Welfare and Welfare to Work in the United States

Summary

Despite social work's historic ambivalence toward income support programs, the policy changes introduced by the TANF welfare to work program demand the profession's attention. Although social workers are not directly responsible for the administration or implementation of the program, many serve TANF clients whose lives have been affected by these changes. Tracing social work's historic but reluctant involvement with income support, this paper urges the profession to respond to the challenges posed by the TANF program in a more systematic way and to contribute more effectively to the wider task of poverty eradication.     

Predictors of Feminist Activism among Social Work Students in the United States

While social workers advocate against domestic violence, sexual harassment, and restrictive reproductive practices, there have been virtually no studies on the reasons behind their feminist activism. To address this oversight, this study documented the extent of feminist activism among American undergraduate social work students (n = 159). When moving to explanatory analysis, our data suggest that feminist activism was related to greater educational attainment, knowing activist peers, recognizing heterosexism, and internalizing a commitment to social justice. Moreover, electoral activism was tied to the rejection of traditional gender norms in the family and perceptions of social movement tactics were crucial to protesting for women's rights.     

Care Diamonds and Welfare Regimes in East and South-East Asian Societies: Bridging Family and Welfare Sociology

This paper tries to bridge the micro-level analyses of social networks for "care" provision which have been conducted in the field of family sociology, and the macro-level framework on welfare mix which has been developed in the area of welfare sociology, because the options for creating social networks are given to individuals by society. A group of Asian researchers including the author have conducted comparative research on social networks for childcare and elderly care in six Asian societies, namely Korea, China, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, and Japan. To reexamine the results, the author draws diagrams of the care diamonds in each society for each type of care (childcare or elderly care) to show the balance between four sectors (the state, market, family and relatives, and the community) which determines the pattern of welfare mix. The most prevalent pattern in Asian societies today is the pattern with a large family and relatives sector and a large market sector. We can interpret it as a familistic welfare regime combined with liberalism. However, Japan alone shows a pattern close to pure familism because the development of the market sector is restricted by immigration policies prohibiting the employment of foreign domestic workers. Unlike other Asian societies which were exposed to the global market before the family could become a closed organization and marketization of care work took place easily, in Japan, where the modern family system had been established, both socialization and marketization of care work have stagnated.     

International Circumstances as Factors in Building a Welfare State: Welfare Regimes in Europe, Japan and Korea

The East Asian experiences of welfare-state building have universal implications for the sociology of the welfare state because they clearly indicate the relevance of international circumstances to welfare-state building. The convergence theory of the welfare state lays emphasis on the economic development, demographic structure, and age of the social security system. The path dependency theory regards a country's social structure and history as important. However, both these theories clearly state the importance of the domestic factors as well. On the contrary, the East Asian experiences show that the dates of the takeoff of the welfare state and the international context at that time were decisive for the subsequent development of the welfare state. The European welfare states are considered to be a by-product of "embedded liberalism." The Japanese welfare state, on the other hand, was established in the context of the worldwide stagflation of the 1970s; therefore, Japan experienced the formation and crisis of the welfare state at the same time and this is what characterized its present welfare system. The Korean welfare state emerged in the age of global capitalism and was consequently shaped by the co-occurrence of welfare and workfare. Given the above, it can be said that the international circumstances faced by each welfare state characterized the three worlds of welfare capitalism: Europe, Japan, and Korea.     

Inequality Regimes and Men's Positions in Social Work

The aim of this article is to contribute to the exploration of men's positions in professions numerically dominated by women through an in depth analysis of the gendering practices in groups of social workers. The empirical material consists of interviews with three work groups in Sweden, each with one man and several women as members. The analysis focuses upon gendering practices in the interview setting. It shows how the positions occupied by the men in the sample confirm or undermine constructions of masculinity as dominance. Furthermore, it is argued that to fully understand men's positions in these groups the analysis needs take other forms of inequality into account in addition to gender. It is shown that in the empirical cases under scrutiny men's positions are shaped by regimes of inequality where age and gender relations, as well as notions of professional experience, are interconnected.     

Feminist Insight on Gendered Work: New Directions in Research on Women and Entrepreneurship

This paper discusses research on female entrepreneurs in conjunction with feminist theory on gendered work. I explore the ways in which much of the research on women's experiences of entrepreneurship focuses on identifying similarities and differences between female and male business owners, and on providing explanations for the differences identified. While such an approach is useful in compensating for the exclusion of women in earlier studies of business ownership, it does not illuminate how and why entrepreneurship came to be defined and understood vis-à-vis the behaviour of only men. I argue that existing knowledge on women business owners could be enhanced through reflection on two issues — first, on the essentialism in the very construction of the category of ‘the female entrepreneur’ (which prioritizes sex over other dimensions of stratification) and second, on the ways in which the connections between gender, occupation and organizational structure differently affect female and male business owners.     

A Feminist Critique of Japanization: Employment and Work in Consumer Electronics

The debate over lean production and Japanization has now matured, with a broad range of perspectives and analysis. Through analysis of the central role women’s labour plays in Japanese‐owned enterprises, this article will provide a critical discussion of Japanization. Japanization is neither a sufficient explanation of the nature of workplaces in which women work, nor a necessary goal for labour management in Japanese‐owned enterprises. Using extensive ethnographic field research drawn from studies in Japan and the UK in Japanese‐owned enterprises and a European‐owned enterprise engaged in television assembly, this article argues that there is no aspect of it which it would be appropriate to label Japanization.     

Examining the Association of Welfare State Expenditure,Non-profit Regimes and Charitable Giving

This paper explores cross-country variations in charitable giving and investigates the association of welfare state policies with private philanthropy. Hypotheses are drawn from crowding-out theory and considerations about the influence of a country’s mixed economy of welfare. We add to the on-going discussion concerning the crowding-out hypothesis with empirical evidence by looking at specific charitable subsectors people donate to across countries. Using Eurobarometer survey data that include 23 countries, we find no evidence for a crowding-out effect, but rather a crosswise crowding-in effect of private donations. Moreover, giving behaviour differs between non-profit regimes.     

Work/Care Regimes: Institutions,Culture and Behaviour and the Australian Case

Increasingly around the industrialized world, labour markets rely upon the paid work of women, many of whom have dependents. Such changing patterns of paid work by women — and by men — are located within work/care regimes that are more or less hostile to the needs of paid workers who care for others. This article sets out a model of work/care regimes and locates the Australian case within international and historical contexts. In Australia, the unchanging normative male worker archetype dominates institutions of work and care, while the cultures of motherhood and fatherhood remain stoically resistant to renovation. In the meantime, the behaviour of working women runs ahead of these unchanging cultures and institutions, creating a policy interest in ‘reconciling’ work and care, but a failure to provide it. The reasons for this failure are outlined.