Critical Social Policy

This article analyses recent developments in Britain in the use of formal and informal day care following the introduction of a National Child Care Strategy in 1997. It is argued that the government's focus on only supporting formal care ignores the crucial contribution made by the informal sector. A small study of the daycare arrangements of mature student parents compares the informal and formal daycare `markets' and shows how the firm line which government policy draws between formal and informal care is based on an incomplete understanding of the meaning of `care' and of `work'. The use of cash payments in the informal sector can sustain, rather than damage, the willingness and ability of carers to care — a choice does not have to be made between love and money. Rather, policies that support both are needed.

The article examines the goals and ideologies of Swedish arrangements for parental leave and public child care for working parents. Two important goals are gender equality in work, and gender equality in family life and child welfare. It is argued that gender equality has been advanced to some extent as women have been able to integrate paid work into their lives. The choice of taking parental leave is, however, more conditional for men, and it is taken for granted that women take on the lion's share. It is concluded that the reform is more of a farsighted welfare policy for children than a policy for promoting gender equality.

Working time is an important ingredient in the Dutch `polder model'. In particular, part-time employment has proven to be an important element on the road towards full employment. Part-time employment is also an important element in the so-called `combination model', a model that has been adopted by the Dutch government as the main guideline for policies in the field of labour and care. The point of departure of the combination model is a balanced combination of paid and unpaid care, where unpaid care work is shared equally between men and women and both work part-time for pay. The article looks at the consequences of this part-time strategy from an equal opportunities perspective. It concludes that for women the popularity of part-time work has resulted in a destandardization and individualization of working hours. The combined effects of both gender and the specific working time policy has been to create a one-and-a-half earner society. Given the half income of women, the polder model has not as yet resulted in a remedy for the socioeconomic inequality between men and women.

Sweden has been considered both `worker friendly' and `women friendly'. Both workers and women have called upon the welfare state to support their demands and they have also had some of their requests granted. Feminists' oldest and most important demand has been economic independence from men and the capacity to form and maintain an autonomous household including children.¹ The article investigates whether women were closer to these goals in Sweden in the 1990s than in the 1970s, and whether this was achieved by commodification (paid work) and/or decommodification (transfers from the welfare state). The result is that women as a whole have become more economically independent of men in families, thanks to paid work, and that lone mothers' capacity to form and maintain an autonomous household has been upheld by transfers from the welfare state. However, the capacity of lone mothers to support themselves and their children through paid work has decreased. Overall, by the 1990s, women in Sweden were more economically independent from men than they had been in the 1970s. Similarly women's capacity to form and maintain an autonomous household had become greater, however, this is through higher transfers, not higher earnings from the labour market.

US welfare reform eliminates social rights and caregiving as bases for making claims; it expands the role of the market; and it marks a shift in patterns of stratification toward gender `sameness', in that mothers and fathers must be employed. The expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit reinforces these changes, channelling resources to poor parents, but only if they are employed. These changes are explained with reference to changing balances of power and structural conditions, particularly long-term shifts in expectations about mothers' employment, including their racialized dimensions, situating such factors in the context of the policy legacy. Both the market-supporting character of the US policy regime and the articulation of feminist projects regarding women's employment helped create a context in which welfare reform was likely to require employment. The linkage of such requirements and the end of entitlement occurred in the context of Republican electoral victories, with a Democratic President committed to welfare reform. A feminist policy alternative would offer support for combining employment and caregiving, as both activities are critical for social and political participation; citizenship claims must be linked to employment to succeed politically.

Structural shifts in labour markets and in households are impacting on the capacity of households and families to deal with risk. In Australia the post-Federation and post-war social settlement, based on the gendered assumptions underpinning the male breadwinner/female carer model, is no longer viable in an era of increasingly precarious employment, diverse family forms and deepening inequalities. Labour market and industrial relations changes, when combined with major demographic shifts such as divorce and population ageing, and increasing expectations for community care are contributing to a `care crunch'. The article canvasses the challenge of developing a social risk protection framework that balances caring, work and quality of life.