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Criticism 4 - UBI undermines the workers In this discussion there was only a cursory mention of another important criticism of UBI, one that often comes from the Left: UBI will undermine the power of organised labour. It this were true this would be an important criticism. For we know that weaker trade unionism is correlated with growing social injustice and inequality. However, as the benefit system has become more vicious, more controlling and less like UBI, we have certainly seen no increase in union power. So again, the empirical evidence for Coote’s argument seems poor. Moreover, conceptually, it is surprising to see UBI presented as a threat to the trade union movement. Marx rightly observed that current labour markets are inherently unfair because people need money to survive and so can effectively be forced into work at almost any price. Exploitation feeds on the fear of poverty and starvation. In theory UBI should increase the supply of people into the labour market, but it should also radically reduce the ‘elasticity of supply’ or in other words: more people will want to work, but they will be pickier about what work they will do and at what price. So there is nothing inherently threatening to the trade union movement about UBI. Quite the opposite - there will be more people who will benefit from collective action, support and representation. And these people will be much better able to exercise their power by withholding their labour, without fear of poverty or starvation.

A guaranteed income would also give activists and organizers within marginalized communities more space to work on the myriad problems a basic income would not solve. Many people working for a more just world get little to no pay for their work. In a world with basic income, activists would not have to work a day job or constantly hustle to get by, but would be able to give their lives to agitating for other causes without the anxiety that comes from being financially precarious. For these reasons the Movement for Black Lives—a coalition of more than fifty black-led organizations seeking “radical transformation, not reactionary reform” for racial justice—released a six-point platform that included reparations for slavery and the institutional exclusion and disenfranchisement that followed. UBI+ alone would go a long way to improving security for all marginalized individuals and families in the United States, but a UBI+ coupled with a broader social vision of cooperative security, such as the one advanced by the Movement for Black Lives, could change the game. This vision would, wherever possible, embrace radical forms of cooperative security, from universal health care coverage to the abolition of both police and prisons.

Maintaining a decent standard of living Giving people a bit more money may not be a panacea, but we do know it helps. Providing people with low incomes with more money — even relatively modest amounts — through simple cash transfers has been shown to have measurable improvements for people’s lives. In Manitoba, a small cash benefit to low-income pregnant women translated to healthier babies, as mothers could better afford necessities. Cash child benefits make a big difference in the lives of low-income families, as money supports basic needs and investments in children’s education. Randomized controlled trials testing unconditional cash transfers in the developing world have also shown that simple transfers of money to low-income households have strong benefits. When you give people who don’t have enough money more of it, no strings attached, it gets used well. It’s not clear, however, that a universal basic income would be likely to put more money in the hands of people with the lowest incomes. It depends on the level that it’s set at it, how it’s designed, and what it would replace. A basic income of even $800 per month ($9,600 per year) would be at least a modest improvement for most single “employable” people in Canada over the meagre “welfare incomes” that they get from provincial social assistance and federal and provincial tax credits — even more so if it were to come without the punitive rules of most social assistance programs. For others, losing other income supports (such as child benefits) or other benefits (such as extended health coverage) would quickly leave them worse off, even before taking into account the effects of higher taxes to pay for the program. This is particularly true if we look not just at income but at whether that income is sufficient to meet the costs of an acceptable standard of living.

Criticism 3 - UBI will be inadequate A further paradoxical criticism of UBI made by Coote is that current benefit levels are too low for people to live on and therefore UBI will not be enough to live on. This is a confusing criticism because people clearly are ‘living’ (just about) on the current benefits levels. If (rightly) you think current benefits are too low then the real question should be what is the best strategy for increasing them. Advocates of UBI at least have a plan for tackling this problem: Increase the popularity of the lowest income level (the basic income) by ensuring that everyone benefits when it is increased (i.e. universality) Make it easier for people to earn extra money if they want to without losing the current income (i.e. no means-testing below the basic income) Extend benefits to non-working partners to reduce exploitation and domestic violence within the family (i.e. individual rather than household-based entitlement) Make it easier for people to do things to experiment, learn, grow, care or contribute without losing their income (i.e. no conditionality) In this way UBI is transformational on many levels. Unlike the post-War benefit reforms, UBI does not assume that current social, economic and industrial structures will remain static. UBI encourages us to see that we are each dependent, not on the boss, not on the state, but on each other. For UBI can only exist in a society that commits itself to the principle that everyone should have enough to contribute, flourish and connect, and that we all must contribute as best we can to ensure everyone has this right.

