MONEY, SEX AND POWER

EQUALITY AND THE POLITICS OF (RE)DISTRIBUTION:

WEEK 2

2013-2014

Distribution and recognition

Nancy Fraser – claims for social justice/equality based on

socio-economic redistribution legal or cultural recognition

This week (re)distribution and equalityNext week recognition and equality

Lecture outline

Today our discussion of (re)distribution and equality will be in three parts:

The politics of redistribution

How to measure inequality

The relationship between economic inequality and power

Feminism and equality

Feminist movement of 1960s and 1970s demanded

equal sexual rights and the end of the sexual double standard

equal political representationequal access to education

Liberal feminists had already made demands to:

improve access to material resources Improve women’s bargaining power Reduce men’s power over women

Marxism and equality

Redistribution of resources also central to Marxist/socialist tradition but focus was on need to redistribute resources on basis of class; gender equality would follow from this.

Engels – women’s participation in labour force key to gender equality

Socialist feminist and liberal feminists agreed about importance of women’s integration into the labour force

Need

In Communist Manifesto

‘From each according to his [sic] need, to each according to his ability’

Idea of need

Equal distribution may not be a socially just distribution

People’s needs differ

The family wage 19th century struggle for family wage

was about distribution of resources

Fighting for redistribution from capitalist class to working class

From women to men within the working class

Labour movement demand for family wage was opposed to feminist demands for equal pay

Individualisation and globalisation

Increased women’s participation in the workforce

Decline of male-breadwinner family model

Beck, Giddens, Castells, Bauman argue that individualisation and globalisation have increased women’s independence

Increased women’s bargaining power in family

Thereby undermining patriarchy

Problems of measuring inequality

Demand for equality in terms of income and wealth is distributional equality – in principal easy to measure

But which unit of comparison should we use? Family-household (‘black box’) or individual?

We can’t assume resources are equally distributed within households

Some individuals need more than others, e.g. of disabilities

Does inequality matter?

Anne Phillips argues that it does

What are the effects of inequality on power?

Women have different interests because gender cuts across hierarchies of class, social status and ‘race’/ethnicity

Increase in economic power/ decrease in economic inequality may not translate directly into power

‘Power to’ and ‘power over’

1. ‘Power to’ Power to is the ability to do things – to act Trade off submission to power of others over

them in exchange for enhanced power to do certain things

Access to resources gives women power to Enhances negotiating position within household

2. ‘Power over’ Greater economic equality between women and men

has given some women experience of power over others, e.g. as managers

Also as employers within the domestic sphere

Inequalities still exist Globally, “Women make up 70% of the world's working hours

and earn only 10% of the world's income and half of what men earn” (Guardian, 27th March 2013).

In the UK, over all forms of employment, the pay gap between men’s and women’s hourly earnings is 20% according to a European Commission report out this year (EC, Tackling the Gender Pay Gap in the EU 2013) .

In the UK disabled women experience a 31% pay penalty compared to non-disabled men (EHRC, 2010).

60% of women reaching state pension age in 2008 were entitled to less than the full basic state pension, compared to 10% of men (Ibid.).

Only 1 in 4 Bangladeshi and Pakistani women, works and almost half of Bangladeshi (49%) and Pakistani (44%) women are looking after the family or home, compared to 20% or fewer of other groups (Ibid.).

Only 1 in 40 households today are defined as overcrowded – however female-headed households are four times as likely as average to be overcrowded (Ibid.).

Conclusions

Equality/redistribution is one of the aims of both ‘second wave’ feminism and socialism.

Measuring inequality is problematic. While it’s easiest to measure income inequality the question remains: what unit of measurement should we use?

There is a relationship between economic inequality and power . Men generally have greater decision-making power, this relates to their greater earning capacity and therefore access to resources.

We need to distinguish between ‘power to’ and ‘power over’.

Despite 40 years of Equal Pay Act, the gender pay gap persists.