Distribution and recognition Nancy Fraser – claims for social justice/equality based on  socio-economic redistribution  legal or cultural recognition This week (re)distribution and equality Next 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 representation  equal 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  19 th 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, 27 th 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.