ABSTRACT
This paper looks at childcare provision in Spain from the perspective of policies for the reconciliation of work and family life. The goal is to understand how social care – and childcare in particular – has been placed within the different policy domains of the welfare state, and how this condition affects its opportunities for policy development and innovation. As a point of reference, the study takes into consideration the recent EU benchmark regarding childcare provision in the context of the European Employment Strategy. The investigation looks at the impact of the institutional configuration of the welfare system and the labour market on the development of childcare provision and policies for the reconciliation of work and family. The paper suggests that, given a strong policy legacy in family policy and social services, childcare provision is expanding under the decentralized education system although it has not been articulated in terms of policies for the reconciliation of work and family life, which impacts on female employment. Legislative changes improving the conditions of female employees who give birth have recently been introduced in labour law, although the structure of the labour market and practices in employment relations pose obstacles to their effective implementation.
Introduction
Focusing primarily on Spain, but within an EU comparative framework, this essay is an attempt to understand how social care in general, and childcare in particular, has been placed within the different policy domains of the welfare state and how this ‘placement’ affects the development of measures for the reconciliation of work and family life. The paper critically assesses the relationship between increasing levels of female participation in the labour market and the development of public provision for childcare, giving greater need for these services. In this respect, the study looks at EU guidelines for the employment policies of the member states approved in July 2005, which explicitly recognised the need to improve public childcare provision in all member states as a prerequisite to increase female employment rates (Council of Europe 2005). The paper sets up as a research question the extent to which and the ways in which, the institutional configuration of the welfare and the labour market systems intersect with this association, holding back the growth of public provision for care despite increasing participation of women in the labour market. It is argued that the locus where social care is placed within the welfare mix affects the chances and the nature of policy change.
The paper is structured as follows: the first section gives an overview of the increasingly important relationship between social care and the welfare state. In here, attention is paid to the gender dimension of welfare analyses and the specific features of the Spanish welfare system, and the South European Welfare systems more generally, regarding these issues. The following three sections describe firstly, major shifts in the patterns of female participation in the Spanish labour market and secondly, the main traits that distinguish the Spanish welfare state in relation to childcare and to mechanisms for the reconciliation of work and family. Care for children is analysed by looking at different policy domains such as education, the social protection system, family policies and labour law. The paper then looks at the impact of the welfare state tradition and the labour market in the development of childcare policies. To explore policy innovation in the field of childcare provision, a total of ten in-depth elite interviews were conducted between November 1999 and December 2004 among key actors and policymakers from the Ministry of Labour and Social Security; the Ministry of Education, officials from the two main national trade unions1 and the Women's Rights Institute (Instituto de la Mujer), a governmental body created in 1983 for the promotion of equal opportunities between men and women. The final section of the paper assesses developments in the ‘informal’ and private sectors and the ways in which these might be transforming to cover demands for childcare.
The study of policy change regarding Spanish childcare provision aims at improving our understanding of European welfare states’ restructuring on a number of counts. Firstly, because in today's Europe the shifting interface between families, labour markets and welfare states is placing social care right at the nucleus of public debate and welfare reform. With low, albeit increasing, female employment rates and the lowest fertility rates in Europe, South European welfare states are facing pressures to reformulate the structure of incentives in social protection and to remove barriers for an effective reconciliation between employment and caring responsibilities. In other words, the analysis of the Spanish case provides an interesting example of how welfare systems with a strong ‘male breadwinner model’ legacy, that is, systems with a tendency to rely on a strict separation of gender roles between the private and public spheres, can progressively shift their policy logics towards the ‘adult worker model’ (Lewis 2001) where both men and women are supposed to engage in paid employment and share unpaid care work.
Secondly, this paper aims at contributing to a better understanding of the South-European model by moving away from what sometimes are stereotypical explanations of welfare arrangements; those giving an exclusive role to the family as welfare provider, and revealing the complexity of welfare provision in the area of childcare between the public and the private, the formal and the informal spheres.
2 Social care and the welfare state
Care has by now become central to contemporary analyses of welfare states and a key figure in the current need for the reconciliation of work and family life. It is on this latter aspect that this essay mainly focuses. The growth in female employment, particularly in the service sector, is causing and affecting a number of changes with a direct impact on social care. Female employment in the service sector is in fact a mutually reinforcing process. The service sector economy both provides for and facilitates the entrance of women into employment, and female employment usually creates in turn an increased demand for the services provided in this sector. Hence, service sector employment, and more generally the increasing female employment rates, together with shifts in individuals’ perceptions of rights and obligations regarding care, triggered by processes of ‘functional democratisation’ (Elias 1989) in family relations, are shifting the boundaries between paid and unpaid work and between public and private employment in a very significant way. Activities that were previously understood as belonging to the sphere of unpaid domestic work are transformed into either privately or publicly paid sources of employment in the service sector (Daly 2002; Leira and Saraceno 2002). In this sense, and given current incentives in the EU to chase the full employment goal, any childcare policy can nowadays be seen as part and parcel of strategies for the reconciliation of (unpaid) care work and participation in the labour market.
