The link between gender equality, birth
rates and economic prosperity is a new and thought-provoking approach to the
gender issue set out by Professor Lena Sommestad in the new article in the
Current Sweden series.
The present demographic situation in
Europe and elsewhere, with low birth rates and ageing populations, highlights
the impact of gender relations and family life on economic development.
According to a growing body of research, countries that fail to restructure
their societies in line with modern womens demands for equal rights and
responsibilities run the risk of curbing population growth, accelerating the
ageing of the population, and, in the longer term, slowing down economic
growth. Gender equality is usually understood as an issue of political and
social rights. In Sweden, however, the struggle for gender equality has also
been closely linked with long-term economic and social concerns. Swedish gender
equality policies build on a strong tradition of pro-natalist and supportive
social policies. This demographic tradition makes the Swedish experience highly
relevant to the current European debate about declining birth rates and
population ageing.
The Swedish welfare state is based on a
dual bread-winner model. Sweden has, in other words, adopted a gender-neutral
concept of social citizenship. Apart from circumstances directly related to
childbirth, married women in Sweden are covered by the same labour, tax and
social security legislation as men. No entitlements are targeted at women in
their capacity as wives. The state uses separate taxation, generous public
day-care provision for pre-school children, and extensive programmes of parental
leave to encourage married women/mothers to remain in gainful employment.
The Swedish dual breadwinner model
contrasts sharply with the predominant European welfare state model, which was
designed around the single (male) breadwinner. The Swedish model grew out of a
distinctive national experience, characterised by late industrialisation,
widespread poverty and dramatic demographic challenges: first mass emigration,
then declining fertility. In contrast to more affluent European societies,
Sweden was for a long time highly dependent on womens paid labour. The
consequent strain on the birth rate encouraged the belief that extensive state
intervention was needed to support families with children. Social policies have
long recognised womens dual role as both mothers and breadwinners.
The demographic and economic legacy of
Swedish gender equality policies is of particular interest today, as Europe
faces the challenge of declining birth rates and population ageing. Not only are
European women today giving birth to fewer children than in previous decades but
there is also a decline in the marriage rate, a large number of single mothers,
and increasing child poverty. We are witnessing a process of female emancipation
and a crisis of the traditional European male-breadwinner family.
These dramatic changes in European
demographic and family patterns are a major challenge for Europe. Population
ageing, problematic as it is, may prove to be a window of opportunity for
radical, gender-equality reform. Yet in order to use the population issue to
promote democratic, women-friendly policies, feminists will have to overcome
their traditional suspicion of demographic arguments and develop a new,
progressive population discourse.
In most countries, the relationship
between feminists and pro-natalists has traditionally been fraught with
conflict. Feminists have generally focused on womens needs and rights, while
population policies have aimed at supplying the country with more babies.
Furthermore, population policies in Europe have often been closely linked to
nationalism and militarism. A case in point is France, where the population
issue became a top priority as early as the late nineteenth century.
The important lesson to be learnt from
Sweden is that demands for more children do not have to conflict with gender
equality. Women in Sweden, like their sisters in Europe, have refused to accept
childbearing as a social duty, yet they have succeeded in making use of
pro-natalist arguments to strengthen their own cause. This distinctive Swedish
tradition of a women-friendly population discourse originates in the 1930s, when
Gunnar and Alva Myrdal, well-known Swedish social-democratic politicians and
social scientists, succeeded in raising the population question as a starting
point for radical policies of social reform. Swedish birth rates had fallen
dramatically, and the Myrdals argued that Sweden needed more babies in order to
counteract population ageing. They also maintained, however, that pro-natalist
policies should build on a democratic and feminist basis. Most importantly,
higher birth rates should be accompanied by freedom of choice for women (for
example access to contraceptives), and population policies must recognise
employed mothers as a social fact. This capacity to combine pro-natalism and
feminism helps to explain the success of Swedish equality policies. Later on, in
the post war era, economic and demographic arguments have again been used in
Sweden to argue in favour of public services such as child care to support
women in their dual role.
The reason for the process of population
ageing that we are witnessing is that most countries in Europé today have birth
rates far below what is needed to reproduce the population. The only country in
the European Union that will not experience substantial ageing in years to come
is Ireland, where birth rates have fallen only lately. In some countries, most
notably Italy, the process of population ageing will be rapid.
What then are the macro-economic
implications of this scenario? We now know that age structure has a profound
impact on macro-economic phenomena. Of particular interest is the impact of age
structure changes on economic growth. Several studies show that children and the
elderly have a negative impact on economic growth, while people of working age,
and in particular the 5064 age group, have a positive impact. It follows that
the ageing of European societies in the coming decades will have a serious
impact on economic development, with slow or even negative economic growth to be
expected within a few decades. Population ageing has also been shown to be
associated with other negative economic trends such as growing.public
expenditure and budget deficits. This adds to the challenges that Europe now
faces. It is thus clear that human reproduction plays a crucial role in the
creation of national prosperity. The negative consequences of low birth rates do
not show up immediately, since age structure changes are slow and gradual.
Indeed, in the short term declining birth rates can have a positive economic
impact as the child dependency ratio falls. In the longer term, however, the
negative economic effects will make themselves increasingly felt as the share of
the elderly grows.
