The assumed gender neutraility of the aff’s expansion of Social Security will exacerbate existing gender inequities

Social security plays a key role in addressing poverty, including gendered poverty. The absence of adequate or appropriate social security adds to the poverty burden faced by women.65 However, gender-neutral social security programmes that assume the unencumbered male worker or citizen is the norm may discriminate against women. Thus, contribution-based pension schemes tend to favour men, who have fewer work interruptions during their lifetimes than women, who often stop working to have children and care for them. Programmes specifically targeted at women that expect them to fulfil socially allocated roles and respon- sibilities may similarly have discriminatory outcomes for women. Social security can discriminate directly against women but more usually does so indirectly.66 Direct discrimination may occur where women are deliberately excluded from participating in a scheme. Indirect discrimination may occur where, for example, social assistance payments are provided to household heads. Since these are usu- ally men because of patriarchal assumptions in families and the wider society, such an approach may have a discriminatory impact. Men are less likely than women to use the income for the benefit of the whole household.67 Access to social security is in some cases more difficult for women who face the danger of violence when collecting payments or within households from men who wish to confiscate their welfare income.68 Women’s caring responsibilities for children, the elderly and sick are often unremunerated or unacknowledged in social security provision. There are limited examples of the use of social security measures to challenge the lack of involvement of men in the care and support of families.69 Feminist efforts to understand women’s poverty in developed countries and the structures that produce it have led to a critique of the modern welfare state and some of the premises of liberal theory underlying it.70 A number of feminist theorists have explored the way in which social policy is gendered.71 They have pointed to the historical premise of the welfare state of a male breadwinner model that casts women, with children, as dependents. Even when women are in the workforce, they often work part-time, are poorly paid, have smaller social security entitlements and therefore still rely on men for support. Welfare states in the developed world and under state socialism have proved generally deficient (to varying degrees) in addressing gender discrimination both in relation to pay and the status of women’s work and benefits; and in relation to their reproductive and caring functions in those societies.72 Comparisons between different welfare regimes have shown variations in the position of women that often correspond to their workforce participation and extent of childcare provision. Even the best welfare models that have moved from male breadwinner to dual breadwinner and even to ‘parent-worker-citizen’ models (as in Sweden) are still failing to adequately overcome gender inequalities.73 While some European countries have tried to address the impact of the gender wage gap and work inter- ruptions faced by women assuming caring functions, many countries perpetu- ate gender inequalities through gender ‘neutrality’ or indirectly target women through cutbacks to existing programmes.74 In some countries, welfare provision has become increasingly punitive, especially for sole mothers, with recipients stigmatised, stereotyped and burdened with conditions.75 Welfare restructuring and cutbacks since the 1980s have been accompanied by a corrosive discourse that casts women recipients of welfare as irresponsible, immoral and lazy and that sees dependency as deviant.76 Recent austerity measures since the global financial crisis of 2008, often involving reductions to sole-parent payments,77 have also been accompanied by negative discourse. More recently, writers in the developing world have conducted analyses of their own countries as well as international trends in the development of gen- dered social policy.78 The lack of adequate welfare safety nets in developing countries has a significant impact on women’s poverty.79 In the past decade some developing countries have introduced social assistance programmes that have had marked impacts on human development.80 While traditional social security systems were often designed around male-dominated formal employment, some recent programmes in developing countries have responded to this imbalance by specifically targeting women (as citizens rather than as workers). Social assistance programmes targeted at women in some developing countries have had positive results but many gaps in provision remain and certain problems have emerged. The development literature illustrates how policies based on patriarchal assumptions about work, family and the economy can reinforce existing gender inequalities.81 Some of the programmes targeted at women have the effect of per- petuating gender divisions by making women responsible for care. This is despite the fact that addressing women’s disproportionate responsibility for care in these societies has been highlighted as a critical consideration for social protection policy.82 Conditions that are attached to such assistance often impose additional burdens on women.83 There is broad consensus amongst feminist writers in this field that social protection programmes that are rights-based and universal have advantages for women but these are most effective when they are alive to the needs and specificities of gender relations and other dynamics in different country contexts. In addition, social assistance without efforts to bring women into work or to formalise informal work with attendant benefits is insufficient.84