| 31. |
- Kulawik, Teresa
(författare)
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Explaining Gender Regimes of Welfare State Formation : A Plea for Gendered Discursive Institutionalism
- 2008
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Feminist scholars have provided us with an array of analytical perspectives on the comparative analysis of welfare states. However despite the reachness of feminist scholarship in that field, it is also marked by a clear limitation. Feminist research focused, above all, on gender-specific contents and outputs of social policies. Much more widely neglected is the question of how country-specific differences may be explained, and whether gender contributed to the politics that created different welfare state regimes. There is one exeption however: scholars working within the tradition of historical institutionalism such as Theda Skocpol, Ann Orloff and Diane Sainsbury have made important efforts in order to explain the early formation of gendered welfare states.The aim of this paper is both theoretical and empirical. First it explores the contribution of gender sensitive historical institutionalism for the explanation of gendered welfare states regimes. In contrast to the way that this approach has frequently been understood, I do not see institutionalism’s major contribution simply as adding on a new set of variables – the variables of state capacity and structure – as it suggested within the policy analysis aproach launched by Amy Mazur und Dorothy Stetson. Rather, the central new insight that institutionalism imparts to comparative politics comes from its reflexive perspective on the political. This goes hand in hand with a concept of configurative causation acknowledging that political developments are contextual, relational, and process-oriented. A critical review of feminist historical institutionalism reveals one important limitation of its conceptual framwork however as it reduces “gender” to “women”, to be more precise: to the impact of women´s movements on welfare state formation. I regard this reductionsm as the last vestige of determinism. Within institutionalism, to be sure, collective identities constitute an important point of reference, but since the processes of identity formation as such are not theorized any further, the precise connections linking institutions and the ability to act remain vague. In order to overcome this reductionism I propose to broaden institutionalism’s framework by formulating an approach based on interweaving historical institutionalism with discursive analysis. Such an integrated approach enables to conceptualize gender as relational and a relevant analytical category, even if womens agency might be deemed an irrelvant explanatory factor in specific national contexts.The second aim of the paper is to demonstrate the fruitfulness of such an analytical approach in a comparative case study focusing on the emergence of gendered welfare state regime in Sweden and Germany. Sweden and Germany are ideal subjects for a comparative study of two countries. On the one hand, they present two similair cases of sociohistorical development. On the other hand, despite these similarities they produced quite different types of welfare states: Germany a conservative welfare state representing a strong male breadwinner and Sweden a social democratic, universalistic welfare state with a rather weak breadwinner model.
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| 32. |
- Kulawik, Teresa
(författare)
-
Feminist concepts of bodily citizenship: a historical and comparative perspective : (PANEL) The body owner, the labourer and the victim citizen: citizenship and the female body in the age of biosciences
- 2010
-
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- In contrast to issues concerning bodily integrity (abortion, violence) reproductive technologies represent a topic,which has been highly controversial among feminist activists and scholars. Some regard it as an expansion of power over women´s bodies through medical expertise. Especially reprogenetics - the fusion of assisted reproductive technics and genetical knowlege - is percieved as a new form of biopower, where life itself is becoming objectified through instrumental sociotechnologies. Others welcome reproductive technologies as an extension of women´s autonomy and right to choose, with regard to their bodies. As such reproductive technologies challenge the liberal notion of selfdetermination. Related to the classical integrity issues selfdetermination meant a "negativ" liberty right as freedom from various forms of coersion or force, when it comes to reproductive technologies, selfdetermination is linkd to a "claim right, namely to have a healthy baby. But can there be a right to have a healthy baby? Should it be an issue of state concern to satisfy the poeples yearning for children? In addition to such challenging question, reproductive technolgies profoundly destabilize central categories of the political and cultural order, on which feminist demands for bodily citizenship have rested. Drawing on sholarship from governmentality studies this paper aims to rethink the concept of bodily citizenship. I will discuss the fruitfullness of such an approach drawing on empirical research covering Sweden, Germany and Poland
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| 33. |
- Kulawik, Teresa
(författare)
-
Gender, Discourses, and Institutions : The Formation of the Welfare State in Sweden and Germany
- 1999
-
