1) Anti-poverty: Fighting poverty is both an inherent goal of welfare programs and a requirement for seeking gender equity because there are a disproportionate number of women and children in poverty.

2) Anti-Exploitation: In addition to providing material welfare anti-poverty programs are valuable for giving people more options, and more autonomy in their life. Somebody who cannot support themself is at risk of exploitation, having a social safety net to provide support gives people the option to leave exploitative situations.

3) Income-Equality: gender equity requires a path towards income equality between men and women. This includes both labor income, when both men and women work and distribution of resources within a family if only one partner works (or if they work unequal hours).

4) Leisure-Time-Equality: gender equality requires a path towards men and women having equal leisure time. This requires some way of breaking the pattern that women do more household or childcare tasks within a family.

5) Equality-of-Respect: shouldn't lead to/promote social arrangements which objectify, deprecate, or trivialize women.

6) Antimarginalization Principle: "Social policy should promote women's full participation on a par with men in all areas of social life -- in employment, in politics, in the associational life of civil society."

7) Anti-androcentrism principle: "Policy should aim to restructure androcentric institutions so as to welcome human beings who can give birth and who care for relatives and friends; treating them as ideal-typical participants."

Fraser summarizes, "Gender equity [in social welfare] is a complex idea comprising seven distinct normative principles, each of which is necessary and essential. . . . The goal should be to avoid trade-offs and maximize prospects for satisfying all -- or at least most -- of the seven principles."

As an opening to discussing different concepts of social welfare Fraser lists four sets of issues that will be important.

1) Social organization of carework.

2) Bases for entitlement ("Usually, it contains varying proportions of three basic principles of entitlement: need, desert, and citizenship. Need-bases is the most redistributive, but it risks isolating and stigmatizing the needy . . ." Entitlement by desert means receiving "benefits according to one's 'contributions,' usually tax payments, work, and service. "Citizenship, allocates provision on the basis of membership in society."

3) Differences among women (i.e., class, race-ethnicity, sexuality, and age).

4) Concerns other than gender equity (i.e., efficiency, community, and individual liberty).

Fraser then offers these names for two broad philosophical categories of social welfare

1) Universal Breadwinner: Promote women's employment, and enable women to support themselves and their families through their own wage-earning.

2) Caregiver Parity: Childbearing, child rearing, and informal domestic labor are to be elevated to parity with formal paid labor. The caregiver role is to be put on a par with the breadwinner role -- so that women and men can enjoy equivalent levels of dignity and well-being.

In comparing them Fraser asks that we consider how successful each would be at achieving the desired goal if they were fully funded, run well, and generally implemented in their ideal form. She concludes that both are good at Antipoverty and Antiexploitation. Both are fair at Equality of Respect. The ways in which they diverge are that Universal Breadwinner is better at achieving income equality and Antimarginalization and Caregiver Parity is better at achieving leisure time equality and avoiding androcentrism (though in none of those latter categories is either alternative good; they are either poor or fair).

I have skipped over the explanations that she gives for those grades because Fraser moves into a conclusion which suggests that, ultimately, our goal of gender equity might best be satisfied in a different way -- a third alternative which would combine the best of both while eliminating the worst features of each.

Both models that we examined are, to some extent working uphill if they presume that the status quo in which women do the majority of carwork will continue. A much better solution would be possible if we could, "induce men to become more like women are now, namely people who do primary carework."

If that were done the division between wage-earning work and care-giving would diminish; more jobs (and careers) would be designed to allow somebody to easily combine paid work and care-giving.

Fraser says, of this possibility (emphasis hers), "Only be embracing the Universal Caregiver vision, moreover, can we mitigate potential conflics among our seven component principles of gender equity and minimize the need for trade-offs. Rejecting this approach, by contrast, makes such conflicts, and hence trade-offs, more likely. Achieving gender equity in a postindustrial welfare state, then, requires deconstructing gender."

Response

Over the past week I've found it an interesting essay to argue with. I think it poses an interesting question and offers an attractive answer, but that there's some rhetorical slight of hand going on to make it look like the answer is responsive to the question. I don't disagree with any of her assertions, but I do think there are places where she gets from point A to B a little too quickly, and it's worth identifying and elaborating on some of them.

First, I was unclear about whether the seven components of gender equity are intended to be a complete definition, or merely a list of elements which fall under the umbrella of welfare policy. I think it's obviously incomplete for the former, and probably incompletely even by the latter definition, and that in either case there's a little bit more work to do. To begin, consider a couple of possible additions to the list, which I think would make sense even under the more narrow definition, but the last two of which also point in the direction of concerns which might fall well outside of welfare policy:

1) the first element listed is Anti-poverty, which is included as a component of gender equity because it is a significant, real-world social problem which disproportionately affects women. Why doesn't preventing intimate partner violence warrant similar standing?

