A basic income would deny gender justice because it polarizes women and it raises the costs of making the gender lifestyles symmetrical

1. Gender‐Symmetrical Lifestyles as a Criterion of Gender Justice To judge the degree to which a policy promotes gender justice,1 I suggest an operational definition of “gender justice” based on an ideal of gendersymmetrical lifestyles: A society is gender just when the costs of engaging in a lifestyle characterized by gender‐symmetry (both in the domestic and in the public sphere) are, for both men and women, less or equal to the costs of engaging in a lifestyle that is gender asymmetrical. A gender‐symmetrical lifestyle is one in which women and men engage equally in paid work and family life, which includes unpaid care work for dependants. I start from the assumption that work and family are the central concerns of most peopleʹs lives, if we understand these as the following: “work” includes market and nonmarket activities that are productive of goods or services, and “family” includes various long‐term living arrangements based on emotional attachments typically involving extended periods of dependency related to child care, old age, illness and sometimes life‐long disabilities. It is reasonable to expect that, in order to lead fulfilling lives, the majority of people will need ample opportunities to thrive in both their working and their family lives. Hence, just social arrangements should make “work and family” the default position and should minimize the costs of choosing this situation, for both men and women, relative to either the work only or family only situation. An additional argument in favour of gender‐symmetrical lifestyles is to be found in the feminist literature, which argues that caregiving should be recognized as a universal duty of citizenship (Bubeck, 1999; Kittay, 1999). Introducing a BI would be compatible with gender justice and possibly beneficial for justice, all things considered, only if it does not raise the costs of engaging in gender‐symmetrical lifestyles. But we have reasons to believe that a BI is likely, in the long run, to raise the costs of gender‐symmetrical lifestyles. I rely on already developed arguments indicating that, should a BI be introduced, it would be reasonable to expect an overall drop in female labour (Kesenne, 1990; Robeyns, 2001; Bergmann, 2004); differing income effects for different groups of women (Robeyns, 2001); and a drop in womenʹs bargaining power within the household, decreased self‐esteem and loss of social capital (Robeyns, 2001). Additionally, work on womenʹs preferences and behaviour with respect to combining home and career in the context of public policies suggests that a BI would increase the polarization between home‐centred and work‐centred women (Hakim, 2000). Research by Catherine Hakim shows that if cash is provided instead of services (for example, home care allowances instead of services such as childcare), female preference patterns become more polarized: more women become either career‐oriented or home‐oriented and fewer try to adapt in order to combine home and career (Hakim, 2000).2 Suppose, based on the similarities between a BI and the open‐ended (cash) benefits discussed by Hakim, that the introduction of a BI would lead to more polarization of womenʹs lifestyle preferences. The group of adaptive women would shrink, and there would be less incentive for adapting policies that make the costs of gender‐symmetrical lifestyles the cheapest option for both men and women.