Basic Income, Gender and Human Rights: reinforcing inequalities or transformative action?

The concept of a basic income, paid indiscriminately to all by the government, has had increasing support from people on all sides of politics, and this interest has only increased with the onset of COVID-19. Such a proposal has important implications for women, who are more likely to live in poverty and precarity due to their unpaid social roles. In today’s analysis, Beth Goldblatt (@BethGoldblatt) of UTS (@UTSLaw) and the Australian Work + Family Roundtable provides a gender-sensitive human rights analysis of how a basic income could be designed to support economic justice for women. This analysis is drawn from her article Basic Income, Gender and Human Rights, recently published in the University of Oxford Human Rights Hub Journal.

Basic income is an increasingly popular idea

A basic income is an unconditional, tax-financed, government payment provided to every member of society. A basic income has been a prominent policy proposal in the context of uncertainty over the future of work and the problem of growing economic inequality. More recently it is being considered in some countries as a response to the economic fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The economic downturn, described as a ‘pink collar recession’, is having a particularly harsh impact on women, so the value of a basic income in this context should be carefully considered from a gender perspective. The implications of a basic income for women has been the subject of long-standing debate amongst feminists. In the context of recent consideration of basic income as a human rights issue, this discussion brings together some of the feminist and the human rights debates to consider what a basic income might mean for gender equality, drawn from a recently-published paper that can be accessed here.

Basic income, feminism and human rights

A central question emerging from the feminist debates is whether a basic income would address the economic and social inequalities that underlie the inadequate realisation of women’s human rights and shift gender roles and responsibilities.  Economic inequality has profound gender dimensions. As Oxfam’s 2020 report notes, the global ‘economic system is built on sexism’. The major burden of caring in all societies falls on women who largely provide this work without pay. This work impacts on women’s access to paid work and other economic opportunities and contributes to the gender pay gap found across the world.

Women are put on a path of financial insecurity for providing unpaid care work. Would a universal basic income help or hinder gender equity reform? Photo by Marcelo Silva on Unsplash

A human rights approach that is attentive to gender suggests that a basic income is likely to assist women who are disproportionately poor and vulnerable in all societies. But on its own it will not address the complex and structural inequality that they face. A basic income will need to be accompanied by measures such as the provision of child care and support for sole parents, alongside changes to the labour market and tax system. It will also have to be of adequate size to make a real difference to inequality. The form of a basic income, its likely impact and its desirability as a policy solution is contingent on the political and economic conditions of the particular country in which it is being considered and should be subject to democratic deliberation. Human rights principles informed by gender will help to ensure that any basic income proposal is carefully evaluated within the context of that country to advance rather than impede gender equality.

Key to ensuring this gendered human rights approach is the principle of equality and non-discrimination informed by the concept of substantive gender equality which requires far-reaching, structural and transformative responses.[1] A substantive gender equality approach is thus deeply contextual and attentive to historical and current differences in the experiences of men and women. It is multidimensional in requiring that inequality overcomes distributive disadvantage and status-based harms and must ensure the active participation of women in developing responses to inequality that are appropriate, as well as transformative, leading to structural challenges to patriarchal relations. In the context of social protection this requires particular attention to women’s location in relation to paid and unpaid work and their responsibilities for providing care to a range of groups including children, the elderly, and people with disabilities and illnesses, as well as also being members of these groups.[2]

Implementation must acknowledge existing inequalities

A basic income in a society where women have more limited access to paid work and social security than men might advance equality and address gender disadvantage by empowering women financially. Since women tend to be disproportionately represented among the poor, this is a compelling equality argument for a basic income. However, the universality of a basic income, while attractive in principle, is itself indiscriminate in treating all people in the society alike. It could therefore be seen as a formal equality measure, inadequate in addressing the structural disadvantages facing women. As a formal equality measure designed by its universal nature to give everyone an equal sum, those who start off more disadvantaged may not see their position significantly altered, and existing hierarchies of power and privilege may not be shifted.