2) She mentions race and class disparities as a possible other consideration for welfare programs but why aren't those part of the gender equity discussion. A version of gender equity which, for example, depends on paid care-giving (which is an obvious possibility under the Universal Breadwinner model) which is disproportionately delivered by people of color will not have succeeded (the "ain't i a woman" principle). Gender equity, by itself, doesn't require elimination race or class disparities (though we might also be interested in that), but some of those disparities are entwined with gender identities. I say that both in recognition of the idea of intersectionality -- that a woman of color will face challenges which aren't simply the sum of challenged faced by women and people generally, but a product of a complex interaction between the two. In addition, and thinking more broadly, I would note that race of class can limit somebody's ability to access the benefits (and social respect) of their gender (for example, I seen the complaint that some black women have a difficult time being seen as fully "feminine" and some asian men have a hard time being seen as fully "masculine" by society at large). If gender is not merely a set of constraints, but also a source of value, it's important that people aren't shut out from that.

3) That leads into a "There's no correct way to preform gender" principle? Queer and transgender issues are inherently part of gender analysis and gender equity. Should gender equity lead us to oppose policies which either embed assumptions about gender (i.e., that most carework will be done by women) or which privilege the nuclear family over other familial or partnership models? Beyond that, does gender equity demand active efforts to mitigate the social costs for people who are non-gender conforming (and here, for example, we see the tension between considering only those things which would be addressed by welfare as opposed to a more expansive sense of gender equity)?

Note: Fraser does introduce this idea within her discussion of the Universal Caregiver, but I didn't see it in her earlier discussion of gender equity.

As we consider adding items to the list, it makes it more difficult to use that list in the precise ways that she does. For example, she avoids prioritizing any of her principles (as she says, "each ... is necessary and essential" ) but if we add elements it feels obvious that some are more essential than others -- we may disagree about the order of importance, but it's harder to pretend that we don't have to wrestle with the question.

In addition, I think part of the rhetorical force of her "Universal Caregiver" idea is that it is presented as if there is a bridgeable gap -- we can see the ways in which the two standard visions of welfare fall short, and the Universal Caregiver is both (conceptually) achievable and solves many of the trade-offs. But, expanding the sense of gender equity reveals that there are still important trade-offs happening. For example, it might not do much to address the intimate partner violence or ways in which gender becomes as aspect of racial or class discrimination. Additionally, it's not a simple gap to close. When Fraser says, "consider the effects of this one change" there is a bit of understatement going (I believe intentionally).

Finally, I can't get over the feeling that the point at which she introduces the "Universal Caregiver" idea represents a change in the scope and nature of the question under discussion. I have a couple of responses which are possibly equivalent. The first is that she says, as a concluding statement, "achieving gender equity in a postindustrial welfare state, then, requires deconstructing gender" but that almost tautology. Given that gender as currently conceived is not equal (in many ways) achieving gender equity will necessarily involve shifts in how gender is treated in society. The important questions are (1) can those shifts be achieved by changing material conditions (by providing a sufficient welfare state) or does it also require an intervention into the way that gender is conceived and (2) if an intervention is required, how does that relate to the welfare state, or is it a separate task?

I think it is appropriate and valuable for philosophy to engage with ideal possibilities as well examination of the world-as-it-is but I wonder if, as presented in the essay, if it undermines some of the motivation for the more detailed analysis which Fraser performs. In my summary I skipped past the description of how each of "Universal Breadwinner" and "Caregiver Parity" were assessed based on the seven elements of gender equity because I felt like the conclusion took my in a different direction.

Personally, I like the essay most when I read it as provideing framework to think about trade-offs, and explaining why two very different policies can both "qualify as feminist." In that version I take the final discussion of the Universal Caregiver idea as a coda of sorts; a reminder that some of the elements which have been assumed to be fixed are changeable, and that change would bring us closer to gender equity. The version of the essay that makes me skeptical is the one which talks about trade-offs but then implies that they're unacceptable and that some other option must be found. I recognize, however, that my preferred version is the more cautious, incrementalist one, and that I may be minimizing the more ambitious aspects of her vision unfairly. One reason why I find the essay so interesting is that it does contain that tension between practical and radical analysis.

A few final notes and nit-picks which are minor but worth mentioning:

First, Fraser focuses on employment or care-giving as the two major options, presumably because they both offer some claim to desert. But it's worth mentioning that there are other things that somebody could do with their time some of which might also be worth state support (art, activism, teaching outside of an institution, . . . ).

Second, given the emphasis on care-giving it may be worth thinking about whether the policy should be designed to support care-givers or support people who need care. In practice the two will generally be similar, but have different implications in some cases.

Finally, this is outside of the scope of the essay, but eventually we will have to think about trade-offs between gender equity and other desirable goals. One of my first responses to the essay was to think, "well this certainly raises the question, how much do we value gender equity and how far will we go to achieve it?"