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Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society Advance Access originally published online on June 1, 2007
Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society 2007 14(2):182-211; doi:10.1093/sp/jxm011
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© The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Affirming, Transforming, or Neglecting Gender? Conceptualizing Gender in the Pension Reform Process1

Patrik Marier

Patrik Marier is Canada Research Chair in Comparative Public Policy and Assistant Professor of Political Science at Concordia University

Correspondence: He can be contacted at the Department of Political Science, Concordia University, 1455 Boulevard De Maisonneuve Ouest, Montréal (Québec), Canada H3G 1M8. Tel.: +1 514 848 2424, ext. 5187. E-mail: pmarier{at}alcor.concordia.ca

This article analyzes the gender visions adopted by policy actors in pension reform debates. Based on the work of Fraser (Fraser, N. 1994. "After the Family Wage: Gender Equity and the Welfare State." Political Theory 22 : 591–618; Fraser, N. 1995. "From Redistribution to Recognition? Dilemmas of Justice in a ‘Post-Socialist’ Age." New Left Review 212:68–93), four gendered visions of public pensions are introduced and then applied to pension reforms in Belgium and Sweden. In line with international trends, both cases seek to integrate women within a pension system that treats men and women the same regardless of their nonmarket activities. However, in both cases, some compensation is introduced to acknowledge the caring functions performed mainly by women. Based on Fraser's typology, this arrangement leads to one of the worst-case scenarios since it legitimizes pension systems that are predominantly geared toward full-time contributors and penalizes those individuals most likely to spend sometimes away from the labor market. The Belgian case emphasizes the negative role of the EU in retrenching pension rights and benefits for women. The Swedish case is interesting because of the scope of its reform and the fact that women in the service sector end up supporting the principle of tying benefits to contributions.


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