Social Security and Gender: Brazilian and World Practices

Abstract

Social security is concerned on easing the impact of contingencies that lead to capacity loss for generating income. There are, however, conceptual differences between genders with respect to social security contributions and benefits. This text is concerned with equality and specificity in the treatment given to the different genders. Equality and specificity between sexes can be attributed to, basically, two different reasons: Biological and socio-cultural factors. Biological differences lead to issues around reproductive functions (birth and nursing). Socio-cultural differences lead to constructs defined in the specific society (cultural and religious values, family ties and hierarchy, labor market sexual bias, patterns of schooling, etc.). They show up in the labor market, in family structure and in levels of schooling. This text places social security in a historical perspective of the in[equality] between genders at a international as well as a national level. International unified concerns with equality and specificity between genders in the realm of social security are relatively recent. Only in 1919 the ILO - International Labour Organization formulated its first convention dealing with issues related to maternity protection. ILO conventions dealing with women protection with respect to social security benefits as well as the main issues defended by women organizations in world conferences sponsored by United Nations are presented and analyzed in this paper. For the Brazilian context, it is presented a list of the main differences between men and women with respect to social security benefits. Brazilian social security benefits are characterized by a major male profile. That is seen as a consequence of their predominance in the formal labor market in terms of quantity and of quality of position and relative earnings. Consequently, women benefit values are lower than men's. This situation is not due to social security rules and regulations unfairness of treatment but only reflects the actual situation in the labor market. In order to best understand the Brazilian situation and to place in the international context, legislation in 60 countries are compared. The comparison includes information disaggregated by gender on: minimum age for retirement, eligibility conditions for survivor's pension, maternity benefits and family responsibilities.