Practice exam question: "Malestream" theories

Practice question: "In the field of social policy, mainstream theories would be more appropriately referred to as malestream theories." Discuss.

Ok, how to address this one? First of all, I don't know a lot about mainstream theories. I know a fair amount about EA, and I know that Willensky's was based on social expenditure. And I know that Marshall was the mac daddy of social citizenship, and that in general social citizenship is defined as one's ability to participate fully in the activities of society. What I could say is that I'll argue that mainstream theories have been said to be malestream because they were far more concerned with the welfare of men than with women. This concern expressed itself  through a concentration on class and an ignorance of the role of gender in personal welfare, as well as an implicit assumption that women's primary role was as carer rather than provider.

• I'll kick off with some quotes from Beveridge about women's role in the welfare state
• Then I'll mention that many traditional social policy theorists similarly took women's roles for granted.
• Had normative assumptions about gender roles, and their focus was instead on class issues. Welfare state viewed as tool for ameliorating these
• Focus on public rather than private sphere
• Very brief run through of some mainstream theorists, then focus on EA and feminist critiques of his typology
• Show examples of how EA's typology gets it wrong
• public private divide
• Offer some feminist counterbalances and alternatives to mainstream social policy analyses of the welfare state. These will include Lewis, Sainsbury
• mention Wilson and other key players
• Possibly point out weaknesses of more gendered theories? Don't think this question asks for that.

The Beveridgean welfare state was founded on many great principles and not a few powerful assumptions, chief among which were those about gender roles. Quote here from Beveridge about how the natural and best unit is the male providing the family income and the mother providing care at home. Mainstream social policy theories have shared many of the same assumptions, earning them the deserved moniker of malestream. In this essay I will look at ways in which mainstream social policy theories have been gender blind, paying particular attention to EA's 1990 typology of welfare regimes. In particular I will critically evaluate how mainstream theories, like Beveride, have focused on class and been blind to gender. I will then look at feminist theories that have attempted to correct this oversight.

In the beginning, there was Marshall. TH Marshall, to be precise. His early work on social citizenship laid the foundation for much social policy theory to follow. By looking at how social policy and welfare states sought to ameliorate class differences. What was his goal? He felt that the goal of the welfare state should be to lessen the impact of class. Other early and influential theorists included Willensky and Townsend. Again, their focus was on class and how the welfare state ameliorated its impacts.

For the rising generation of feminist social policy theorists coming of age int eh 1970s, these theories were all blind to gender. Writing in 1977, Wilson argued that [get exact quote] social policy must look at gender if it was to be useful. Despite the cogency of this argument, mainstream social policy theory continued to be largely gender blind, as epitomised by EA's seminal 1990 work The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. EA wasn't the most gender blind of policy theorists by any stretch of the imagination, but his sophisticated typology of welfare regimes became the gold standard for understanding and discussing social policy approaches in developed countries (specifically, western europe and the anglosphere). However, like Marshall and others before him, EA concentrated on class. For EA, the primary role of the welfare state was to extend social citizenship to all through the amelioration of class differences. In his typology, he evaluated how successfully states achieved this, largely through what he called decommodification, or the removal of dependence on paid labour to provide for one's welfare. As an example, in Sweden, which he classed as Social Democratic, the state provided relatively large cash transfers to those unable to work, so there was a high level of decommodification. In the UK and US, on the other hand, government social insurance tended to be of the safety net variety; these countries were classified as Liberal Democracies. On the continent, countries such as France and Germany preferred a  model in which benefits accrued largely based on one's work inputs, yet welfare payments to those not in work were relatively high. these countries were deemed to be corporatist/conservative.