Toni Preckwinkle is hoping to start a national conversation about guaranteed income with Cook County Ill.'s pilot program, which is giving 3,250 families $500 a month for two years. A little boost, just $500 a month, could help a transit-dependent resident in suburban Cook County, Ill. finally buy a car and expand her horizons for a new job, a better job, away from the bus or train lines. An extra $500 in mid-December could mean new winter coats and shoes that actually fit growing children. Or a cushion for the budget in a volatile environment when food and gas prices fluctuate. Or just fewer hard choices for people who don’t have many options. Those are some of the outcomes the Cook County Promise hopes for more than 3,200 families over the next two years, all of whom will receive $500 a month. When the county opened a lottery for the program for roughly two weeks last fall, more than 233,000 people applied. “There’s clearly a great need,” said County Board President Toni Preckwinkle. “I’m confident that we’re going to have some interesting findings at the end of our two years and we’ll continue on with this initiative.” All told, the county is putting $42 million in American Rescue Plan Act funding into the two-year pilot project and is committing to continue with county funding after that.

At the same time, predictions of a drop in women's labor force participation may also be overstated. Sociological and heterodox economic perspectives have emphasized broader motivations other than income regarding labor force participation, such as status, satisfaction, and other less tangible benefits. The incentive for unemployed persons to take up employment is most often measured using the "replacement rate" (RR)—the ratio between net income out of work and net income when in work, and research in this area reinforces the idea of work or employment being more than just income. Empirical data shows that there are many who choose to work, despite facing replacement ratios of close to or over 100 percent (Callan et al., 2011). That is, they choose to be working, even if they could be close to or even better off financially by remaining unemployed. BIG advocates (Fitzpatrick, 1999; Van Parijs, 1995) further point out that existing systems of social security have substantial disincentives to work embodied in unemployment and poverty traps where low-income households face severe reductions in benefits for every dollar they earn. Combined with logistical problems, financial costs of entering work, and uncertainty regarding stability of employment, there is a huge incentive to forgo work in favor of benefits, if choosing one reduces income from the other. BIG reduces such disincentives, thus potentially making the most vulnerable women better off, with greater rather than lesser incentive to engage in paid labor. This issue highlights the role of women's diversity in creating ambiguous effects of BIG, with some women likely to be gainers and some losers under any reform (see also Robeyns, 2001).

Basic income is by no means enough on its own to achieve true gender equality, but the feminist justification of a basic income, unlike justifications based on the traditional androcentric subject of justice and citizenship, implies other institutional and policy changes as well to make sharing caregiving responsibilities easier and more attractive for women and men. Some steps along the path to gender equality follow directly from the universal caregiver model of citizenship, and include: • the wider availability of part-time work and job sharing; • job security during periodic leaves for full-time caregiving; • the decoupling of access to benefits such as health insurance and pensions from paid employment (a continuing problem in the US); • the widespread availability of care centres, both publicly supported and privately run, for children, older people and adults unable to care for themselves; • the reconfiguring of children’s schooling away from an anachronistic schedule designed to conform to the requirements of an agricultural society and a schedule that recognises the realities of paid employment demands on many parents.6 Other steps require extending the norm of gender neutrality now prevalent in higher education and professional workplaces, for example to the still androcentric institutions of vocational education and skilled blue-collar workplaces (Bergmann, 2005; Estévez-Abe, 2006). Still other steps require a more radical restructuring of the employment sector including, for example, reductions in rewards for seniority or continuity of service in promotions or advancement to protected status in both blue-collar and professional jobs.

Second, let me emphasize that a basic income is not a panacea. In itself, a basic income would not, for instance, provide an adequate stock of affordable housing, sufficient good quality education, adequate health care, an end to racism, or violence-free neighborhoods. Yet if a genuinely democratic society in which the freedom of women is as important as that of men remains an aspiration, it is hard to see that there is a substitute for an unconditional basic income.

