Using a time conditions framework to explore the impact of government policies on the commodification of public goods and women’s defamilization risks

IMPACT

This article offers insight into how the commodification of public goods could affect women’s lives directly and indirectly through its impact on the family. It draws on the experience in Hong Kong of raising policy-makers’ and public sector administrators’ awareness of the importance of women's and families’ perspectives in policy practice at both the international and national level. The analysis is based on the Hong Kong government’s interventions during the Covid 19 pandemic. Its shows how the commodification of public goods can affect women and families and create more challenges for them during a global crisis. The article speaks to policy-makers and practitioners involved in policy design and implementation.

ABSTRACT

This article makes contributions to the field of defamilization, discretionary time and the commodification of goods. It introduces the ‘time conditions framework’ to examine the impact of the government’s responses to the commodification of public goods on women’s defamilization risks that limit women from performing different family roles. Referring to the Hong Kong government’s policies on handling the Covid 19 pandemic, this article explores four issues: how government policies on the commodification of public goods can create unfavourable time conditions for tackling defamilization risks; how these policies can create multiple defamilization risks; how these policies can undermine families’ capacity to support women; and how these policies could be revised to address such risks.

KEYWORDS:

• Commodification of public goods
• Covid 19 pandemic
• defamilization risks
• discretionary time
• family
• Hong Kong
• women

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ruby C. M. Chau

Ruby C. M. Chau is an Associate Professor in Public and Social Policy at the University of Nottingham, UK. She is an international researcher with special interests in women’s welfare and their roles in the family and the labour market in Asia and Europe.

Sam W. K. Yu

Sam W. K. Yu is a Research Fellow at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He was an Associate Professor in the Department of Social Work at the Hong Kong Baptist University. He specializes in comparative welfare research in pension, health and family policies.