story of that decision. The fate of the project became intertwined with the dismissal of the Whitlam government, but the links were indirect. Archival sources show state actors raising concerns about academic autonomy, the utility of academic research for public policy, and independence of academic publication. The social science of the period saw research as a public good, generating knowledge at once for its own sake and for application in public life. The withdrawal of Martin’s funding marks the end of an era when Australian social scientists could see research collaboration with government as unproblematic.

States, Markets, Families: Gendering Theories and Comparisons of Welfare States

The 1990s will likely be remembered as a period of contentious restructuring of state social provision – one in which issues of gender are quite marked. Since the late 1970s and early 1980s, Australia, Great Britain, Canada and the United States of America have experienced a rise in the popularity of ideologies and political forces celebrating market liberalism. Debates about the proper role of the state vis-a-vis the market and the family and about the character of state policies have intensified and broadened out to consider a greater range of policy alternatives; prominently, a range of market or private solutions to social problems for many decades considered properly political concerns. These have led to dramatic changes in social policy, often referred to as ‘restructuring’, including eliminating or scaling back entitlements and increasing work incentives or requirements. Concerns of gender pervade these social policy debates – about employment opportunities and day care, about how (or even whether) to publicly support caregiving work and single parent families, about the scope of womens choices as to whether and when to be mothers. Should states promote greater social equality? Should government modify or strengthen market forces? Should governments or private entities be the instruments of insurance against social risks? Should states respect ‘family privacy’ and the decision-making authority of corporations? Should governments recognise any sorts of group rights, or attempt to accommodate systematic differences among social groups? Decisions about gender roles and relations will be inescapable in the current restructuring of social provision. Contemporary policy shifts are at least partly in response to a perceived need to better harmonise social benefits and labour market policies in the face of economic restructuring and increased international competition.