The feminist version of the liberal egalitarian tradition that has as its foundation a universal, unconditional basic income at a level to meet basic needs, on the other hand prioritises the emerging norm of combined care work and paid employment throughout adulthood. The latter attempts not so much to mould individual behaviour to a socially dominant norm, but to allow for the emergence of alternative norms of behaviour beyond the dominant universal breadwinner norm. By socialising the cost of supporting care – not only among fathers, but also among all those whose high earnings suggest protection from the burdens of care – a basic income promotes reciprocity not only within families but also between those with care responsibilities and those without. Finally, by providing an unconditional floor of income to low-skilled workers, basic income provides bargaining power for those who might prefer to stay home and take care of their own children or parents over working as low-paid caregivers for higher-paid women and men, or for women and men of all classes to demand workplaces more accommodating of universal care responsibilities. A universal, unconditional basic income does not promise a gender-symmetrical society – an unreachable goal anyway, until men can bear and breastfeed babies. But it may lead to a society in which remaining, and perhaps essential gender differences do not penalise women (or men) who choose not to pursue androcentric ideals of citizenship by relegating them to poverty, dependence on their spouses or employers, and second-class citizenship.

Basic income is by no means enough on its own to achieve true gender equality, but the feminist justification of a basic income, unlike justifications based on the traditional androcentric subject of justice and citizenship, implies other institutional and policy changes as well to make sharing caregiving responsibilities easier and more attractive for women and men. Some steps along the path to gender equality follow directly from the universal caregiver model of citizenship, and include: • the wider availability of part-time work and job sharing; • job security during periodic leaves for full-time caregiving; • the decoupling of access to benefits such as health insurance and pensions from paid employment (a continuing problem in the US); • the widespread availability of care centres, both publicly supported and privately run, for children, older people and adults unable to care for themselves; • the reconfiguring of children’s schooling away from an anachronistic schedule designed to conform to the requirements of an agricultural society and towards a schedule that recognises the realities of paid employment demands on many parents.6 Other steps require extending the norm of gender neutrality now prevalent in higher education and professional workplaces, for example to the still androcentric institutions of vocational education and skilled blue-collar workplaces (Bergmann, 2005; Estévez-Abe, 2006). Still other steps require a more radical restructuring of the employment sector including, for example, reductions in rewards for seniority or continuity of service in promotions or advancement to protected status in both blue-collar and professional jobs.

Equally importantly, a UBI provides support for those undertaking work that is poorly remunerated in existing economies. Indeed, as feminists such as Federici (2012) and James (2012) have long argued, the reproduction of capitalist workforces relies upon the exploitation of women’s unpaid work in the home. Those working as migrants and in the service industry are equally central to ongoing production and reproduction, but undervalued in existing political economies. A UBI is normatively different than arguments in favour of payment for specific services; as an unconditional grant, it is received whether one works or labours. In practice, however, it enables participation in and greater valuation of reproductive activities. While it is difficult to conceive of a UBI that would replace the standard of living of traditionally unionised, white, male industrial labour force, a moderate UBI could effectively increase incomes and reduce the dependency of more highly exploited populations doing socially reproductive work.

Adequacy is an essential element of the right to social security. The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural rights explained that: Benefits, whether in cash or in kind, must be adequate in amount and duration in order that everyone may realize his or her rights to family protection and assistance, an adequate standard of living and adequate access to health care … States parties must also pay full respect to the principle of human dignity contained in the preamble of the Covenant, and the principle of non-discrimination, so as to avoid any adverse effect on the levels of benefits and the form in which they are provided. 31 Adequate social protection that is attentive to gender must ensure that income support takes account of the position of women within households, women’s unpaid work and care obligations, women’s lower earnings and savings, and women’s position in the workforce which is often informal and precarious. What constitutes adequacy and whether there are minimum core levels of provision required by rights has been debated within the field of social and economic rights .32 In addition, valid concerns have been raised with a human rights emphasis on sufficiency leading to efforts to tackle poverty without also ensuring distributive equality.33 A substantive equality approach to social protection rights requires structural responses to systemic inequality via social, economic and political reconfigurations that lead to fundamental changes to gender, class and other relations.34 It thus requires policies aimed at overcoming inequality rather than just providing minimum levels of poverty relief. This idea of adequacy should be central to the human rights lens used to consider questions of the theory, design and politics of a basic income. In addition, adequacy must be understood as a global issue since affordability and economic choices facing states require international cooperation and assistance, as required by the ICESCR.35