EA's typology was and continues to be wildly popular; yet, as numerous feminist critics have pointed out, it made many of the gender blind mistakes of earlier social policy theories, despite EA's greater attention to so-called "woman's issues" such as childcare. Much of this gender blindness can be illustrated by looking at his clusters of states, and asking whether they would be clustered together were one to pay more attention to assumptions about gender in each state. Who are some of the people who said we need to do this? For example, EA's conservative regime cluster includes both France and Germany; this is based on the similar approaches to ameliorating class differences in these countries. However, when one looks at the two countries approaches to gender, one realises that they are light years apart. Here I should put in working mother stats for Fr and Germany, plus childcare availability in both countries. Mothers in France are much more likely to work and to work full-time than mothers in Germany. In class terms, the two countries can be grouped together, but in gender terms, they are poles apart. As Sainsbury (?) has pointed out, EA's SD cluser contained Norway, which, at the time of EA's writing, had a strikingly different approach to gender, labour and care than did its neighgbours, placing much more emphasis on policies designed to encourage the father as provider and the mother as carer. Norway (whose policies are now converging somewhat with those of the other SDs)  offered the large benefits characteristic of all SDs, but for women, those benefits were tied to their roles as carers, whereas in the other SD countries, benfits for women were tied more to their role as workers.As women make up half the population of any country, if not more, a social policy theory that does not analyse how the welfare state shapes their opportunities is more than alittle remiss. Looking to the US, it is EA's liberal democracy par excellance - ie the one that does least to alleviate class differences. However, as Lewis has argued, the US also offers many opportunities for women who wish to be in paid labour, having a much higher paid work rate than the UK. So while the UK might seem somewhat more class-friendly than the US in EA's typology, it could also be viewed as offering women fewer options and opportunities with regard to paid labour.

The mistakes made by EA and other mainstream theorists are often along the public-private divide. Mainstream theory has tended to see the private sphere - what goes on in the household - as a black box, an area beyond policy. Feminst theorists, on the other hand, have identified the private sphere as being both fundamentally shaped by and a fundamental shaper of the public sphere. For example, as discussed in my earlier essay, women's caring responsibilities, whether implicit or explicit, limit the opportunities to participate on an equal footing in teh paid labour market. As EA rightly pointed out in his 1990 work, welfare regimes encompass not just welfare states, but the full range of assumptions and activities they are predicated on.

Ok, here's where I talk about some conflicting theories. In response to EA's gender blindness, feminist theorists have developed their own typologies. Among these is Lewis' analysis of states based on their commitment to the male breadwinner model. I need to read the first few paras of one of her articles to be able to explain this fully. At one end of the spectrum are male breadwinner societies - these are those whose implicit and/or explicit social policies are aimed at maintaining teh sort of society that was the norm in Beveridge's time: the father working to earn a family wage, and the mother staying home to provide the unpaid labour upon which he and society depend. In essence, father producing labour in the public sphere and mother reproducing it in the private one. Germany is a prime example of this type of state, as is Italy. Here, policies have been actively aimed at encouraging mothers to stay at home caring for children while fathers earn a family wage. These do not just have to be gender policies in the explicit sense. For example, many german schools let out at 2pm. Even if there was widespread childcare in Germany (there is very little, and I should say how much) the cost of having a child in cc from this hour would tend to militate against full time maternal employment. Coupled with teh lack of childcare, the result is that most German motehrs do  not work. At the other end of the spectrum is the dual-breadwinner model. While no state has attained this, the closest would be Sweden and Denmark, which have the lowest gender wage gaps (around 10%, compared to, eg 20% in the UK) and the highest level of attachment to paid labour among mothers. Maybe a nice stat here. Somewhere in teh middle are countries classified as 1.5 breadwinner models, including the UK. Here, policies such as the high cost of childcare, the limited opportunities for women to combine full time work with extensive caring responsibilities and the longest working hours in western europe (particulalry for fathers), plus numerous part-time jobs for women, mean that the norm is for families to consist of a full-time (more than) working father and mother working part-time.

Other feminist typologies include Duncan's and WHOSE, who looked at states in terms of whether they saw women as supported mothers, supported workers, supported as both or supported as neither.  Dig out this article. And what was Sainsbury's typology? And throw in one more. Daly and Rake argue against typologies, saying that there are too many variables to effectively cluster countries together.   

Here to wrap up what I want to do is say that to better understand the real world of welfare - not just that of class-based welfare, but that of gender as well - social policy theories need to take into account implicit and explicit gender issues. But I want to refer to other people saying this. In particular, feminist theories of the social policy have increased the focus on what goes on in the home. They have pointed out that the black box needs to have light shined on it if we are to understand not just relations in the home, but roles and behaviours outside it.

Then to sum up, what is the state of current social policy theory? EA has fessed up to the gender blindness of his 1990 work, and his more recent work, eg Why we need a new welfare state, pays more attention to gender issues. The third chapter, indeed, is entitled why we need a gender-friendly welfare state. But has social policy theory been able to combine emphases on class and paid labour with feminist emphases on gender and unpaid labour?