Welfare State Policy and Informal Long-Term Care Giving in Austria: Old Gender Divisions and New Stratification Processes Among Women

Abstract

In Austria, the provision of long-term care is strongly based on unpaid female work within family networks and is characterised by a highly unequal division of informal long-term care-giving. In 1993, a major reform has been introduced in the Austrian long-term care system with a payments for care programme and a state–provinces treaty regarding service development at its heart. The objective of this article is to investigate the implications of the 1993 programme on gender divisions and on whether and in what ways the programme and processes set in train by the programme influence the role of women as carers. The question is approached by applying and broadening the concept of defamilisation in a process oriented way. The analysis suggests that from the informal carers' perspective long-term care allowances in the Austrian context mean some financial relief via ‘symbolic payments’. At the same time, the overall long-term care system prolongs existing gender divisions and sets in train new stratification processes among women as main carers with gender, class and space as dimensions reinforcing each other.

The Gender Informal Care Gap

“…Leitner (2003) argues that explicit familialistic policies such as cash-forcare benefits foster the gender care gap. Consistently, Hammer and Oesterle (2003) showed that in Austria care allowances strengthen the gendered division of care labour by reinforcing family responsibilities (see also Morgan and Zippel 2003). However, evidence on the effects of financial support for care is not conclusive.…”

Embodying the ideal carer

“…The literature on welfare state regimes and in particular care regimes provides a useful approximation for the analysis (Abrahamson 1999;Arts & Gelissen 2002;Lewis 1992;Orloff 1993;Sainsbury 1994;Scruggs & Allan 2006;Simonazzi 2009). Austria is usually described as a corporatist-conservative welfare system with a strong emphasis on the role of care provision by the family (Badelt & Ö sterle 2001;Hammer & Ö sterle 2003;Strell & Duncan 2001). Social rights in Austria are usually closely connected to either individual employment or family relationships (see Hammer & Ö sterle 2003).…”

“…Austria is usually described as a corporatist-conservative welfare system with a strong emphasis on the role of care provision by the family (Badelt & Ö sterle 2001;Hammer & Ö sterle 2003;Strell & Duncan 2001). Social rights in Austria are usually closely connected to either individual employment or family relationships (see Hammer & Ö sterle 2003). Strell and Duncan (2001) in their research also focus on the strong role of Austria's family policy, both socially and ideologically.…”

“…But have these developments led to a reconsideration of family responsibilities? Is a process of ''defamilisation'' (McLaughlin & Glendinning 1994) which describes the freedom not to care (Hammer & Ö sterle 2003) In Austria the answer for many families has been the employment of migrant carers working and living in the house of the person cared for. In Austria there are approximately 40,000 people employed as carers in private settings (Jandl et al 2007).…”

Data Sets on Pensions and Health: Data Collection and Sharing for Policy Design

“…Sources: OECD (2009a). Additional information about co-payment structures are drawn from: Austria (Reichmann and Sommersguter-Reichmann, 2004;Hammer and Österle, 2003); Belgium (De Grave and Ourti, 2003); Denmark (Civitas, 2002); Republic of Korea (Song, 2009); Netherlands (Helderman et al, 2005); Spain (Lopez-Casanovas and Planas-Miret, 2001); United Kingdom (Boyle, 2008).…”