In the feminist literature there is a divide between those who think that a basic income is a good thing for women and those who think it will reinforce women’s disproportionate responsibility for care. They are worried that people will say that women should stay in the domestic sphere because now they are being compensated for doing so. What’s interesting to me about the welfare rights movements that originated in the 1960s and ’70s in the US and in Europe is how they inform this feminist debate. In those movements, the women who would have been the immediate beneficiaries of an unconditional guaranteed income were absolutely in favor of it. It was middle class and professional women in the 1970s who were against the idea of a basic income and who thought it would be something that would relegate women to the domestic sphere. This argument clearly doesn’t offer an intersectional understanding of feminism. When we think about what’s good for women, we have to think about what’s good for women of different classes and what’s good for women of different races and ethnicities. The outsourcing of childcare is one of the things that makes it possible for middle class and professional women to have careers. When women join the labor market, it’s not the case that care work is redistributed evenly among men and women. It’s being redistributed among women—specifically to poor women of color, to legal and undocumented immigrants, who now have to leave their own families in the care of someone else, who is typically unpaid, and earn a wage by caring for other people’s families. Redistributing care work in this way does not solve gender division of labor. We have to redistribute it to men as well. HB: In her famous essay “Welfare is a Women’s Issue,” former chairperson of the National Welfare Rights Organization [NWRO] Johnnie Tillmon made that connection about domestic service work and the division of labor—her analysis, gained from lived experience, was spot on, which I think says a lot about the importance of participatory policy design. AZ: It’s absolutely important to hear from the people who are going to be the biggest beneficiaries of a basic income or any other kind of policy of welfare reform. I’m drawn to the welfare rights movement because women were arguing for increased and unconditional welfare benefits. Those demands are clearly important to the discourse around basic income today.

Most importantly, basic income indirectly compensates care and society’s other unpaid work without reinforcing the existing gendered distribution of labour or the primacy of the public sphere by equating care with work. Although basic income is often characterised as allowing people not to work, its most radical feature in comparison to current forms of welfare state redistribution is that it allows people to work without losing benefits immediately at a punitively high effective rate of taxation, which they do in the ‘poverty trap’ effect of conditional or means-tested benefits. Because of its universality and its unconditionality, basic income preserves work incentives; at low levels of income it is not a substitute for earned income, but a complement, and operates as a wage subsidy (Van Parijs, 2001). This means that low-wage jobs, or the volunteer work that can provide some of the non-financial benefits of paid employment, for both the individual and society, can become feasible in a way they are not under conditional or means-tested forms of redistribution. Together with other strategies to increase the flexibility of paid employment, basic income promotes the ability of individuals to choose the mix of paid work, care and leisure that best meets their needs at any given time (Roebyns, 2000). Because no one – man or woman – has to choose between being a ‘worker’ or a ‘caregiver’ to receive income, basic income has the most potential of any redistributive scheme to transform over time the relation of both men and women to the provision of care and to the world of paid employment.