Following sound criticisms from scholars working on gender and welfare (Orloff 1993; Hobson 1994; Sainsbury 1994, 1999; Ostner and Lewis 1995), analysts of the welfare state and social policy, whilst originally undermining the importance of women's role as carers in the overall provision of welfare and the impact that such role plays in their capacity to engage in paid employment and claim social rights, have become increasingly aware of the need to assess the ability of a welfare state to, on the one hand, encourage women's engagement in paid employment and on the other hand, allow for an effective reconciliation of work and family life. A useful research tool in this respect has been Lewis’ (1002) ‘breadwinner models’ which is meant to reveal the interaction of the public and private spheres of life in the organisation of welfare, which also implies the recognition of women's unpaid role as welfare providers. Ostner (1997) later incorporated the breadwinner model into a broader concept of ‘individualisation’ including a dimension of economic independence. According to this author, a country's individualisation ranking is related to the strength or weakness of the male breadwinner model, as well as to the degree to which individuals are independent from family obligations. The latter is measured both by the existence of laws that enforce family obligations, and by the availability of full-time public services for children and the elderly.
Welfare states therefore are progressively being evaluated according to their capacity to bring individuals into employment; access to work being one important indicators through which policy change at national level is studied. Accordingly, welfare states are moving quickly to find ways to ‘defamilialise’ social rights, which implies, among other things, looking at the success of the public social service sector and other policies intended to assist the reconciliation of work and family life. It is against this background that EU goals regarding the increase on childcare provision in member states should be seen.
The responses of welfare systems to the need for adaptation depend of the context of the specific welfare mix in which policies operate. How is Spain facing these challenges? The Spanish welfare system and the Southern Europeans more generally, derive from the conservative welfare regime which heavily relies on income maintenance programmes, social services are not as well developed as in other welfare traditions, for instance in the Scandinavian countries, and the family plays a key role although in the Mediterranean countries, contrary to what happens in other welfare states linked to this conservative tradition, the family mainly operates in the informal sphere with limited institutional recognition. As already expressed, this paper's main concern is to understand recent developments in childcare provision taking into consideration the context in which these take place, a main point of interest is therefore the ways in which the above mentioned institutional factors either facilitate or constrain policy development in this area.
3 The complex transition from unpaid to paid work
Departing from extremely low levels, there has been a constant increase in female activity rates since 1980.2 Over the period 1995–2001, Spain managed to increase female employment rates by 10.7 per cent; among the largest increases in the EU together with the Netherlands (11.6) and Ireland (13.4) (EC 2002). Still, despite the rapid increase, female employment rates continue to be very low compared to male employment rates, and compared to employment rates in other EU countries. Spain surpassed the 40 per cent female employment rate mark only in 2001 (41.9 per cent): far from the ‘full employment’ goal of the European Employment Strategy, which set a target female participation rate of 60 per cent for the EU average by 2010 (EC 2002). The increase in activity rates has been accompanied by high levels of unemployment, which is an especially common risk for Spanish women.3 Long-term unemployment is also a significant problem for women.4 While part-time employment is a main trait of female employment in the EU – approximately one-third of women in employment have a part-time job – in Spain, this form of employment contract has not been successfully introduced to increase levels of female participation in the labour market despite several labour market reforms aimed at increasing levels of part-time employment. On the contrary, much of the increase in participation rates is due to a continuous rise of short-term employment. In 1999, 35 per cent of women and 31 per cent of men were employed under a fixed-term contract; well above the EU averages of 14 and 12 per cent, respectively (EC 2000).
The good performance in employment growth is thus hindered by the poor quality of much of the employment created, and is still insufficient with respect to EU employment targets. In such a context, the employment reports of the European Commission continuously recommend that Spain should implement measures to promote the reconciliation of family and work, viewing these as necessary for increasing female labour force participation (EC 2001: 55). In particular, the European Commission urges this country to implement policies on career breaks, parental leave, good quality care for children and other dependents, equal sharing of family responsibilities and measures to facilitate the return to the workforce after a period of absence (EC 2000: 19).
Considering childcare provision in particular, the goal, common to all EU countries as it was set by the Barcelona European Council in March 2002, is to provide childcare by 2010 to at least 90 per cent of children between three years old and the mandatory school age and at least 33 per cent of children under the age of three. The next session will look at the evolution of childcare in Spain in education as well as in other social policy spheres.
