Conditions for Welfare Production in Families
Wednesday, 16. October 2013 | 11:15 Uhr
Speaker
Organisation
Reporting
Heidi Stutz of the Center for Labor and Social Policy Studies BASS said that the welfare state cannot secure the prosperity and welfare of the individual alone. The welfare state essentially only financially supports the gainfully employed in cases of loss of income due to illness, accident, disability, and age. But the nursing and care needs as well as nursing and care work, which for the most part is carried out without pay by relatives, are only minimally protected in most countries.
The reason for this is that at the time the achievements of the welfare state were introduced, it was a matter of course that husbands as the sole breadwinners would also support their wives who would nurse and care for the children, the sick, and infirm parents within the family. However, the gender division of work has changed. And at the same time, uncertainties and ruptures in working life have increased.
“If families and social surroundings should continue to play their important roles in the creation of prosperity and welfare, the relationship between welfare state, gender-based division of work as well as the assumption and protection of nursing and care must be rethought.” Thus she spoke and demanded: “Better solutions for separated parents. Better basic protection for low-income families. And in order to ensure that future nursing and care requirements are covered, there also need to be time-outs that are protected by social insurance during care-intensive periods.”
Heidi Stutz
Social Economist and Economic Historian
lic. phil. hist., 1959
Studies in economic history in connection with social economy in Zurich. She worked as journalist and editor.
Since 2000, she has been working for BASS (office for labor and social political studies):
Focus
Social security: studies on family policies (e.g. collaboration in «Family, Money and Politics » study of the national research program 45), generational politics (co-direction of «Heirs in Switzerland » study of the national research program 52) and social minimal security («models for a guaranteed minimum salary» study for the Federal Social Insurance Office and various activities on supplementary benefits).
Equal opportunities: long-term research experience in the field of gender equality (e.g. assessment of gender equality law, gender and research funding study commissioned by the Swiss National Science Foundation. Work: Projects on work-life balance and paid and unpaid labor.
