Publication alert! 🚨
Care at the Crossroads: How Policy Feedback Shaped Competing Feminist Advocacy for Parental Leave Reform in Spain?
I promise a fascinating thread on the politics of gender and work in Spain. Don't miss it! 🧵 1/9
https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.70005
Care at the Crossroads: How Policy Feedback Shaped Competing Feminist Advocacy for Parental Leave Reform in Spain?
I promise a fascinating thread on the politics of gender and work in Spain. Don't miss it! 🧵 1/9
https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.70005
Comments
📈 Moms and dads have = parental leave, fostering equality in work-family rights and duties. This is unique in the world!
📉 But family transfers are among the lowest, causing very high child poverty!
How come this unbalance?
Activists want to change policy, but their objectives and strategies are affected by institutional change!
1. Patriarchal regulation during the Francoist dictatorship shaped a feminist counter-movement asking for women's emancipation from care responsibilities, but not any 'family' policy (this is Valiente 96 and León 02).
This 'equality feminism' infiltrated firstly on PSOE, later on gender institutions (e.g. Instituto de la Mujer), and eventually even influenced right-wing female MPs!
A cross-partisan elite consensus emerged on equalizing labor opportunities for women.
+ Directly influenced the birth of PPiiNA to seek equal leave for moms and dads.
+ Indirectly helped its success, as elites were quite responsive to their requests.
4. Successful lobbying:
🔜 fully non-transferable leave for both parents approved in 2019!
But a group of mothers formed PETRA as a counter-movement against the reform! They request longer leave for mothers’ right to care.
My guess is that they have little success because political fears of any policy reinforcing gender roles remain alive and kicking.