4 Childcare provision: From family policy to the educational sector
One of the key features of welfare states in Southern Europe is the low levels of social expenditure devoted directly to the category of ‘family and children’ in both cash and in kind services. Spain spends 2 per cent of all social benefits expenditure on these programmes, compared to 8.4 per cent of the EU average (Eurostat 2001). Notwithstanding the importance of the family's role in providing protection, as it appears implicitly in several social insurance programmes,5 policies or measures that directly address the issue of caring in the private domain have no significant importance in the global distribution of welfare policies. The scarce or complete lack of monetary allowances for childcare or family responsibilities is not compensated for through tax deductions either.
Contrary to the conservative welfare tradition, motherhood and care work in the private domain has never served as way to receive welfare rights and social protection (León 2002). Given the resonance of family policy to the natalistic and paternalistic measures of the dictatorship (1939–1978), the different governments under the democratic period have deliberately chosen inaction in this field. As Valiente (2003: 288) has clearly expressed, political conditions in Spain have been less favourable towards childcare policy rationales other than the educational approach. As we will see next, improvements in the education sector have been remarkable.
A whole new legal framework for the regulation of the national education system (LOGSE) was created in 1990. It established, for the first time, the education of children under the age of six within the education system. Although compulsory education does not start until that age, the regulation of infant education was a significant step.6 The gross schooling rates for children from three to five years old have increased from 80 per cent in 1991–1992 to close to 100 per cent in 2000–2002.
The most dramatic change has occurred with the schooling rates of children of three years of age (from 57 per cent by the middle of the 1990s to 88 per cent in the year 2000–2001). For children aged four to five the schooling rates had reached 100 per cent in the majority of the regions by 1994–1995 (MEC 2002).
There is nevertheless a considerable degree of regional variation. While the Southern region of Andalucía had in 2000–2001 a net schooling rate of 67 per cent, the Basque Country already showed a net schooling rate for three year olds of a 100 per cent by the mid 1990s (Table 1). Although not specified by law, the engagement of three to five year olds in the education system usually takes the form of full-time attendance, although different centres can have different timetable arrangements.
(a) Number of units in infant education (3–5) by public/private. (b) Number of children in infant education (3–5) by public/private.
(a) Number of units in infant education (3–5) by public/private. (b) Number of children in infant education (3–5) by public/private.
| Children aged 3 | Children aged 4 | Children aged 5 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1994–1995 | 2000–2001 | 1994–1995 | 2000–2001 | 1994–1995 | 2000–2001 | |
| Total | 57.4 | 88.4 | 100.0 | 99.8 | 100 | 100 |
| Andalucia | 19.0 | 66.8 | 96.6 | 98.8 | 100 | 100 |
| Aragon | 80.7 | 98.3 | 100.0 | 100 | 99.2 | 100 |
| Asturias | 70.4 | 93.4 | 99.7 | 100 | 100 | 100 |
| Baleares | 47.9 | 93.8 | 98.0 | 99.9 | 100 | 100 |
| Canarias | 31.0 | 88.7 | 100.0 | 99.7 | 100 | 100 |
| Cantabria | 75.2 | 91.4 | 98.8 | 99 | 100 | 100 |
| Castilla León | 86.1 | 98.2 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 100 |
| Castilla-La Mancha | 62.3 | 97.4 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 100 |
| Cataluna | 97.1 | 99.5 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 100 |
| Valencia | 40.4 | 86.7 | 98.3 | 97.6 | 94.9 | 98.7 |
| Extremadura | 58.0 | 93.8 | 98.3 | 100 | 100 | 100 |
| Galicia | 75.0 | 88.4 | 100 | 99.2 | 100 | 100 |
| Madrid | 62.0 | 93 | 100 | 98.3 | 100 | 100 |
| Murcia | 40.5 | 92.2 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 100 |
| Navarra | 95.9 | 98.7 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 100 |
| Pais Vasco | 100.0 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 100 |
| Rioja | 76.2 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 100 |
| Ceuta | 38.9 | 75 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 100 |
| Melilla | 35.5 | 79 | 89.8 | 90.9 | 90 | 89.5 |
| Children aged 3 | Children aged 4 | Children aged 5 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1994–1995 | 2000–2001 | 1994–1995 | 2000–2001 | 1994–1995 | 2000–2001 | |
| Total | 57.4 | 88.4 | 100.0 | 99.8 | 100 | 100 |
| Andalucia | 19.0 | 66.8 | 96.6 | 98.8 | 100 | 100 |
| Aragon | 80.7 | 98.3 | 100.0 | 100 | 99.2 | 100 |
| Asturias | 70.4 | 93.4 | 99.7 | 100 | 100 | 100 |
| Baleares | 47.9 | 93.8 | 98.0 | 99.9 | 100 | 100 |
| Canarias | 31.0 | 88.7 | 100.0 | 99.7 | 100 | 100 |
| Cantabria | 75.2 | 91.4 | 98.8 | 99 | 100 | 100 |
| Castilla León | 86.1 | 98.2 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 100 |
| Castilla-La Mancha | 62.3 | 97.4 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 100 |
| Cataluna | 97.1 | 99.5 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 100 |
| Valencia | 40.4 | 86.7 | 98.3 | 97.6 | 94.9 | 98.7 |
| Extremadura | 58.0 | 93.8 | 98.3 | 100 | 100 | 100 |
| Galicia | 75.0 | 88.4 | 100 | 99.2 | 100 | 100 |
| Madrid | 62.0 | 93 | 100 | 98.3 | 100 | 100 |
| Murcia | 40.5 | 92.2 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 100 |
| Navarra | 95.9 | 98.7 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 100 |
| Pais Vasco | 100.0 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 100 |
| Rioja | 76.2 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 100 |
| Ceuta | 38.9 | 75 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 100 |
| Melilla | 35.5 | 79 | 89.8 | 90.9 | 90 | 89.5 |
Source: MEC (2001, 2003) Las cifras de la educación en España.
