Current social policy emphasises work instead of welfare and seeks to integrate the unemployed in the labour market rather than to merely give them monetary support. Can such measures open up new educational and employment opportunities for unemployed women, or do they instead tend to result in additional burdens?
Background
The welfare state’s effort to fully integrate persons able to work into the labour market also affects gender relations. The traditional model of male ”breadwinner” and non-employed housewife is replaced by the model where all adults independently earn their living. In the social insurances and social welfare, this policy is found in the fostering of employability and in the pressure on welfare benefits recipients to find employment. Such programmes seldom take into account the different life situations and needs of women and men, but they often take up on gender stereotypes: women are employed in textile studios; men are trained as forklift operators.
Aim
This research project focuses on the issue of the gender equality potential of activation strategies in the areas of unemployment insurance and social welfare. How do these institutions ”invest” in the employability of unemployed and often low qualified women? Are the measures appropriate for the specific situation and the needs of the target group? How do women deal with the demands of activation? And what does access to the working environment mean to the recipients? Does this mean more autonomy or additional burdens? The project will conduct ethnographic case studies in a regional job centre, a social services office, and three to four integration programmes (observation as well as interviews with staff and unemployed persons and their spouses/partners).
Significance
The study will provide an empirical basis for the assessment of gender effects in labour market policy and social policy as well as an impetus to discuss the equality of underprivileged women, who are often immigrants. The study is also of interest for immigration policy and makes a theoretical contribution to the debate on the entanglement of inequality dimensions (gender, ethnicity, class) in gender research.
Original title: Lohnende Investitionen? Zum Gleichstellungspotenzial von Sozialinvestitionen und Aktivierung
Grant: CHF 329‘666.-
Duration: 24 months
Project leaders
- Professor Eva Nadai, Hochschule für Soziale Arbeit, University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland, Olten
- Prof. Gisela Hauss, Hochschule für Soziale Arbeit, University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland, Olten
- Alan Canonica, Hochschule für Soziale Arbeit, University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland, Olten
- Loredana Monte, Hochschule für Soziale Arbeit, University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland, Olten