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Women’s work and the public sphere

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Of course, politics is not the only area in which women have had to struggle for full participation and to have their private needs addressed in the public arena. Historian Alice Kessler-Harris’ In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in 20th-Century America demonstrates how assumptions about gender are built, in seemingly invisible ways, into many of this country’s social and labor policies. According to Kessler-Harris, this “gendered imagination” creates policies that value paid labor over other forms of labor.

It is these “deeply embedded belief systems” that create disparities in citizenship. In theory, citizenship provides people with access to a wide range of rights and benefits. However, different types of citizenship can be at odds with each other, and this contradiction largely affects women. In this country, many of the rights a person has a citizen are connected to ideas about work, particularly work for which one is paid:

[C]onstructing “work” as the passport to certain social rights produced dramatically different paths for different citizens. Not only has women’s economic freedom never been accepted as axiomatic, but, with respect to the rights meant to accompany it, the limited freedoms available to all women were further restricted to marriage and motherhood—and by treating unmarried females in the workforce as if they were potentially married and mothers.

Historically, social and labor policy has viewed women as dependents, rather than as equals in areas such as heading families, finding work, and being eligible for government benefits. From the policy perspective, the ideal is a nuclear family headed by a male wage earner, who provides for the entire family, while his wife performs unpaid labor at home. Even today, with large numbers of women working, the idea that women freely enter the labor force is rarely entertained. Women’s paid labor outside the home is rarely discussed as primary to a family’s survival, but as something that is supplementary— a way to make ends meet or pay for “extras.”

Given the current debate over Social Security, it is interesting to note the gender assumptions that went into its development in the1930s. Initially begun under the title of Old Age Insurance, ideas about gender were debated from the very beginning. The male-headed household formed the program’s backbone, and it was seen as a way for a man to continue to provide for his family after he retired— and after he died.

In contrast with today’s Social Security, which allows people to continue working while drawing benefits, one of the program’s initial goals was to remove people from the labor force to make way for new workers. Access to the program was not, as is the case of many European social programs, defined largely by national citizenship, but by the fact that one worked. Invoking traditional gender and family norms ensured public support for this new program:

Gendered constructs helped soothe a public increasingly enamored of government-funded assistance (which seemed to some policy makers an appropriate and to others a short-sighted and short-term solution). And they provided the language of family normalcy that convinced reluctant policy makers who remained skeptical of the capacity of an insurance program to solve general employment problems without depending on general taxation. Ultimately, gendered conceptions provided the keystone that maintained public confidence in the core old age program and justified its redistributive goals. By providing economic security in particular ways and to particular people, old age insurance, defined a new category of economic citizenship…

Benefits were to be tied to the notion a male wage earner, with categories of pay connected to this wage earner’s status. Widows with young children could receive benefits, but a widow without children could not collect until she was older. If a widow with children went back to work, her benefits were reduced, in order to encourage her to stay out of the labor force. An irrational fear that some women might marry men just to get access to their benefits was “solved” by mandating that the marriage must have lasted at least a year before she could collect. Because women were deemed to be less skilled in handling money, they could not receive a lump-sum payment, but had to have it doled out monthly.

One of the interesting things about the history of Social Security is that it was one of the few national policies that was changed due to the influx of women into the labor force. While, for example, the income tax system still penalizes people for being married, Social Security benefits no longer penalize married female workers.

What is notable about the current Social Security debate is its traditional emphasis on the notion of the “worker.” The Bush administration constantly appeals to “workers” to gain support by saying changes will give them more control over their money and their future. What is not discussed in any detail is how others who depend on Social Security, but who do not work, will be affected.

As Kessler-Harris points out, one of the major problems in American social policy is this strong emphasis on paid labor, and in fact, on particular types of paid labor. For example, many domestic and agricultural workers do not have access to government retirement benefits. This is in contrast to Europe, where many people receive medical insurance, pensions, educational assistance, and childcare regardless of their work status.

In fact, in the United States, if all citizens were provided with health care and pensions, many of the struggles over gay rights, inheritance rights, and women’s rights, which are often struggles to gain the full rights willingly given to the white, male head of a nuclear household, would not exist.

However, no society or economy can function without the contributions of unpaid labor. This unpaid work, done largely by women, encompasses much more than taking care of children. In this country, just imagine what many schools, health organizations, and social services organizations would look like without the participation of people who freely give their time. Until this type work is valued at the policy level, women will not receive the full benefits of citizenship.

next:
women workers in the global economy

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