There’s a laundry list of potential issues that could lead the UBI to increase gender inequality.

Others have been more cautious about the implications of UBI for gender equality. The potentially high costs could preclude public investments in other areas, including care services. One estimation of the costs of UBI paid at 100 per cent of the national poverty line to every adult and child for a sample of 130 countries found that this basic level would require a significant fiscal outlay of 20 to 35 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) for most world regions, making this a very difficult proposition for most countries and out of reach for those that are highly indebted.24 The question of how the substantial level of resources necessary for UBI set at this level could be mobilized raises important questions about sustainability and equity, with implications for gender equality. For UBI to be within reach for highly-indebted countries, debt relief would be an essential first step. In the context of fiscal tightening and austerity, there are fears that UBI is being promoted to replace social security—which tends to provide higher levels of protection and promotes social solidarity—with a minimal social safety net plus individual private insurance schemes for those who can afford them. This runs the risk of exacerbating inequalities given that, in determining premiums and entitlements, private insurance schemes tend to discriminate by sex, age, pre-existing conditions that are affected by structural determinants of health, and other factors, rather than pooling risks and resources as is the case in solidarity-based social insurance schemes.25 A flat-rate UBI for all would also fail to address specific gendered risks throughout life, such as childbirth, unemployment and old age, and may also erode existing provisions for groups such as women with disabilities or single mothers. Feminists have also expressed doubt about how far UBI truly challenges ongoing gender- and race-based inequalities in unpaid care and paid employment.26 They have cautioned that, rather than shifting gender norms on care, UBI in higher income contexts and heterosexual partnerships may mean that women cut back on paid work while men continue in full-time employment and receive additional income on top. UBI would therefore be little more than a “housewives wage”, reinforcing gender inequalities.27 The impacts of this potential reshuffling of household labour on migrant domestic workers remains unknown.28 Given the enormous fiscal implications, most UBI schemes will likely not be generous enough to cover basic living costs, meaning that recipients will require additional sources of income, particularly from paid work. In this regard, UBI cannot make up for lack of fulfillment of worker’s rights or access to decent work, especially for women and transgender and gender-diverse people experiencing multiple and intersecting inequalities in access to employment. Trade unionists have rightly warned that UBI does not solve issues of low pay, precarious work or lack of negotiating power in the workplace and could potentially detract from the need to tackle exploitative labour conditions and strengthen workers’ rights, including through living wages, universal job guarantees, affirmative action, unionization and collective bargaining.29 In this case, UBI would merely act as a band aid for a broken economic system and divert attention from more radical, transformative change needed to address structural inequalities. Finally, UBI raises important questions around who is included in a purportedly ‘universal’ scheme. For example, if receipt were attached to narrow notions of citizenship, incarcerated or formerly-incarcerated persons (a group often including disproportionately high numbers of people of colour and people living in poverty), migrants and their children (particularly those who are undocumented), unhoused people and those without government-issued IDs that reflect their identity (including many transgender and intersex individuals) might all experience exclusionary treatment.30