5. Conclusions: Basic Income, a Radical or Conservative Policy with Regard to Gendered Empowerment? A basic income promises ‘real freedom’, or a freedom from dictate; what role then for state intervention? The interplay between social policies and norms is of key interest to social scientists and policy makers. This is particularly clear in the arena of public health, in which the interventionist state often plays a strong role in changing our behaviours, for e.g., with regard to smoking, alcohol consumption, vaccinations, sugar consumption. There are other examples around environmental behaviours too, e.g. recycling and reduced use of plastic bags and other plastics. Should the state not take action too with regard to gender equalities? Norms will develop: there is no such thing as total ‘real’ freedom. Legal frameworks however, such as parental leave policies can see changes to norms, even those as deeply embedded as parenting practices. In Sweden, such statements are hardly controversial, but choice and gender equality are sometimes contrasted, and the limits to state intervention are constantly renegotiated. Basic income would potentially change the boundaries for state intervention, which for many sounds intuitively positive, and may well bring many benefits. However, if the state does not intervene regarding gender-equality, gender norms will be determined by other less visible forces, such as the power dynamics within households. It is likely that a universal basic income has the potential for empowerment for all, but for this to be achieved, attention will need to be paid to its potential for gendered outcomes. The concerns raised here regarding the limitations of empowerment for women from a basic income—particularly with regard to whom remains holding the baby, doing the majority of domestic work and the majority of both formal and informal care work—are not in themselves arguments against the implementation of a basic income. However, there are certainly strong reasons to not let basic income replace other structures that have been shown to be relevant for gender equality, in particular the ones directed at supporting families, such as parental leave and childcare services.

Gender Inequality One way in which UBI can serve as a potential tool to correct gender inequalities is through its individual feature: It provides dependent spouses with exit options. In most systems of assistance, eligibility for welfare support is calculated per household. This makes it particularly difficult for those abused by spouses they economically depend on to free themselves. Conner (2014, p. 340) sums it up this way: “While a batterer is empowered by his partner's financial dependence, the autonomy of a woman who is victimized is diminished by her abuser's ability to control her through financial means. Moreover, financial instability is one of the greatest reasons why, after gaining freedom, a woman who experiences battering has limited choices and may ultimately acquiesce to her partner's attempts to reconcile.” This line of support for UBI is fairly uncontroversial and accepted by most in the literature. Note, however, that it does not necessarily constitute an argument for UBI as such; an individually means-tested and lightly conditional benefit would suffice to undermine the financial dependence of spouses. What makes a truly universal and unconditional basic income proposal more centrally connected to the goals of gender justice, I will now propose, is its capacity to contribute to the proper remuneration of care work.

In liberal democracies a woman's relationship to the state is mediated by her husband, who is seen to contribute directly to society through his paid work. Despite recognition at the level of discourse of women's "vital unpaid service" to the nation, this service is still treated as if it were but a personal one to her husband. A new model of citizenship needs to explicitly recognize the importance of the "sexual contract." In addition, it must recognize the social changes in personal relationships and intimate/sexual lives. Janet Finch (1989) points out that historical evidence shows that when the state's notion of family obligation is out of line with individual ideas of appropriateness, policies can have the opposite effect to that intended. Both Finch (1989) and Weston (1991) emphasize that individuals tend to see family as a last resort for assistance. This is in direct contrast to the state's assumptions, enshrined in social security policies, that the (nuclear) family should be a first resort. Several authors have proposed concepts that attempt to account for this. Julia O'Connor's insistence on the importance of personal autonomy, as "insulation from personal and public dependence," seems to us a promising direction (O'Connor 1993, 515). Lister's concept of "defamilialization" performs a similar role (1994; see also the discussion in Lister 1995, 29-30). In our opinion, welfare policies need to be disengaged from a particular model of the family— worker-citizen + wife-mother + children—if women are to achieve personal autonomy and a direct relationship to the state. The implications of family change and sexual citizenship for policy are that policies should be based on personal autonomy and enable a variety of supportive relationships. This involves a radical rethinking of the relationship between family and citizenship, a relationship with significant implications for the construction of gender. In an apparently paradoxical fashion, the best way to support families may be to treat people as individuals in social security policies. The privileging of marriage (even if broadened to include cohabiting heterosexual couples and even lesbian or gay couples) is part and parcel of constituting women as "second-class" citizens. Equal citizenship rights involve recognizing the dependence of the "social contract" on the "sexual contract" and devising new ways of organizing the various types of work that need to be done. As Judith Stacey has argued: "The family" is not "here to stay." Nor should we wish it were. On the contrary, I believe that all democratic people, whatever their kinship preferences, should work to hasten its demise. An ideological concept that imposes mythical homogeneity on the diverse means by which people organize their intimate relationships, "the family" distorts and devalues this rich variety of kinship stories.

