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Gender, welfare and the developmental state in south africa
Hassim, Shireen
Hassim, Shireen
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dhassim.pdf
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"Mainstream welfare state literature identifies four welfare state regimes: liberal, social democratic, corporatist and state socialist. More recently, a fifth category ha emerged: the developmental welfare state. As with research on Esping-Andersen’s categorization of ‘three worlds of welfare capitalism’, early research on developmental social policy is revealing enormous variants within this category as well (Mkandawire, 2004). Feminist studies of developmental welfare are poorly developed, and thus far we have very few analyses of how gender is conceptualized. Yet, like other welfare state regimes, developmental states are regulatory in nature: they ascribe meaning to the social category of gender and create a normative framework within which needs are adjudicated and considered to be worthy of attention. While welfare states in the north traditionally re-defined the relationship between work and family, developmental states operating in the context of informalisation of labour markets re-draw the boundaries between and responsibilities of state, community, families and individuals. Analyses of developmental states have focused on the types of need that ought to be prioritized, and the extent to which these needs could be satisfied within a range of fiscal and global constraints. However, there has been less attention to the ways in which developmental states interpret needs and particularly to the gendered nature of needs interpretation. South Africa has explicitly adopted the approach of developmental welfare – indeed it is regularly described as ‘probably the developing world’s largest and most generous welfare state’.2 Unusually, South African policy frameworks are underpinned by very strong formal commitments to gender equality. It thus provides a useful case study for the examination of the gendered nature of developmental welfare. In this chapter, I consider the impact of processes of democratization on the structure and ideology of welfare institutions in the post-apartheid. I analyse the extent to which these processes have expanded women’s citizenship entitlements. Has democratization shifted the nature of state regulation and conceptions of need and entitlement? How are interpretations of need concretely manifested in policies and programmes? I argue that while women have made enormous strides in gaining recognition for their particular political disadvantages, there has been slower translation of political rights into social rights."(pg 3)
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2005-05
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With permission of the license/copyright holder