A Basic income would reinforce the male breadwinner model because it would encourage women to quit the labor market.

Sweden is known to be a particularly normative society, in that it is perhaps more difficult than in less normative societies (all societies are normative to some extent) to live outside the accepted ‘best practice’ norms. This currently shows up for those outside the normative universal worker model. Would a basic income exacerbate this existing social divide between those remaining on a low level of income and those on more average or higher levels of income? Would it create a two-tier system: a ‘them and us’ of lower income groups reliant on basic income and top up benefits and the higher income groups (who possibly resent paying for it all whilst having less ‘free’ time)? So, the Swedish ‘universal worker’ model, or ‘work line’, which is such a core principle of many policies which are generally agreed to support gender equality, is possibly going to rub along as an awkward partner with a basic income. There seems to be a fundamental ideological conflict between the two ideas, a conflict much deeper than economic considerations of state budget, often expressed in the ‘right to work’ and also to meaningful work, not least by the trade unions, which may undermine the universal worker model, bringing its existence into question. If the universal worker model did not continue to hold firm, this would likely undermine related efforts to reduce gender inequalities. Sweden is a good case indicating that structural interventions based around a universal worker model are needed to reduce gender inequalities still today and probably far into the future. It is not clear that a basic income payment would challenge gender inequalities. Indeed, it may reinforce a (male) breadwinner model even in a country like Sweden where norms are clearly moving towards gender equal sharing; the gender wage gap would likely prevail, and we may see a tendency towards women (in particular mothers) quitting labour market work in favour of living on a basic income.