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper examines the relevance of gender in accounting for the formation of different welfare state regimes in Sweden and Germany. Recent feminist scholarship has provided us with an array of approaches to the comparative analysis of social policies. However, it has not fully succeeded in conceptualizing gender as an analytic category. Concerning the welfare state, Joan W. Scott's a critique of feminist theorizing is substantially correct today. Gender is still often used as a substitute for »woman,« as for example in Skocpols work. Gender relations - here meaning gendered welfare state institutions - are usually explained in terms of »non-gendered« causal relations. Thus Jane Lewis claims, referring among other countries to Sweden among other countries that gender was irrelevant to the formation of different welfare regimes. My hypothesis, by constrast is, that gender plays a constitutive role in the creation of the early welfare state in Sweden and Germany. The purpose of this paper is therefore twofold: first to develop a theoretical framework which moves beyond the conceptual limitations of feminist inquiry mentioned above; and second to demonstrate its empirical usefulness in a comparative case study focusing on the emergence of protective labour legislation in both countries. The research strategy I pursue includes three levels of analysis: 1) processes of social and economic change; 2) political forces and institutions; 3) discourses and interpretative frameworks. My aim is to explore the mutual and complex relations among these different levels, in order to avoid a slippage into a determinist epistemology, whether conceptualized in terms of discourses, institutions or social/economic structures. Sweden and Germany are extremely well suited to this comparison. From the perspective of social history, they share several similarities: the tradition of a strong bureaucratic state, a weak liberal bourgeoisie, and an early political mobilization of the labour movement. With regard to the subject of inquiry, they differ considerably. Germany passed numerous gendered regulations in the field of protective legislation before 1914-- such as maternal leave in 1878 (repeatedly extended), prohibition of night work, and limitation of daily working hours for women in 1891. The Swedish development was in contrast rather modest: the first protective law in 1889 did not include any gender distinctions, a maternal leave was enacted in 1900 and women's night work was prohibited in 1909. This analysis shows that the policy differences between the two countries can not be adequately explained in terms of socioeconomic structures indicated, by e.g. women's employment rates. The legal differences correspond to variations in formations of national discourses. Demands for protective legislation in Germany were formulated in a gender specific way from the outsest. This was not the case in Sweden. Characteristic of the German debate was an early enmeshment of moral with scientific discourses defining women's factory work as undesirable and harmful for the female and social body, as well as an explicitly articulated masculine political interest. The interpretative frameworks of the Swedish dabate were quite different. This is well illustrated by the strategies of the early labour movements in both countries. The close relations between the Swedish and German labour movements led Swedish social democracy to take over the Gotha programme though with one notable exeption however: the paragraph demanding special protective legislation for women was excluded.
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| 34. |
- Kulawik, Teresa
(författare)
-
Gender, Institutions, and Solidarity : The Struggle for a Motherhood Insurance in Sweden and Germany
- 2000
-
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper examines the paradoxes of maternalist politics in Sweden and Germany at the turn of the century. Feminist scholarship on maternalism has convincingly demonstrated the importance of policy measures directed to women and children as well as women’s political agency for the early welfarestate formation. It has also provided us with insights into the limitations and failures of maternalist strategies due to different political opportunity structures as well as conflicting concepts of maternalism within women’s movments itself.In comparative historical perspective Sweden and Germany are usually portrayed as similair cases of well developed welfare states, with weak women’s movements however, and therefore strong paternalist policies, directed to women as dependents rather than in their own right as women and mothers. The difference between the two countries with regard to gender policies is considered to be a later phenomenon, due to the divergent paths of conservative and socialdemocratic welfarestate formation. This paper challanges such a view in several respects. The similairity of both countries refers to similair – as compared to the United States and Great Britain - trajectories of social development: the tradition of a strong bureaucratic state, a weak liberal bourgeoisie, and an early political mobilization of the labour movement. With regard to the early welfare state Sweden and Germany have produced quite divergend institutional solutions, which cannot be conflated into „paternalism“. From the outset both countries differed considerably, as will be argued in the paper, when it comes to gender. Inquiring maternalist policies and politics, no easy equatations – such as between „good“ policies and „strong“ women’s movments - can be made. The analysis of the struggle for a motherhood insurance in Sweden and Germany reveals a rather contradictory and paradox picture.Germany was the first country to invent a paid maternity leave. The sickness insurance law of 1883 - introducing a mandatory insurance for factory workers – included a payment for the period of three weaks after delivery. This maternity benefit was extended in the following years in correspondance with the protective labor legislation, which regulated the maternity leave for female factory workers. The campaign for a motherhood insurance, which started after the turn of the century, was carried by a variety of political forces with quite different motives. In its most radical version the concept aimed at an comprehensive insurance plan, which would give benefits to all mothers, not only to factory workers and not just for a couple of weeks after delivery but for a much longer - up to one or three years –period of time. Such an insurance was not only considered fiscally utopian. The more moderate bourgeois women’s movment opposed such a motherhood endowment on more fundamental grounds. Enableing women to become mothers without depending on men, such an institution would lead to a dissolution of the family, or even, as Alice Salomon feared, to the distruction of loving relations between