The increase in the supply of pre-school education has taken place in both the private and the public sector although the latter clearly dominates the former: out of the total of units offering pre-school education, 68 per cent corresponds to the public sector and 31 per cent to the private one (Table 2). As for the percentage of children attending pre-school centres, 66 per cent are registered in a public institution and 34 per cent in a private centre.7
| 1991–1992 | 1995–1996 | 1997–1998 | 1999–2000 | 2000–2001 | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total units | 43 815 | 100% | 51 781 | 100% | 54 426 | 100% | 57 486 | 100% | 59 199 | 100% |
| Public | 29 170 | 66.58 | 35 718 | 68.98 | 37 709 | 69.28 | 39 701 | 69.06 | 40 563 | 68.52 |
| Private | 14 645 | 33.42 | 16 063 | 31.02 | 16 717 | 30.72 | 17 785 | 30.94 | 18 636 | 31.48 |
| Total pupils | 1027 597 | 100% | 1096 677 | 100% | 1122 740 | 100% | 1132 976 | 100% | 1164 456 | 100% |
| Public | 635 188 | 61.81 | 737 088 | 67.21 | 759 374 | 67.64 | 759 837 | 67.07 | 772 970 | 66.38 |
| Private | 392 409 | 38.19 | 359 589 | 32.79 | 363 366 | 32.36 | 373 139 | 32.93 | 391 186 | 33.59 |
| 1991–1992 | 1995–1996 | 1997–1998 | 1999–2000 | 2000–2001 | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total units | 43 815 | 100% | 51 781 | 100% | 54 426 | 100% | 57 486 | 100% | 59 199 | 100% |
| Public | 29 170 | 66.58 | 35 718 | 68.98 | 37 709 | 69.28 | 39 701 | 69.06 | 40 563 | 68.52 |
| Private | 14 645 | 33.42 | 16 063 | 31.02 | 16 717 | 30.72 | 17 785 | 30.94 | 18 636 | 31.48 |
| Total pupils | 1027 597 | 100% | 1096 677 | 100% | 1122 740 | 100% | 1132 976 | 100% | 1164 456 | 100% |
| Public | 635 188 | 61.81 | 737 088 | 67.21 | 759 374 | 67.64 | 759 837 | 67.07 | 772 970 | 66.38 |
| Private | 392 409 | 38.19 | 359 589 | 32.79 | 363 366 | 32.36 | 373 139 | 32.93 | 391 186 | 33.59 |
Source: MEC (2001) Estadísticas de las Enseñanzas no Universitarias.
Contrasted with recent childcare provision targets in other EU countries, there is good availability of education services for children from three years old until mandatory education. In the UK for instance, the Labour Government's 1998 Childcare Strategy aimed to guarantee free early education place for all four and three year olds. However, even if the targets are met, the fact that the service will be part-time (defined as 2.5 hours per day, five days a week for 33 weeks a year) still leaves the public provision for children aged three to five in the UK considerably narrower in relation to current Spanish standards. Spain has also surpassed the previously mentioned EU objectives for 2010 set up in the 2003 Barcelona Council regarding childcare provision for children between three years old and mandatory school age.
Nevertheless, important as it is, from the point of view of the employment of mothers, childcare cannot be limited to the time children spend at the school. Pre-school provision does not deal with many situations evolving around the care of children, and it cannot offer a solution either when there is a change of routine (school holidays, sickness, etc.) The array of situations requiring ‘reconciliation’ needs to be acknowledged by specific policy mechanisms, since these do have a strong impact on the employment prospects of parents; mothers in particular. This is more so when the presence of short-term and precarious employment in the labour market is high, as is the case here.
As already argued, the problem of childcare from the point of view of the employment of mothers becomes more complicated in the case of children under the age of three. The provision here is considerably lower, although growing, and with a great degree of divergence across the national territory.
