Discussing a basic income without considering gender reinforces patriarchy – a UBI can provide women with economic independence if we Rethink our framework first

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