men and women. She favored therefore a more „practical“ solution, e.g. the extension of the benefits to other professional groups. The principle, that the benefit should be a replacement for the loss of wages and not a payment for motherhood was central to this concept. With the reformact of 1911 (Reichsversicherungsordnung) major improvments of the paid maternity leaves within the sickness insurance were enacted. At that time the German welfare state included the best maternity benefits - when measured as coveragae rate of the female population and the duration of payments – in the industrilized world. In the long run however benefits for mothers were locked in an institutional logic based on principles of solidarity, which were rather hostile to the rights of women as mothers. Not only was motherhood treated as a sickness, the benefits were constructed according to criteria – professional status groups, replacment of the loss of wages – which were external to the social conditions of motherhood, creating different categories of mothers.The Swedish development took quite a different course. Compared to Germany, Sweden was a late comer with regard to regulations for mothers. A maternal leave was enacted in 1900. Because Sweden had no compulsory sickness insurance at that time, a law proposal for the introduction of an own motherhood insurance for female factory workers was elaborated in order to compensate for the loss of wages. In case the law would have been enacted in 1912, the motherhood insurance would have become the first branch of mandatory social insurance introduced in Sweden. However, the government never presented the law to the parliament. This was also due to an outspoken opposition of the different strands of the women’s movment. They rejected the plan because of its mode of finance. According to the proposal the insurance should be financed mainly with contributions from the employees and female factory workers in the age of 15 to 50. The women criticized the plan also because the benefits were restricted to women factory workers. They demanded payments for all mothers, but at least for all working women. The sharpest protests however were directed against the financing principles in which the fathers were left aside and women treated as en enforced community of solidarity. The Swedish debate on the motherhood insurance demonstrates the limitations of maternalism as a political strategy. Swedish women explicitly rejected the notion there can be solidarity among women based on the experience of maternity, which could give rise to redistributional policies. The failure of the motherhood insurance project finaly refers to structural limitations of justice within market society and social insurance institutions forged on this principles: Motherhood is simply not an insurable risk as sickness, accident or olde age. It has no „value“ and it is not a „damage“ to compensate for. The Swedish women were strong enough to prevent the institutionalization of a program which, as they percieved, was based on false solidarities. They had to wait for more than twenty years, until in 1931 a tax financed program was implemented, which - far from solving all problems of justice for mothers – laid the ground for much more mother friendlier policies, than in Germany
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| 35. |
- Kulawik, Teresa
(författare)
-
Gender Representations and the Politics of Biotechnology in Sweden : Eplaining liberal Regulations in a Social Democratic State
- 2003
-
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- What makes Sweden especially relevant for this case study? At first, Sweden appears to have quite a puzzling policy pattern indeed. As a social democratic regime with an extensive statist governance system, Sweden stands out in its biomedical policy through remarkably liberal, lenient regulations which, in European comparison, are closest to those of Great Britain. Sweden's legislation allows for the use of so-called "spare" human embryos, resulting from IVF procedures, for research purpose, pre-implantation diagnosis, and egg donation. This country also has a considerable amount of embryonic stem cell lines at its disposal and has recently initiated an entire research program involving their use. Furthermore, legislative processes have been initiated, which could legalize the creation of – instead of the use of "spare" – human embryos for research purposes and so-called therapeutic cloning. This policy-making process provoked only a moderate deal of controversy. Parliamentary resolutions concerning the issue were backed by a broad consensus among all parties in Parliament. To say the least, the politicization of biomedical issues has been quite limited. This corresponds well to the virtual lack of noticeable mobilization of extra-parliamentary groups.Throughout the course of this essay I will de-riddle the puzzling features of Sweden's biopolitics through presenting the juncture between institutionalist and discursive approaches. In short, I argue that the Swedish model is based on a productivist paradigm, the institutional and discursive parameters of which have not been decisively extended through its "new politics." In this way, elitist policy-making structures within environmental and technology policies have remained intact. Ironically, this relative openness, which enabled the rapid integration of new issues and political actors, was what led to the blockage of extensive participatory rights (as a counter-concept to the elitist policy style) and hindered the development of oppositional public spaces and forms of knowledge. Sweden's heritage of utilitarian ethics and pragmatic legal tradition and its assertions make it even more difficult for leftist or feminist to formulate a critical stance. Therefore, the only anti-embryo research position taken in the political arena was by the Christian Democratic Party.I will start providing an overview of policy regulations, then analyze the peculiar relation between the social democratic state, and the so-called new politics. I will then examine the institutions and actors in the biomedical policy field, and finally reconstruct the lines of argumentation within policy discourse.