Childcare for children under three is more limited precisely because it falls into the domain of social services and not of the education system. The schooling rates for the period 2000–2001 of children under three was 2 per cent for children 0–1 years of age; 9 per cent for one year olds; and 21 per cent for two year olds (MEC 2003). The distribution between public and private nursery schools for children under the age of three is 42 per cent in the public sector and 58 per cent in the private sector (MEC 2003). However, among the different regions there is again great disparity. Catalonia, the Autonomous Community of Madrid and the Basque Country are the three regions with schooling rates well above average: 51, 31 and 61 per cent correspondingly for two year olds. The variation also applies for public/private provision. In Catalonia the majority of the provision is private (65 per cent), the Basque Country has a majority of public provision (61 per cent) and Madrid is more evenly distributed between public and private provision; 51 per cent is public and 49 per cent is private (MEC 2003). It is worth pointing out that there seems to be a correlation between levels of provision and levels of female employment. The three mentioned Autonomous Communities with the highest percentages of schooling rates for children under three years old have female occupation rates well above the national average (MTAS 2003).8
5 Labour law
Turning our attention to developments in labour law, protection towards the ‘risk’ of pregnancy and after-birth needs of working mothers has been improved on a number of counts. Measures for the reconciliation of work and family life have been developing overall within the framework of workers’ rights. Maternity leave has improved in terms of the length of time covered and the amount of the benefit.9 Entitlement to the benefit has also become broader, requiring a minimum of 180 days of employment rather than one year. The law on the ‘Reconciliation between Family and Working Life’, approved by the centre-right government (Popular Party, PP) in 1999, regulated in favour of working breaks for breastfeeding; adoptive mothers were given the same rights with regard to maternity leave; and the right to reduce the number of working hours for parents with dependant children was introduced, with the correspondent reduction on salary. The law also extended the possibility of periods of leave to care for dependent relatives, not just children. As a result of this and previous reforms, Spain conforms to EC standards regarding maternity leave.
The new regulation however, failed to provide real paternity leave. Maternity leave has not yet developed into a comprehensive parental leave policy. Parents do not have equal rights (or obligations) to take leave. Mothers have the option to transfer a maximum of ten weeks out of the 16 weeks of her leave to the father. This has not encouraged fathers to take leave, however, or induced mothers to give up their right. Firstly, because the mother has to choose between sharing part of the 16 weeks with the father or keeping the whole period for herself and secondly, because the mother has to be entitled to this benefit. A male worker included in the social security scheme cannot benefit from this right unless his female partner is entitled to it. Hence, the notion of childbirth is still primarily linked to mothers. As a result, only 3.5 per cent of men have taken up some of the measures for the reconciliation of work and family (CES 2003).10 Furthermore, although the eligibility criteria is not very strict, it does not solve the problem of childcare after the first three months of birth.
As will be discussed in the section that follows, the effectiveness of all these instruments is substantially hindered by the conditions of women in the labour market as well as by the bargaining dynamics between unions and employers in negotiations and collective agreements. The next section pays particular attention to the effects of the welfare state system and labour market structure on policy innovation in the field of childcare.
6 The Impact of the welfare state tradition and the labour market in the development of social care policies
The Spanish welfare state was consolidated considerably later than most welfare states in Western Europe. The modernisation process in this country, and also in Italy, Portugal and Greece, was shaped by an ‘atypical trajectory of change’ which compressed, in the 1970s, a late political democratic transition for Greece, Portugal and Spain, and, for Italy, delayed political stability. The democratic consolidation in these countries ‘(…) involved skipping over developmental stages that had characterised processes of socio-economic and political change in most other Western countries earlier in the twentieth century’ (Gunther et al. 1995: xiv). This ‘late arrival’ was for some time seen as the most specific feature in welfare research: South European welfare states were distinct to the extent that they were immature and underdeveloped. This view has, however, been progressively replaced by a less simplistic conception. Given the progressive Europeanisation of social policy in these countries (Mangen 1996; Guillén and Matsaganis 2000; Guillén and Álvarez 2004), their welfare systems are no longer considered as being peripheral to West European welfare states. Nevertheless, although processes of rationalisation, modernisation and progress towards social citizenship have helped to consolidate the welfare state architecture of Spain (and also Italy, Portugal and Greece) there are certain areas of social policy that resist change. As we have seen in the previous section, policy change has occurred overall in the terrain of pre-school education, but the influence of indirect familialistic practices in other social policy spheres, and the absence of effective implementation of policies addressing work/life balance dilemmas, especially for women with caring responsibilities, persists as fundamental traits. As a former Director of the Women's Right Institute pointed out:
we (state feminists) have always believed that the universalisation of rights such as health and education is a positive thing for women. We have not been able to challenge the foundations of a ‘male breadwinner’ welfare state but at least we are closer now to the principles of a social-democratic state in the public health and education systems.11
In this vein, trade unions are putting forward the idea that the solution to low levels of female participation in the labour market and low provision for social care would be the expansion of a personal social services sector that would create jobs by providing services to dependent elderly people and children.12 This develops from the idea that demand and supply in service employment are mutually reinforcing. In the Netherlands, for instance, the rapid increase of employment in areas of care for children and other dependants in the mid 1980s occurred simultaneously with the quick expansion of female labour force participation (Hemerijck and Schludi 2000).
