Women friendly welfare state?

Saara PellanderDoctoral Candidate, M.Soc.Sc.

Women granted right to vote and become eglible for office in general elections

• [New Zealand 1893 –only voting rights, right to be elected in lower chamber 1919, 1941 upper champber]

• Finland 1906• Norway 1913• Denmark 1915• Austria 1918• Sweden 1919• UK 1928• France 1944• Italy 1945• Switzerland 1971

Women in national parliamentsSingle house or lower house

Upper house or senate

Both houses combined

Nordic countries 42,1% - -

Europe OSCE (incl. Nordic countries)

22,2% 20,2% 21,8%

Americas 22,0% 23,1% 22,2%

Europe OSCE (excl. Nordic countries)

20,3% 20,2% 20,3%

Sub-Saharan Africa 19,7% 18,9% 19,6%

Asia 18,3% 15,2% 18,0%

Pacific 12,5% 32,6% 14,8%

Arab States 10,9% 7,5% 10,3%

[Data compiled by the Inter-Parliamentary Union on the basis of information provided by National Parliaments by 31 August 2011]

Labour force participation rates of prime-age women (aged 25-54)

Public investment in childcare services as % GDP in some EU Member States

And in addition those, the Nordic countries have

• The highest amount of paid parental leave• A high work-live participation of mothers of

under sex year old children• Low poverty risk of single mothers• Welfare state based on a dual-breadwinner

model

Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2010

Highly gender-segregated job-markets

Gender gap in equal pay: ”Women’s euro is 80 cents”

Nordic women still do most of the house/care work at home and take

most of the parental leaves

Violence

• Violence against women in Finland higher than the EU

• High rates of reporeted rapes: SWE• Marital rape: Finland on of last european

countries to criminalize it(AMNESTY REPORT)

A women-friendly welfare state…

“would not force harder choices onwomen than on men, or permit unjust treatmenton the basis of sex” (Helga M. Hernes, 1987, 15)

Women’s political and social empowering through the state and state policies

Critique

• Only Nordic?• Gender friendly?• All women? • Migration?

Read and reflect

1. Melby, K., Ravn, A.-B. and Wettergerg Carlsson, C.:”A Nordic model of gender equality? Introduction.”In: Gender equality and welfare politics in Scandinavia.The limits of political ambition? Ed. by Kari Melby, Anna-Birte Ravn and Christina Carlsson WetterbergPolicy Press, Bristol 2008, 1-24.

2.Borchorst, Anette and Siim, Birte: “The women-friendly welfare states revisited.,” NORA: Nordic Journal of Women’s Studies 10, no. 2 (October 2002): 90-98.