A substantive gender equality approach might be better served by designing social protection that is directed at the most vulnerable in society. A basic income could achieve this if accompanied by additional payments for groups such as sole parents, to remedy their disadvantages. Much hinges on the particular design of a basic income and whether it sits on top of, rather than replaces, necessary social assistance for groups in need of this support.[3] Its’ gender equality impacts will therefore depend on the way in which the broader social protection system acknowledges and responds to gender disadvantage in line with the human rights framework. A basic income policy that replaces existing social protection measures must not be regressive in removing benefits aimed at advancing women’s economic security.

Basic income as a form of universal and unconditional social assistance has significant appeal to many groups of women currently frustrated by punitive and patchy systems. It offers unencumbered access to income for unpaid carers and precarious workers, groups that are women-dominated and face challenges under many social security systems. These groups may struggle to meet activation requirements such as job seeking while balancing caring obligations; and may also be burdened with responsibilities that are sometimes attached, via conditions, to cash transfers. These arguments suggest that in some contexts a basic income will enhance equality and rights to social protection by bringing poor women and carers into the social protection fold without additional demands being placed on them. But this alone will not undo the structural disadvantage that these groups face and will not necessarily be transformative in altering the gendered responsibilities for care; nor will it necessarily remove all the barriers to, and within, the labour market facing women and carers.

Basic income as one aspect of an interdependent, human-rights focused system

This suggests that a substantive gender equality approach could endorse a basic income if it offered more support to women than already existed. But it would also require further social policy measures to redress the sexual division of labour at work and home. These changes are unlikely to flow automatically from a basic income where structural inequalities along gender lines are embedded in society.  Other measures will be needed, whether through state provision, market regulation or norm realignments, or combinations of these to spread caring in more gender-equal ways. A basic income would need to sit alongside state support to realise other interdependent human rights including health care, housing, social services and worker rights, themselves developed in accordance with substantive gender equality.

Combining feminist and human rights arguments has the potential to offer a new angle into the basic income debate. A focus on a substantive, redistributive equality approach challenges discourses of minimalism that arise in discussion of a basic income. It also challenges the human rights discussion of a basic income to ensure that gender and equality are fully considered and built into understandings of a rights-compliant basic income proposal. Bringing rights-based arguments into the feminist debate encourages a careful consideration of the evolving framework of guidance on the interpretation of rights (particularly social and economic rights and non-discrimination/equality); and what this might mean for basic income as a policy choice and its specific formulation. Human rights direct attention to the requirements of a just social protection system and workplace which can reinforce feminist arguments for new social policies that extend justice to women and challenge sexual divisions of care and work.

The focus on gender in the basic income debate emphasises social reproduction alongside production in attempting to fundamentally reimagine work and care. The human rights lens draws attention to the compatibility of basic income proposals with universally articulated principles of what is required for socially just societies. Combining these leads to a clearer picture of the type of basic income policy that might address the circumstances of different groups of women while also meeting their needs through other forms of social provision. Whether this combination, or any social policy, is capable of fully shifting gender inequalities, particularly as they relate to unpaid work, remains an open question and an ongoing, multi-layered and complex terrain of struggle.

This post is part of the Women's Policy Action Tank initiative to analyse government policy using a gendered lens. View our other policy analysis pieces here.

Posted by @SusanMaury

NOTES

[1] Sandra Fredman, Discrimination Law (2nd edn, Oxford University Press 2011) explains that this equality is multi-dimensional in ensuring redistribution, recognition, participation and transformation. For its application to gender and human rights see Sandra Fredman and Beth Goldblatt, Gender Equality and Human Rights (2015) (UN Women Discussion Paper No 4) 1-65.

[2] Beth Goldblatt, Developing the Right to Social Security – A Gender Perspective (Routledge 2016).

[3] Some proponents stress that a minimum income to all must be accompanied by supplementary payments and other benefits to disadvantaged groups: for example, Guy Standing, Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen (Penguin Random House 2017).