JG: Can you describe how you came to understand basic income as in the interests of the advancement of women and a more democratic society? CP: One of the first things that attracted me to basic income is that, if the income was set at a sufficient level, it would not just relieve poverty, but it would be the end of poverty. For women it is actually very important because women’s income tends to be less than men’s. I mean if you think about a few decades ago [in the global North], it was not seen as altogether seemly for married women to be employed. They were reliant on their husband’s income, and his generosity (or not) for their own standard of living. Now, women’s wages still tend to be less than men’s, so we still don’t have a situation where women and men have equally high standards of living. With something like a basic income, women could be assured of a reasonable standard of living in the same way men are. Finally, we’d really start talking about equal citizenship. JG: That certainly supports the argument of why it would be better for individuals to be entitled to the basic income rather than a household to have a set amount. CP: You know what happens historically when money goes to the household? Men tend to spend it on things other than the necessities of life for their wives and children. One good thing about family allowances in Britain is that they were always paid to the mother, so there was a really good chance that the children benefited. JG: Could you say a bit more about the ways in which a basic income enables women (or anyone) to participate fully as a citizen in a democracy? CP: A certain level of subsistence is required if you’re going to have the time and energy and possibility of getting the knowledge required to participate fully in your society. If all your time and energy goes toward trying to make enough money to keep body and soul together, or to providing for a family, then you are going to have to make pretty heroic efforts to actually participate. If you are actually interested in having a democratic citizenry — that is where citizens have the opportunity, in some way or another, to govern themselves and not just be governed by others — then there has to be a material basis for it.

Now is the time to ask the second question. The conditions under which the institution of employment and the Anglo-American social insurance system were constructed have now crumbled. “Old economy” male breadwinner jobs are being swept away in global economic restructuring and “downsizing.” New jobs have been created but many are low paid, lacking benefits, and temporary, and economic insecurity is widespread. Views about femininity, masculinity, and marriage are changing too, but since we are still in the midst of all these changes it is hard to know what the eventual outcome will be. Still, times of rapid change provide opportunities to investigate new ideas and look critically at old arrangements—including the moral hazard of institutions that give incentives to men to avoid their fair share of the unpaid work of caring for others. It has now become possible to rethink the connections between income and paid employment; between marriage, employment, and citizenship; between the private and public division of labor; and between caring work and other work—and to reconsider the meaning of “work.” But such rethinking requires a different approach from that taken by many participants in the debate about stakeholding and basic income. This is crucial if proper account is to be taken of women’s freedom, which has received rather short shrift in discussions of a basic income. As early as 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft argued in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman that rights, citizenship, and full standing for women required economic independence, whether a woman was married or single.33 As Ackerman and Alstott emphasize, a capital grant would be a step in this direction, but a basic income would for the first time provide all women with lifelong economic independence. Thus feminists might be expected strongly to support the introduction of a basic income.34

The liberal egalitarian tradition suggests a different foundation for a gender egalitarian society: an unconditional basic income, which, I argue, supports care work in accordance with the principles of a feminist theory of distributive justice and the universal caregiver model of citizenship. First, a basic income derived from a feminist theory of justice would provide every child and adult a guaranteed minimum income sufficient for basic needs, fulfilling the feminist reciprocity principle; this is in contrast to basic income proposals justified on other grounds, which often limit the basic income to adults, or tie the amount of the benefit to reductions in inequality rather than provision of basic needs. Second, basic income provides caregivers with resources to use as they prefer: as a personal caregiving stipend, to pay for care provided by others, or indeed, for any other purpose, thereby supporting care and supporting the autonomy of caregivers. Third, by redistributing income to those with the least, basic income redistributes power to society’s most vulnerable members. For those in need of care, it reduces the power imbalance between care recipients and caregivers by guaranteeing recipients of care at least minimal resources, thereby fostering equality of respect. It reduces power imbalances within the family, where it provides a caregiver financial resources and a citizenship status independent of paid employment, and it provides a wage supplement and some bargaining power to low-paid workers. Finally, an unconditional and universal basic income triggered by no condition other than low income, and recouped through the tax system from recipients with higher incomes, has the potential to eliminate poverty more effectively than any other scheme of redistribution.