K - Gender Kritik of Economics - Michigan 7 2023 KLAB

Gender K of Economics – Mich K Lab
1NC
The 1ACs fiscal politics are a means of ERASING gendered violence on the margins while perpetuating economic disparities and impeding progress towards gender equality in the social sphere.
Marco Cedro et al 23 [Marco Cedro is researcher of Tax Law at LUMSA, authored Sect. 11.4, Sect. 11.2 is written by Eleonor Kristoffersson. Teresa Pontón Aricha wrote Sect. 11.1, Lidija Živković Sect. 11.3 and the conclusion is authored by Teresa Pontón Aricha and Lidija Živković, “Gender Equitable Taxation”, p. 393-394 of “Gender-Competent Legal Education”, Springer, Accessed: 7/17/23] HZaidi
Economic policies (both macroeconomic and microeconomic policies) are often thought of as gender neutral. Budgeting is generally considered a gender-neutral policy instrument. But that is a mistake: the budget is not gender neutral, but rather gender blind. Some examples of gender biases in taxation, both explicit and implicit, have been analysed in the previous section. Moreover, budgeting policies can hide gender biases too. Public accounting policies are not gender sensitive and have a negative impact on women compared to men. It must be understood that by maintaining gender inequality, these policies also have a negative impact from an economic point of view, making it difficult for all categories to access work or business. It is clear that governmental budgets reflect political priorities. If we neglect this distinct impact on people, we perpetuate economic disparities and disable the improvement of social roles various groups individuals hold. National or local budgets do not affect individuals directly, but the choices contained in the national or local budget, impacting the market demand or public services, influence employment, family life, healthcare, price level and so on. Individuals in general have different economic roles and, consequently, different economic and social power. In most cases, women and minorities are at a disadvantage. The apparent neutrality of the public budget hides the fact that, often, women and third-gender persons do not have the same variety of choices (political, social, economic) in relation to others. If we consider gender inequality as inefficient, both from the point of view of access to work and business, and as a lack of participation in political life, it becomes clear that the government (and parliament) can use the money raised through taxes to reduce inequality. By orienting public finances, it is possible to redistribute wealth and fight against women’s poverty and gender inequality. Public spending encompasses gender bias and produces gender-disparate effects on distribution of public services and wealth. Usually, government budget is considered as a monetary quantification of political objectives,86 but we must understand that the public budget is the result of political negotiations and it is influenced by political and social contests and values. Public budget is the reflection of the government’s interpretation of these values through the use of public expenditures. Very often public policies do not consider the unpaid work of women enough, especially during economic crises.87 Women become the last resort of families, compensating for insufficient public healthcare or social services. Public budgets do not recognise the role of women (nor individuals of third-gender and non-binary individuals) in the economy and society. To achieve equity and redistribution of wealth, considering the limited public resources, it is necessary to set the objectives of public finance taking into account these needs.88 Recently, UN statements (Millennium Development Goals and Sustainable Development Goals, especially action n. 5) reiterated the need to adopt and strengthen sound policies and enforceable legislation for the promotion of gender equality. Fiscal policies determine the composition of expenditure, and expenditures can consent investments and benefits to influence private behaviours in a gender responsive way. A high level of taxation and a similar level of public expenditures can contribute to an inclusive growth,89sustaining investments that reduce gender gap. Moreover, austerity measures after the financial crisis were executed without regard to gender bias. By cutting public expenditures or reducing taxation, governments cannot drive budget priorities towards improving the opportunities for minorities, boosting welcoming culture towards gender equality and avoiding the lack of integration into social life.
Their normative depiction of fiscal redistribution fails to account for ongoing gendered discrepancies – leads to serial policy failure.