The dualistic and fragmentary character of social protection schemes in terms of core-periphery dynamics, a feature of the ‘Southern Model’ (Ferrera 1996; Trifiletti 1999), which has a strong gender dimension, also impacts upon policy innovation in the field of social care. The consequent reforms of the social protection system in Spain have not acknowledged the complicated relationship between family and employment and its consequences for female participation in the labour market. Recent pension reforms in some countries have taken into account the impact time spent on care has on women's low pension claims and on gender patterns of stratification within insurance schemes. New measures have been introduced to compensate for the time spent off work due to child rearing demands, or time spent taking care of other dependents. This is the case, for instance of the German 2001 pension reform, where greater recognition for time spent on care marks an inverse trend in a landscape of restrictive measures (Klammer 2002). In Spain, however, although different redistributive mechanisms, that break the proportionality between benefits and contribution records, apply for workers with weak working trajectories, so far there is no crediting system for time spent in care. There are, however, other schemes that partially compensate for the difficulties women face in claiming benefits; this is chiefly the case of the survivor's benefit, the archetypal example of familialistic benefits and support for the male breadwinner type of family (León 2002). In many social provisions, care is not explicitly acknowledged, but in contrast family dependency is taken into account, so as to provide a secondary route for women to access social rights. This complex role that the family plays in the organisation of welfare has probably been the feature that has captured most attention among social policy and welfare scholars.
A further issue is the increasing decentralised nature of key welfare domains. Decentralisation poses significant challenges to the coordination capacity at different administrative levels. While actors at the central level might see decentralisation as posing obstacles to the achievement of national and EU targets, such as for instance raising rates of pre-school education, a higher capacity for manoeuvre at sub-national level might also be seen as an opportunity to cover deficits in a particular field. This has recently been the case with laws for the reconciliation of work and family, which some regions (Autonomous Communities) with competencies for it have put forward to widen the scope of the measures to their employees. In 2002, the Catalan Parliament approved legislation with a number of measures related to the reconciliation of work and family life of personnel of the Catalan public administration13 (BOPC 22 April 2002). The most innovative of the measures has been the right for parents with children of less than one year to work part-time (a one-third reduction in the total working time) without any salary cut. The law also contemplates the right of a one hour absence from work for breastfeeding for the first nine months after birth. Interestingly enough, the central government has introduced a similar scheme to improve the work/life balance of civil servants working for the central administration.14 The problem with these measures, whether they come from the national or sub-national level, is that further rights are granted to an already protected sector of the labour force (civil servants working for the regional or central administrations). To a certain extent this depends on the already strong centre-periphery dynamic in the labour market
In relation to the labour market, two interconnected factors intercede. Firstly, employment policies have been dominated by a ‘strategic neo-corporatism’ (Rhodes 1997) where the public administration, employers and unions have negotiated reforms often in a climate of economic and social constraints. The result of the negotiations has often been a compromise between wage moderation and protection of the core sector of the labour market while allowing for greater deregulation of the ‘peripheral’ sectors of the labour force. Employment policies during the 1990s were shaped by deregulation in the labour market (leading to high levels of temporary employment) and the preservation of previous protective employment regulations (Rhodes 1997).
The growth of short-term contracts thanks to the deregulation of the labour market has created an environment of precarious flexibility. As stated by one interviewee, the basic problem is that flexibility has been introduced through short-term contracts instead of part-time employment:
The strategy undertaken for increasing labour market flexibility has proved highly counterproductive in terms of the work/life balance. At present, part-time employment does not work as a bridge leading to regular employment, but rather as an instrument in the hands of employers to meet their needs for flexibility.15
Politicians and social actors have understood that the rights of children need to be protected and there has been consensus across all political parties and social actors to improve childcare as part of the principle of universal access to education, but that has not been linked to the situation of women who work and have small children. This is a completely different story. Women's vulnerability in employment is mainly a problem of the functioning of the labour market. Women's rights as workers are invisible in most negotiations even if these are protected by law.16
7 The fragmentation of informal care
Finally, there seems to be a relationship between the underdevelopment of specific policy areas (in this case child care) and the lack of specific pressure from public opinion to develop them. The invisibility of certain issues that have traditionally not belonged to the paradigms of certain spheres of the welfare state often operates as an obstacle for their future integration and assimilation in policy change.