Declining birth rates in a society are
brought about by a combination of factors. Unemployment and lack of housing, for
example, can hamper family formation. But the crucial variable today is womens
own choice, and in this context, it is important to know that an increasing
number of studies now show that gender equality matters.
As has already been mentioned, this
association between gender equality and childbearing was already recognised in
Sweden in the 1930s. Alva Myrdals idea that declining fertility rates should be
fought with increased gender equality was, in fact, a major contributory factor
to the development of the Swedish dual breadwinner model. A law from 1939 made
it illegal to fire women on grounds of pregnancy or marriage. Although single
(male) breadwinner families became common in Sweden in the 1940s and 1950s as
the urban population grew and average incomes rose, the idea that women should
be able to combine work and motherhood survived. From the 1960s and onwards, a
growing number of Swedish women returned to gainful employment, and by the early
1970s, the two-breadwinner norm had been firmly established.
According to the traditional view, women
choose between children and a professional career. Therefore, it is often
argued, birth rates would improve if women returned to their traditional role in
the domestic sphere. However, recent research on the fertility decline in Europe
and elsewhere indicates that the return of women to the home is no longer an
appropriate measure if we want more children to be born. Cross-country analyses
demonstrate, namely, that birth rates are particularly low in countries that
support traditional patterns of marriage and breadwinning. In fact, since the
early 1980s, high birth rates in the industrialised world have tended to go hand
in hand with a high level of female labour-market participation, while low birth
rates are found where female labour-market participation rates are low. In
short: womens access to the labour market appears to be a prerequisite for
higher birth rates. Women no longer choose between children and careers. It has
furthermore been shown that countries that do not stigmatize non-marital
cohabitation or extra-marital births have a better chance of maintaining higher
fertility levels. Since there is a decline in the marriage rate all over the
industrialised world with later and fewer marriages and more divorces
non-marital births are needed to compensate.
Finally, a number of studies show that
social adjustments and public policies matter a great deal when women are trying
to reconcile family obligations with roles outside the home. Higher fertility
rates are often observed in countries where such adjustments have taken place
and where public policies are supportive of gender equality. In contrast, it is
clear that countries that have not managed to adjust and to accept multiple
roles for women are those facing the most severe problems. Italy, Spain, and
Japan are examples of countries where resistance to change goes hand in hand
with low birth rates and rapid population ageing. Womens education and
employment levels have risen dramatically in both Italy and Spain in the past
two decades. Yet these changes have met with the resistance of society as a
whole and especially of men, who have insisted that women should continue to
play their traditional role of mother and homemaker. This inability to adjust
means that Italian and Spanish women in contrast, say, to women in Sweden
have resolved the conflict between career and domesticity by post-poning
childbearing. Similar observations have been made in Japan, where low birth
rates are largely due to the inflexibility of the marriage institution.
The new insights into the role of
population dynamics in long-term economic growth give feminists an opportunity
to challenge the widespread assumption that households and families are
primarily units of consumption. Instead, it can be argued that households should
be seen as productive units that supply our economies with a crucial input:
human capital. Enabling households to function well and providing them with
adequate resources in terms of time and income is just as important as
developing competitive markets.
Equally, the crucial role of households in
economic development makes it reasonable to demand that men should take on a
greater responsibility for this sphere of the economy. It is clear that the
participation of men and in particular of fathers in the daily chores of
domestic life is important if motherhood is to attract young women in the
future. Here, again, the Swedish experience may be of interest. In a Swedish
survey about attitudes towards families and children, presented in the spring of
2001, 90 percent of the women interviewed stated that they could not imagine
having children if the father was not prepared to share the daily
responsibilities of the household. It is clear that generous public services for
working mothers are not enough to make motherhood an attractive choice for
modern, emancipated women.
Can we now expect a progressive,
women-friendly population discourse to develop in Europe? This remains to be
seen. The traditional conflict between feminists and pronatalists is one major
obstacle. Another is the strong resistance which can be anticipated from
economists and policymakers, most of whom are still deeply influenced by the
classic idea that households and markets belong to separate social spheres.
Childbearing is viewed as a private and emotional issue, not as a part of the
macro economy. Challenging this classic idea of separate spheres is a difficult
task indeed both intellectually and culturally. The current debate about
population ageing in the European Union and elsewhere is a good illustration of
this. Most experts and politicians prefer to discuss population ageing as an
issue related to the labour market only. To counteract the process of ageing,
they typically propose strategies such as postponing the age of retirement or
investments in life-long learning. If issues of gender equality figure at all in
these discussions, women are seen as a potential future source of labour. Female
labour-participation rates must increase, it is argued, when the share of people
of productive ages starts to decline. Few want to confront the challenging fact
that the supply of labour ultimately depends on womens unpaid labour in the
family, and that gender inequality in the home therefore matters to the macro
economy.
Lena Sommestad is professor of economic
history at Uppsala University and director of the Swedish Institute for Futures
Studies, Stockholm. Her main research interest is gender history, welfare state
history, and economic demography. The present article first appeared as a
lecture for the seminar series Equality at Work Equality at Home: Men, the
Family and Working Life. The series, with seminars in Paris, Luxemburg, London,
Brussels, Madrid and Naples, was arranged by the Swedish Institute as part of
the official events during the Swedish presidency of the European Union.
The author alone is responsible for the views
expressed in this article.
Published by the Swedish Institute No
432 September ISRN SI-CS-00/432-ENG--SE
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