Tellier 20 (Geneviève is Full Professor at the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa and Treasurer of the Canadian Study of Parliament Group. “Canadian Economic and Fiscal Policy: Questioning Markets’ Neutrality.” The Palgrave Handbook of Gender, Sexuality, and Canadian Politics, Nov. 2020, pp. 459–83, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49240-3_23. Accessed 11 July 2023. //dre)
A second important function of the state is to ensure that existing resources are redistributed in society. The issue is complex, since there are no clear answers as to what constitutes precisely the optimal level of redistribution. Should everyone have access to the same quantity of resources, or should some resources be allocated to some specific groups and individuals? If so, who should be targeted? Why? How? In sum, the redistribution of resources rests on normative considerations about equality and differences among citizens. Modern societies have provided some answers to these questions with the establishment of the welfare state. Although some early initiatives appeared at the end of the nineteenth century, the welfare state as we know it today was implemented during the twentieth century, especially after the Second World War in the case of Canada. Broadly speaking, the welfare state can be defined as fulfilling a social-solidarity function, by providing some basic social rights (e.g., access to free healthcare services and universal education), and offering minimal economic security to all (through pensions, social assistance, employment insurance, etc.). Nowadays, public policies associated with the welfare state makes up most of the modern state activities. As Fig. 23.1 indicates, more than 60 per cent of all Canadian public spending is dedicated to funding of healthcare, education, and social services, the three sectors commonly associated with the welfare state. Fig. 23.1 figure 1 The Canadian welfare state. (Source: author’s computations with data compiled by Statistics Canada. Canadian Classification of Functions of Government (CCOFOG) by Consolidated Government Component. CANSIM database, Table 10-10-0005-01; accessed, March 15, 2019) Full size image Public Expenditures At first sight, public services provided by the welfare state do not appear to target women and men differently: all people, regardless of gender, are entitled to receive public services, such as healthcare services, education, and professional training. The same is true for sexual minorities: individuals cannot be denied a public service (e.g., healthcare) because of non-heterosexual desires and practices or because they self-identify as genderqueer or gender non-conforming. There are some obvious exceptions, such as programmes designed for maternity leave or to provide specific medical care (e.g., gender-affirming surgery), but these instances are infrequent. In practice, however, the welfare state is far from being as gender neutral as is often claimed. Its policies are based on some preconceived ideas that advantage some and disadvantage others. One factor that many feminist scholars have identified as a cause of this inequality is the inability (or unwillingness) of the welfare state to consider the contribution of unpaid work and care activities (Sainsbury 2013). Social-assistance programmes provide a good illustration of this situation. In Canada, most of these programmes implicitly assume the superiority of private markets to generate personal income. Therefore, social-assistance programmes seek to provide minimal basic income to those unable to enter the labour market and earn an income. The data presented in Table 23.3 show the major sources of incomes of women and men for various age groups in Canada. As we can see, the earnings of women lag those of men at all stages of life. This inequality is created primarily by private-market mechanisms (labour, investment, and private retirement income). Although this imbalance is alleviated by government transfers, it does not disappear. In reality, government transfers marginally correct the income difference. For instance, government transfers reduce the income gap between women and men aged twenty-five to sixty-four years by about only one-tenth.Footnote4 The situation is even more puzzling for elderly women: on average, men receive more government transfers than women, even though their market income is higher. Table 23.3 Major sources of income, per capita, by age group and gender, 2017 Full size table Gender differences are also noticeable for specific categories of government transfers. For instance, women rely more on public pensions than men do.Footnote5 Furthermore, women receive more support from pension programmes that specifically target low-income Canadians, such as the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) and the Spouse’s Allowance (SPA). Meanwhile, women are the primary beneficiaries of child benefits. It must be noted that the federal child-benefit programme does discriminate on the basis of gender, as women are explicitly identified as the usual beneficiary. On average, women aged between twenty-five and sixty-four years receive $2400 per year in child benefits.Footnote6 This amount is higher for women with low income, especially for single parents (additional help is provided with social-assistance programmes). Although significant, these amounts do not cover all the costs related to raising children, especially when both parents are in the labour market. For instance, a recent study has shown that the median cost of childcare services was between $6500 and $8000 per year per child in various parts of CanadaFootnote7 (Maire 2014).
<Insert Mechanism Link Here>
Analysis of gendered violence has implications for all levels of policy formation – our impacts come prior to plan implementation.
Hearn, et al. 22 (Jeffery Richard is a British sociologist, and Research Professor at the University of Huddersfield, and Professor at the Hanken School of Economics. Sofia Strid is Associate Professor of Gender Studies at Örebro University. Anne Laure Humbert, PhD, is a Reader in Gender. and Diversity and Director of the Centre for Diversity. Dag Balkmar is Associate Professor (Docent) and Senior Lecturer in Gender Studies at Örebro University. “Violence Regimes: A Useful Concept for Social Politics, Social Analysis, and Social Theory.” Theory and Society, vol. 51, no. 4, Feb. 2022, pp. 565–94, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-022-09474-4. Accessed 14 July 2023. //dre)