In the case of the Spanish welfare state, and South European welfare states, problems and constraints faced by care providers and recipients of care have been well documented, at least during the last decade. These are the result of ‘deficits’ in care welfare arrangements. The record lows in fertility levels is perhaps the most ‘puzzling factor’ for public opinion and politicians. Although misleading in some political discourse,17 the low levels of reproduction among Spanish women are seen as the outcome of scarce measures supporting the reconciliation of work and family and of a high degree of instability in employment. Yet the identification of a problem does not necessarily lead to its remedy. Precisely, there might be a ‘perverse’ relationship between the deficit of certain policy mechanisms, and the lack of public demand and support for those instruments. As some authors have argued referring to family policy in Italy and Spain (Valiente 1996; Tobío 1998; Naldini 1999; Flaquer 2000), there is a sort of vicious circle between a high level of informal, unpaid protection provided by the family and a low development of family policies. One of the consequences of weak or absent family policy might be that people get used to dealing with these sorts of risks individually and privately, and thus do not demand public action on such matters in an articulated way.
However, personal strategies for social care arrangements are rapidly moving towards a marketisation process although still within the limits of the household. Individual strategies for social care seem to be shifting from informal unpaid family support to informal/formal paid work. Hence, social care is moving beyond the traditional realm of the family where care work is fundamentally unpaid, to a vague area of paid work circumscribed between the informal sector of the black economy, and the formal but ‘weak’ service sector economy. For the year 2002, 86 per cent of foreign women registered in the social security system were employed in the service sector (CES 2003: 112). Half of the work permits given in 1999 to the service sector went to ‘households that employ domestic personnel’ (62 per cent of foreign women who obtained a work permit in 1999 belonged to this domestic service category) (MTAS 1999).18
More comparative analyses will be needed to measure the scope of the global redistribution of care work produced by recent migration and mobility flows and the implications of this care arrangements in terms of the reproduction of social inequalities, but as Williams (2001: 470) has pointed out, these trends suggest that ‘the “costs of care” are not just a question of the changing relationship between the state, market, family and community, but of geopolitical inequalities between states affecting individuals in gendered and racialised ways’. Informal provision of care in general, whether formal or informal, is used in most countries as a complement to formal forms of provision (see for instance the comparative study of Larsen 2004; and Skinner 2003; Wheelock and Jones 2002 for the UK). But whether that informal arrangement is pivotal to the general social demand for care would fundamentally depend on levels of institutional support towards social care.
8 Concluding remarks
This paper has looked at the evolution of mechanisms for childcare against the background of increasing female participation in the labour market. Women's expectations towards paid employment, the socialisation needs of children and the social importance of children's vulnerability have placed childcare and policies for the reconciliation of work and family at the forefront of public concern.
The paper has shown that, broadly speaking, the demand for childcare and also the supply of care within the welfare state have been placed in the domains of education. Developments in this field have been regarded more as an investment in the socialization needs of children than as a policy aimed at assisting parents to balance their work and family life. The improvements in the quality and the scope of public care for children have taken place thanks to a considerable expansion of the education system to include children prior to regulatory school age. Contrasted with recent childcare provision targets at EU level, the care and education needs of children from three years of age until mandatory education seem to be well covered in Spain. The provision for children under three is, albeit growing, more limited and there is a high degree of regional disparity. The potential for development in this field lies firstly in the expansion of the education sector to include the age group 0 to 3 as part of the system, and in the capacity for policy innovation at sub-national level with incentives from central government.
The paper has also shown that recent reforms in the social protection system have failed to consider childcare as an element determining eligibility and access to social rights. While the role played by the family as a main provider of care is still important, there is an increasing process of marketisation of a particular kind. Individual strategies for social care seem to be shifting from unpaid family support to informal/formal paid work. Social care is expanding itself in an area of paid work circumscribed between the informal sector of the grey economy, and the formal but fragile service sector economy.
In looking for possible explanatory factors, the paper has pointed out that the specific configuration of the welfare state and the labour market plays a role in the chances of policy innovation in this area. The welfare state is cash transfers biased. Lack of state social care services signals a gender bias in welfare policies towards the male breadwinner. There is also a problem of political visibility and corporatist politics, which have given priority to other issues in the political agenda.
New measures and legislative initiatives in labour law have been enhanced at central and regional levels to deal with the reconciliation of work and family life. These have been important in terms of recognition and political visibility, but still minor in relation to existing needs for large parts of the population. This is an area where improvements could take place more easily than in the rather immobile field of family policy. Social and political actors might be more willing to work in this direction given the fact that this is an area with ‘no past’ as is the case in family policy and where transposition of EU law is quite straightforward. The difficulty, however, is with the implementation of rights legally protected into actual benefits. In this last aspect, outcomes of collective agreements will be of crucial importance.
Footnotes
The two largest trade unions at national level are: UGT (Union General de los Trabajadores) and CC.OO. (Comisiones Obreras)
The male activity rate decreased from 79 per cent in 1986 to 75.5 per cent in 1993 while female activity rate increased form 34 per cent in 1986 to 43 per cent and 49 per cent in 1993 and 1999, respectively (Eurostat, Labour Force Survey 1993, 1999).
