Istanbul Technical University Women’s Studies Center (ITU-WSC) Working Paper Series on Work-Family Balance and Gender Equality: A North-South Policy Perspective TAKING ADVANTAGE OF AUSTERITY: THE ECONOMIC CRISIS AND CARE IN SPAIN Lourdes Benería and María Martínez-Iglesias February 2014 Abstract The paper focuses on the effects of the 2008 economic crisis on care work in Spain. It analyzes the extent to which the crisis has affected earlier trends and brought about new developments in care giving. It shows that, even before the crisis, reconciliation policies were focusing on the distribution of care work within the family or they were leaning on the family to "professionalize" care work. The paper's main argument is that the crisis has been used as a way to justify the low implementation path that was being followed even before the crisis and to water down many of the policies that had been adopted since 1999. Using primary statistical sources and complementary information from interviews, we show that the implementation of these laws and the processes initiated in 1999 have been seriously weakened and, in some cases, even reversed by the crisis, with negative consequences for gender equality. 1. Introduction The main argument in this paper is that the economic crisis that has hit Spain since 2008 has become an obstacle and a turning point in the implementation of the policies that had been adopted during the previous decade on the issue of balancing family and labor
Istanbul Technical University Women’s Studies Center (ITU-WSC) Working Paper Series on Work-Family Balance and Gender Equality: A North-South Policy Perspective TAKING ADVANTAGE OF AUSTERITY: THE ECONOMIC CRISIS AND CARE IN SPAIN Lourdes Benería and María Martínez-Iglesias February 2014 Abstract The paper focuses on the effects of the 2008 economic crisis on care work in Spain. It analyzes the extent to which the crisis has affected earlier trends and brought about new developments in care giving. It shows that, even before the crisis, reconciliation policies were focusing on the distribution of care work within the family or they were leaning on the family to "professionalize" care work. The paper's main argument is that the crisis has been used as a way to justify the low implementation path that was being followed even before the crisis and to water down many of the policies that had been adopted since 1999. Using primary statistical sources and complementary information from interviews, we show that the implementation of these laws and the processes initiated in 1999 have been seriously weakened and, in some cases, even reversed by the crisis, with negative consequences for gender equality. 1. Introduction The main argument in this paper is that the economic crisis that has hit Spain since 2008 has become an obstacle and a turning point in the implementation of the policies that had been adopted during the previous decade on the issue of balancing family and labor
1984WorkingPaper.workFamilyBalance.Spain.docx