Violence, and gendered and intersectional forms of violence, are an extensive global problem connected to power, inequalities, health, economy, crime and security, impacting all societies (Krug et al., 2002). Violence can also be a point of departure to examine and intervene in social life, whether the focus is on social politics,Footnote1 social analysis or theoretical development (Hearn et al., 2016). Indeed, as a driving principle, analyzing and understanding violence is key for its reduction, as a fundamental link between theory and society. The range and depth of both violence and research on violence are immense. Within this range, there is considerable research that examines the co-variationFootnote2 of and interconnections both amongst and between forms of violence (for example, homicide, child abuse, civil conflict) and further aspects of violence (political organizing, policy development against violence, knowledge production, measurement, definitions/inclusions/exclusions). However, much research on violence remains fragmented in different disciplinary and with substantive focuses on different forms or aspects of violence. This paper addresses two linked questions: the extent to which research literature reports on how different forms and aspects of violence co-vary and interconnect, or not; and the need to work towards a more inclusive, more comprehensive conceptualization of violence than more partial approaches. Specifically, the paper addresses two key research questions: How can the extent to which specific forms and aspects of violence co-vary and interconnect, as reported in research literature, be usefully conceptualized and theorized in a more inclusive, more comprehensive way? What difference would a more inclusive, more comprehensive conceptualization of violence make to social politics, social analysis, and social theorizing on and against violence? We address these questions by arguing that the concept of violence regime (Hearn et al., 2020; Strid et al., 2021) – that is, the governance and production of forms and aspects of violence – constitutes a more inclusive and more comprehensive approach to such interconnections (or lack thereof), and a way of dealing with tensions and limitations in more partial frameworks. We also hypothesize that forms and aspects of violence co-vary with each other to constitute a violence regime. Furthermore, we hypothesize that such co-variance is likely to be greater than with other inequalities and measures that are often assumed to ‘cause’ violence: in this view, a violence regime is relatively autonomous rather than merely a subset of other inequalities. In line with Davenport’s (2021) recent call for “integral violence studies”, this paper aims to contribute to overcoming the fragmentation of policy and politics, empirical research and theoretical development on violence, and its different forms and aspects, and to further interdisciplinary research on violence. These are important issues for social politics, social analysis, and social theory. Accordingly, we see violence regimes as a policy concept, an empirical concept, and a theoretical concept. But, there is an immediate problem: namely and simply, what is violence? There are multiple contestations of what violences are – physical violence, assault, sexual violence, coercive control, homicide, genocide, as well as less directly physical violences, such as cultural, symbolic, epistemic and systemic violence (Bourdieu, 1998; Žižek, 2008). Violence includes, but is not limited to, state violence, economic violence, terrorism, interpersonal violence, gender-based violence (GBV), violence against women, anti-lesbian, gay and transgender violence, intimate partner violence, gang violence, hate crime, cyberviolence, and stalking. So, is violence a set of material bodily actions and effects? A range of discursive constructions? Is violence more structural in character, as, for example, through institutions or structural inequalities? Or all of these, intersectionally gendered? In this paper, we use illustrative examples from GBV, whilst not restricting discussion to gendered violence regimes.Footnote3 In this text, violence and violence regimes are understood as material-discursive, including how violence is defined, what is included and excluded as violence, in knowledge production on violence, and as operating across micro/interpersonal, meso/institutional, and macro/(trans)societal scales. Theoretically, we locate ourselves in debates on the close relations of materiality and discourse, such that recognitions and contestations of violence are part of the problem of violence. Indeed, the problem of what violence ‘is’, and how violence is named, defined, limited, understood and explained, is a key question across many realms: everyday life, social politics, social analysis, and social theory more broadly, albeit unevenly. Knowledge production on violence, who gets to define violence, contestations on definitions, are part of violence regimes, thus engaging with wider theoretical debates, such as on regimes of truth (Foucault, 1980). Violence as an open-ended, but not relativist, concept that refers to multiple ways in which humansFootnote4 can be attacked, transgressed, harmed, destroyed, materially-discursively. Violence certainly involves direct physicality, but it is more than that, as with physical harms without direct physical violence. The violence regime approach brings a focus on violence, and re-centres violence – that it is not only concerned with specific ‘types’ of violence but sees violence as both cause and consequence of social realities. As such, this paper draws on and develops the very long tradition of feminist theory, practice and research on violence (for example, Brownmiller, 1975; Hanmer and Maynard, 1997; Hester et al., 1996; Kelly, 1988; MacKinnon, 1982; Moran and Sharpe, 2004; Gordon and Meyer, 2007). We consider uses of violence regimes as a heuristic analytical tool for social politics, social analysis, and social theory. Building on earlier empirical, policy and conceptual work (Hearn et al., 2020; Humbert et al., 2021; Strid et al., 2021), the concept of violence regime forces consideration of different understandings of what is to count as violence, from direct killing to forms of violence often not recognized as violence at all, such as violence to non-humans, colonial violence, slow and environmental violence. Following this introduction, we continue by examining how studies on violence are subject to disciplinary fragmentation, as a precursor to examining five inspirations and ways of moving towards a broadened, more inclusive conceptualization: violence regime. The following section focuses on the notion of regime more directly, building on earlier work, and spells out the violence regime concept. The latter parts of the paper consider three applications of violence regimes – in social politics, social analysis, and social theory. In the first case, violence regimes address and inform politics, policy and policy development, labeled here as social politics, around violence, such as gender-based violence, violence against women (VAW), intimate partner violence (IPV), anti-lesbian, gay and transgender violence. Extending understandings of violence is important for policy formulation, development and implementation, whether working at the UN scale, regionally as in, say, the Council of Europe, nationally or locally. More comprehensive analysis of the complexities of violence is likely to demand transcending both disciplinary and policy area boundaries, with policy responses often depending on where within state (or parastate) machinery violence policy is located, for example, war and militarism in ministries of defence, violent crime in ministries of justice. Second, violence regimes, and indeed intersectional gender violence regimes, are part and parcel of social analysis, including the analysis of the place and relation of violence to societal contexts, broadly based structures of inequality, governance, welfare state regimes, gender regimes, and social movements, and empirical data thereon. Third, violence regimes engage with social theory. One may ask: what assumptions on the construction of the subject, for example, ‘rational’ or individualist, pertain in different social theories, in relation to violence, and the experience of being violated? Specifically, social theory is partly constructed by, through and in relation to violence, including the frequent exclusion of the knowledges of the violated, sometimes but not only through killing. The concluding section discusses further implications of the conceptualization of violence regimes.
The rational, homo oeconomicus subject is one that

Preview shortened. Download the file for the full document.