In 1985 the female youth unemployment rate was 20 per cent in Spain; 14 per cent in Portugal; 14.5 per cent in Italy; 14 per cent in France; and 11 per cent in the UK. In 1990 the figures were 17 per cent in Spain; 6 per cent in Portugal; 13 per cent in Italy; 9.5 per cent in France; and 6 per cent in the UK (EC 1999).
Female long-term unemployment (% of the labour force) 1985: Spain 16 per cent; Portugal 7 per cent; Italy 9 per cent; France 6 per cent; Germany 4 per cent; and the UK 4. per cent. In 1990: Spain 15 per cent; Portugal 3 per cent; Italy 10 per cent; France 5 per cent; Germany 2.5 per cent; and the UK 1.5 per cent (EC 1999).
This is the case for instance of the non-contributory retirement and invalidity pension scheme where the socio-economic situation of the household is taken into account for the determination of income threshold and degree of disability, and where incentives are in place to encourage pensioners to cohabit with their relatives.
‘Infant Education’ as it is now called (to stress the educational character–nursery schools were renamed as infant schools after the 1990 national law on education) is divided in two phases. The first goes from 0 to 3 years old; and the second from 3 to 6.
However, the division between public and private institutions needs to be nuanced given the fact that a large part of the privately managed schools (escuelas concertadas) are publicly subsidised and access is, in principle, also free. The difference lies more on the character of the institution (private schools are almost all religious (Catholic in character) and the extra-curricula activities.
For 2003, the average female employment rate in Spain was 36 per cent; In Catalonia it was 43 per cent; 40 per cent in the Basque Country and 41 per cent in the Autonomous Community of Madrid (MTAS 2003).
The allowance went from 14 weeks in 1989 to 16 weeks in 1994. The amount of the benefit increased from 75 per cent of the reference wage in 1989 to 100 per cent in 1994.
In 2003, a total of 34.116 workers benefited from the main measures of the 1999 law for the reconciliation of work and family. Reduction of working week for taking care of children under 6 (with a proportional salary reduction) was taken up by 19.609 workers (of which 18.940 were women and 669 were men); the next most demanded measure was work absence for the care of dependant children (14.381 persons, of which 502 were men). (El Pais 09/03/2004)
C. Martinez Ten, Director of the Instituto de la Mujer from 1991 to 1993 (Madrid, 14 of February 1999).
Interview with Lola Liceras (Secretary of Employment); Carmen Bravo and Pura García, trade union CC.OO. (Madrid, 21 December 2004)
The potential beneficiaries of the law are 205.000 civil servants from the local and regional administrations of Catalonia (El Pais 18/04/2002).
The new plan ‘Concilia’ was introduced in December 2005 by the centre-left government PSOE. The plan grants additional paternity and maternity rights to civil servants working for the central administration.
Alfonso Prieto, General Directorate for Labour Market Studies, Ministry of Labour. (Madrid, 21 December 2004)
Lola Liceras, Secretary of Employment, CC.OO. (Madrid, 21 December 2004)
As in other places, the issue of low fertility has often been linked to migration issues. Although it is certainly true that birth rates are lower in Italy and Spain than anywhere else in Europe, the difference is however not that striking. In 1997 Spain had 1.15 and Italy 1.22 of fertility rates and countries such as Germany and Austria had 1.36 (Eurostat 1999). The ‘uniqueness’ of Southern Europe in this respect is the speed of change from relatively high levels to a rapid decrease, a phenomenon which is common to Catholic countries such as Ireland. The latter had the strongest variation since 1960.
Given the high presence of the grey economy in this sector, ‘real numbers’ are well above official percentages. According to the 2001 census, the number of foreign women actually working as domestic minders is actually 30 per cent higher than those registered with social security that same year (CES 2003: 110).
References
Margarita León is a lecturer in Social policy, School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research, University of Kent. From 2001 and 2003 she was a Marie Curie Post-doctoral fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute in Florence, Italy. In 2000 she completed her PhD at the London School of Economics. She holds an MA in Sociological Research from the University of Essex (1995). Her most recent publications in English include: ‘Welfare state regimes and the social organisation of labour: childcare arrangements and the work/family balance dilemma’, in L. Pettinger, J. Parry, R. Taylor and Glucksmann, M. (eds) (in press, 2006) A New Sociology of Work? Oxford: Blackwell Publishing/The Sociological Review, pp. 204–18; with M. Mateo and C. Meseguer (2005) ‘The Spanish case: who was mobilized and how?’, in S. Lucarelli and C. Radaelli (eds) The EU Convention's Impact on Southern Europe, Inc. Routledge (an earlier version was published in 2004 in South European Society & Politics 9(1), 63–81); and M. León (2002) ‘The individualisation of social rights: hidden familialistic practices in Spanish social policy’, South European Society & Politics 7(3), 53–79.