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| 36. |
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| 37. |
- Kulawik, Teresa
(författare)
-
Political Epistemology in Gender Policy-Making : The German Democratization of Expertise
- 2020
-
Ingår i: Social Politics. - : Oxford University Press. - 1072-4745 .- 1468-2893. ; 27:4, s. 765-789
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article proposes the concept of feminist political epistemology to examine the changing modalities of knowledge production in Germany. The article examines how German gender equality policies have been embedded in and shaped by the shifting modalities of knowledge production and the remaking of the science expertise–politics nexus. The two formative time periods investigated—the 1960s–1970s and 1998 to the present—account for major shifts in the gender and political knowledge regime in Germany. The findings provide insights into the contradictory dynamics involved in transformations of political and epistemic authority.
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| 38. |
- Kulawik, Teresa
(författare)
-
Rethinking bodily citizenship in the era of reprogenetics. Insights from a comparative perspective
- 2009
-
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- In contrast to issues concerning bodily integrity (abortion, violence) reproductive technologies represent a topic,which has been highly controversial among feminist activists and scholars. Some regard it as an expansion of power over women´s bodies through medical expertise. Especially reprogenetics - the fusion of assisted reproductive technics and genetical knowlege - is percieved as a new form of biopower, where life itself is becoming objectified through instrumental sociotechnologies. Others welcome reproductive technologies as an extension of women´s autonomy and right to choose, with regard to their bodies. As such reproductive technologies challenge the liberal notion of selfdetermination. Related to the classical integrity issues selfdetermination meant a "negativ" liberty right as freedom from various forms of coersion or force, when it comes to reproductive technologies, selfdetermination is linkd to a "claim right, namely to have a healthy baby. But can there be a right to have a healthy baby? Should it be an issue of state concern to satisfy the poeples yearning for children? In addition to such challenging question, reproductive technolgies profoundly destabilize central categories of the political and cultural order, on which feminist demands for bodily citizenship have rested. Drawing on sholarship from governmentality studies this paper aims to rethink the concept of bodily citizenship. I will discuss the fruitfullness of such an approach drawing on empirical research covering Sweden, Germany and Poland.
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| 39. |
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| 40. |
- Kulawik, Teresa
(författare)
-
The Paradoxes of Political Epistemology : Democratization of Expertise versus Antigenderism
- 2018
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Ingår i: 10th European Feminist Research Conference. - Göttingen : Göttingen Diversity Research Institute. ; , s. 377-378
-
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- In the last decades, theorizing about societal and political transformations have been closely intertwined with claims about new modalities of knowledge production. The institutionalization of women´s and gender studies as post-academic interdisciplinary field corresponds with this socially distributed, system of knowledge production. Equally important has been the remaking of the policy-science nexus. Scientific claims in political processes have become increasingly publicly contested, not least in the field of gender policies. The traditional technocratic and hierarchical policy-making style has been reshaped by more horizontal participatory procedures which have been perceived as democratization of expertise. These developments implied a recognition of feminist knowledge and academia as politically relevant “gender expertise,” in many European countries. Parallel to this processes, since around 2005 public campaigns against the “ideology of gender” or “genderism” started to question the scientific character of gender research as a discipline.This paper explores the interplay between gender, knowledge, and policy-making in Germany and Sweden within the field of gender equality. This paper deploys a novel perspective. It launches the concept of political epistemologies drawing on insights from science and technology studies, which have been pioneering research focusing on the policy-science nexus and moving it from a linear “knowledge utilization approach” towards a notion of co-production and boundary-crossing configurations. It will pursue the following questions: In what ways has scientific expertise contributed to the shape of these political fields? What institutional and epistemic mechanisms can account for the detected knowledge regime? Which impact has the anti-genderist mobilization on the political epistemology?
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