CHANGES AND CONTINUITIES IN MATERNITY POLICIES

ABSTRACT

This paper examines maternity policy legislation in Ireland and Estonia, focussing on changes and continuities. Throughout the paper we speak about maternity, referring to the physiological aspect of motherhood and the unique capacity of women to bear children. Very often maternity is not covered by a single policy, but it is an amalgam of various policy fields, like health, social security, and labour. These policies are all embedded in the legal framework which therefore presents a means to achieve the desired end in the society by marking the borders between the allowed and the prohibited. Even though these lines are not always followed, and may sometimes stay only on paper, they still have an impact on how the ideal state of things is perceived. They are linked to the principles upon which welfare is organised and in the case of Estonia and Ireland these have been very different. In the former, there has been the communist ideal of woman as worker and mother, and in Ireland can be seen the enduring view of woman as mother first, citizen worker second. In this paper we concentrate on the legislation since the 1920s, that is, since both countries became independent republics. We explore the critical junctures that have shaped the policy paths in both countries.

Keywords:

• maternity legislation
• path dependency
• Ireland
• Estonia

Acknowledgements

The research has been supported by the Graduate School on Cultural Interaction and Integration and the Baltic Sea Region, Finland and the Department of Social Policy of the University of Turku. Further support has been obtained from Open Estonian Fund. The authors would like to thank the referees for their very useful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

Notes

¹Estonia claimed its re-independence in 1991, but the Soviet (Russian) army left in 1994, marking the end of the occupation.

²As many Soviet revolutionaries had stayed in pre-World War I Germany, they were well acquainted with it.

³In legal sense that was a very interesting period. De jure, Estonia had re-claimed its independence and emphasised that the state was the continuation of the 1918–1940 state, therefore legislation of the 1940 could have been valid. However, it was difficult, to put it mildly, to ignore the past 50 years, therefore de facto Soviet laws were still enforced, until replaced by new ones.

⁴Though the Soviet Union aimed to build a classless society, it lived in ‘real socialism’ in which people were divided into three classes: ‘workers’, ‘peasants’ and ‘intellectuals’ (who were a sub-class of ‘workers’) plus ‘nomenclatura’, officially non-existing. Not all rural workers were ‘peasants’, since the rural sector was divided between the state farms (sovkhozes) and collective farms (kolkhozes) to which different legislation applied. Those working in state farms were ‘workers’, those in collective farms were ‘peasants’.

⁵In the Soviet Union this right was established in 1935.

⁶In the Soviet period, terms like ‘full-time’ or ‘part-time’ jobs were unknown. Instead one had a ‘workplace’ (where their work history record book was kept), and ‘additional workplace(s)’ if possible. There were also various jobs that did not require eight hours of work (e.g., cleaning jobs), but they were still ‘full-time’ jobs though of low income.

⁷Health care is guaranteed also to pensioners and children under 18.