Gender Regimes and Welfare States in France: A historical perspective
This paper has a twofold aim. First, we will analyze the system of family benefits in relation with the income tax system in France through the adoption of a historical and gender perspective. While typologies of welfare states frequently neglect taxation, in our view, one must take family taxation into account because it provides incentives and disincentives for paid income. Moreover, in the case of France, a close relationship exists between family benefits and taxation on income, one that stems from certain discussions—discussions led to the birth of the French system.Second, we will demonstrate how and to what extent France has moved away from the male-breadwinner model. However, any decline of the malebreadwinner model does not, in turn, indicate a corresponding shift toward a dual caregiver model. Indeed, the current French model has ambiguous effects on gender relations.
The dilemmas of lone motherhood: key issues for feminist economics
The acute dilemmas facing lone mothers in raising their children and earning a living form a common theme across the articles in this special issue of Feminist Economics on Lone Mothers. Like other parents, lone mothers face difficult decisions in allocating their time to caregiving and income generation, but in their families there is only one adult to do both. Further, that one adult is a woman, who will generally earn less than a man, compounding the difficulties. Lone mothers must rely on a range of support mechanisms (fathers, other family members, employers, and government policy) to manage; they can therefore rarely be economically independent. Policies that are ideologically reluctant to support unmarried mothers in their caregiving may divide unmarried mothers from other lone mothers, and lone mothers from other poor parents. Nevertheless, most lone mothers find creative strategies to manage that are as varied as lone mothers themselves.
Of Markets And Martyrs: Is It OK To Pay Well For Care?
If caring work were well paid, would it lose some of the special, emotional, interpersonal aspects we want in "real" care relationships? Some fear that the introduction of "market values" would lead to such an outcome. This article seeks to bring to light some logical fallacies and insufficiently expunged gender dualisms that may lie, unexamined, under such concerns. Examining the ways we think and talk about markets, meanings, and motivations, it argues that the foci of feminist concern should instead be the concrete structures of caregiving and the problem of under-demand.