Abstract
Basic income is likely to gain momentum as the next social welfare trend to sweep over the world with ideas of how to improve the fairness and efficiency of distributing money. Other earlier movements with similar ambitions to transform societies, ranging across the political spectrum from socialism to neo-liberalism, have led to very different consequences for strata of citizens, but have in common that they have de-prioritised gender equality in favour of other interests. Advocates of basic income suggest that in addition to pragmatic gains, such as a more efficient state administration, primarily a basic income will empower citizens, leading to the potential for greater human flourishing. Our question is whether this empowerment will be gendered and if so, how? So far, the basic income debate addresses gender only in so far as it would raise the income of the poorest, of whom a larger proportion are women. However, it is less clear how it might contribute to a transformation of gendered behaviour, making possible divergent shapes of life where binary and set notions of gender are not a restriction. We discuss the idea of basic income from a perspective of gender equality in the Swedish context.
Highlights
Basic Income is a social welfare movement currently gaining momentum across the world
We discuss the idea of basic income from a feminist perspective in the Swedish context
The central tenet of the universal worker model is the value to human flourishing of being engaged in paid activity that is meaningful to a community; and an understanding of how core such a contribution is to social inclusion
Summary
Basic Income is a social welfare movement currently gaining momentum across the world. We take as our cornerstone that gender equality would be realised if there were no difference, at the population level, in the distribution of mothers and fathers taking parental leave and participating in the labour market. The central tenet of the universal worker model is the value to human flourishing of being engaged in paid activity that is meaningful to a community; and an understanding of how core such a contribution is to social inclusion. A contribution of feminist policy-making and scholarship has been the observation that freedom of action is contingent on certain structures being in place (of which a basic income might be one). These structures rely on state intervention or ‘dictate’. We bring examples of Swedish interventions, which have the aim of reducing gender inequalities
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