A UBI equalizes the division of care and work

Proponents of a basic income suggest it has value for women in delinking social security from work given the disadvantages faced by women in the job market.84 Work interruptions to have children and fulfil care roles result in shorter careers, lower wages and smaller accumulation of retirement savings for women, making them more dependent on men and vulnerable in old age. A basic income could enhance women’s freedom to make life choices, including allowing them to live independently of men at different stages of their lives. 85 This is an important consideration given the economic vulnerability facing single mothers and single older women in many countries, worsened by austerity and economic crisis. A basic income would enable women to leave violent relationships if they were assured of income for themselves and their children.86 A basic income has also been supported as a necessary means of enhancing women’s democratic citizenship. 87 By focusing on reciprocity across the society, the debate about a basic income can open up conversations about reciprocity within the household. 88 A basic income recognises unpaid and affiliative work as socially valuable and thus has the potential to change understandings of social citizenship. 89 The shift from work to citizenship as the source of income thus increases the possibility of transformed gender relations. Nancy Fraser’s transformative model of citizenship, ‘the universal care-giver model’, sees all members of society participating in paid work and unpaid care with social institutions restructured to support this.90 A basic income, or some variant of it, might enable this change leading to a more equal division of care and work.91 Cox suggests reframing basic income as a ‘universal social dividend’ since this would ‘redefine such income as produced by valuing wide-ranging unpaid contributions to collective social well-being and counter some of the materialist gender inequities of economic models’.92 The challenge to decommodify human activity so that ‘affiliative’ work is valued must be built into policies aimed at achieving gender equality.93 Pateman points out that a feminist lens reorients the basic income debate away from economic questions to ones related to democratisation since it focuses on issues of citizenship and institutions including the workplace and marriage.94 While the debate is often concerned with ‘free-riding’, those who choose not to work while depending on the income of others, a feminist understanding shifts the examination of free-riding to men who continue to expect women to perform the bulk of social reproductive work within their households even when both partners are in paid employment. The idea of a basic income paid to individual women as a citizenship entitlement rather than to the household where it may not be shared equally is important for feminism and democratisation.95