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Abstract
This article deconstructs New Labour's emerging workfarist regime to reveal the complex and contradictory gender relations embodied in and through its work–welfare policy. Starting from the decline of manufacturing employment within the UK, it traces the deregulation of the labour market and the range of structural and social changes initiated by this process. Noting, in particular, how the ‘feminisation of the economy’ is connected to the changing characteristics of employment and women's socio-economic positions, the article identifies the manner in which the growing labour market participation of women is serving to (further) entrench gender inequality. Against this background, it proceeds to raise issues regarding the increased expectation to enter the labour market observed within programmes such as the New Deal for the Unemployed, which stipulates that the receipt of state benefits ought now to require a labour input. The crux of analysis is on the policy and political discourses that award priority to paid work in the formal labour market, whilst simultaneously neglecting the gendered divisions of labour around unwaged care work and domestic tasks. In suggesting that gender remains a key form of political-economic organisation in the contemporary period of after-Fordism, this article argues that (further) attention must be given to the ways in which its socially constructed properties are manifest within work–welfare policy and the ramifications of this embedding for social and economic equality.
Este artículo deconstruye el emergente régimen ‘workfarist’ del Nuevo Laborista para revelar las relaciones complejas y contradictorias de género encarnadas en y a través de su política de trabajo-bienestar. Empezando con la declinación del empleo manufacturero en el Reino Unido, expone la desregulación del mercado de trabajo y la gama de los cambios estructurales y sociales iniciados por este proceso. Se nota, en particular, cómo la ‘feminización de la economía’ está entrelazada con las características cambiante del empleo y de las posiciones socioeconómicas de las mujeres. Este artículo identifica la manera en la cual la participación creciente de mujeres en el mercado de trabajo sirve para afianzar más la desigualdad del género. Contra este contexto, se procede plantear cuestiones con respecto a la expectativa creciente para incorporar el mercado de trabajo en los programas tales como el Nuevo Acuerdo para los Parados, que estipula que la recepción de las ventajas del estado ahora tiene que requerir una entrada laboral. El quid del análisis es en la política y los discursos políticos que conceden prioridad al trabajo renumerado en el mercado de trabajo formal, mientras que simultáneamente descuida la división de genero del trabajo de tareas domésticas y el trabajo no renumerado de cuidado. Sugiriendo que el género siga siendo una forma dominante de organización político-económica en el período contemporáneo post-Fordismo, este artículo discute que se deba dar más atención a las maneras de que sus características sociales construidas son manifestadas dentro de la política del trabajo-bienestar y de las ramificaciones de esto que encaja para la igualdad social y económica.
Acknowledgements
Earlier versions of this article have been presented at a session of the 2006 Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers and a Geographies of Political Economy research group meeting in the School of Geographical Sciences at the University of Bristol. I am grateful to those who attended these events for their comments and questions. In addition, I would like to thank Deborah Dixon, Martin Jones, Columba Peoples and Mark Whitehead for their written feedback and useful insights in discussion. I am grateful for the constructive criticism received from three anonymous reviewers of this journal. Finally, and more formally, I would like to acknowledge the support of ESRC award number PTA-030-2002-0168. The usual disclaimers apply.
Notes
1. The term after-Fordism is used throughout this article to refer to the actually existing ensemble of mechanisms and practices which presently enable capital accumulation to occur in a relatively stable way, despite being marked by a continuing relative incoherence because a discrete post-Fordist accumulation regime and mode of regulation has yet to become established (for a further discussion of this period of transition to post-Fordism see Jessop, Citation2002).
2. I use the term ‘discourse’ within this article to refer to the wider linguistic frameworks through which key policy concepts come to function as the central nodal points for welfare state restructuring, including policy formulations, speeches, media reports, popular reactions and secondary political analysis.
3. Critical discourse analysis is a multi-method approach to research, which pioneers a dual focus on discourse, as a means of performing a representative function and as an indication of the social and cultural practices that seek to ensure the replication of dominant power relations (Fairclough, Citation1995; Citation2001). It is a research approach concerned with the identification of the forms of governance that underpin and stimulate the manifestation of dominant political forms and practices in society, as well as the intricate links between representations, languages, practices and policy outcomes.
4. Jobseeker's Allowance is a form of unemployment benefit that is paid by the government to people who are unemployed and seeking work. It is part of the UK social security benefits system and is intended to cover the cost of living expenses in periods when the claimant is out of work. It is paid by the Department of Work and Pensions, through local Jobcentre Plus offices.
5. Under NDLP advisors also staff compulsory work-focused interviews operating in some areas for new claimants—a move that blurs the non-compulsory nature of NDLP.
6. This article is specifically directed towards an examination of how British work–welfare texts act to ‘ungender’ their subjects by glossing over or ignoring gender relations and the gender divisions of labour, however, similar conclusions have been drawn by Boyer (Citation2003) in a study of North American policy.
7. As Pateman (Citation1988) notes, the meaning of ‘civil society’ is constituted through the ‘original’ separation and opposition between the modern, public—civil—world and the modern, private or conjugal and familial sphere. This is a patriarchal division, in which everything that lies beyond the domestic (private) sphere is public or ‘civil’ society. As most discussions of civil society, and formulations such as ‘public’ regulation versus ‘private’ enterprise, presuppose that the politically relevant separation between public and private is drawn within civil society, fraternity—as a crucial bond integrating individual and community—is seen to be based upon the constitution the ‘individual’ through the patriarchal separation of private and public. Hence, the ‘fraternal social contract’ is used to distinguish between equality made after a male image and the real social position of women as women (and further suggest that the categories and practices of civil society cannot simply be universalised to women).
8. There are two forms of Jobseeker's Allowance. The first is contributions-based Jobseeker's Allowance, which is awarded to claimants who have paid, or are treated as having paid, a minimum level of National Insurance contributions in the two financial years preceding a claim. The second is income-based Jobseeker's Allowance, which is means-tested for each individual claimant and/or their dependants. Income-based Jobseeker's Allowance may be awarded to those who are ineligible for contributions-based Jobseeker's Allowance, as well as those in receipt of such assistance, only if they are in a low-income household.