How Women Might Tip The Scales in the Fight For Basic Income

In my last post, I wrote about how female sci-fi writers have incorporated elements of basic income into their fiction. But the feminist case for basic income isn’t just a hypothetical. As our presidential candidates debate the merits of a higher minimum wage and paid parental leave, some writers question whether that’s even the battle that we should be fighting.

In an essay in The Feminist Utopia Project, Madeleine Schwartz writes:

“[M]uch of feminism has upheld waged work and work outside the home as a way for women to find independence and freedom…. But waged work is itself constricting and demanding — hardly liberation itself. As women have entered the workplace, the kinds of jobs they take have often declined in quality, paying less, demanding more, and becoming more unstable and restricting. Work does not foster independence or freedom when individuals cannot choose where they work or the conditions under which they do so. Placing work at the core of a feminist demand obscures work’s problems….”

While the tech bros who support basic income worry about the robots who will come to take their jobs, feminist advocates for basic income focus on this other, more immediate dilemma: work that has traditionally been done by women is less likely to be robotized, and more likely to be unpaid. In the New York Times, Judith Shulevitz writes that basic income would be

“a way to reimburse mothers and other caregivers for the heavy lifting they now do free of charge. Roughly one-fifth of Americans have children 18 or under. Many also attend to ill or elderly relatives. They perform these labors out of love or a sense of duty, but still, at some point during the diaper-changing or bedpan cleaning, they have to wonder why their efforts aren’t seen as ‘work.’ They may even ask why they have to pay for the privilege of doing it, by cutting back on their hours or quitting jobs to stay home.”

A basic income would both compensate this unpaid labor, and

“edge us toward a more gender-equal world. The extra cash would make it easier for a dad to become the primary caregiver if he wanted to. A mom with a job could write checks for child care and keep her earnings, too. Stay-at-home parents would have money in the bank, more clout in the family, and the respect that comes from undertaking an enterprise with measurable value.”

In a sense, basic income would be “something like reparations” — a way to pay back women for their domestic labor and pass some of that burden on to men. If such an agenda seems unlikely in today’s political climate, it may only be a matter of time until it’s feasible. In her new book, All The Single Ladies, Rebecca Traister argues that women (single women in particular) have more political clout than ever before:

“[S]ingle women’s changed circumstances are what’s driving a political agenda that seems to become more progressive every day. The practicalities of female life independent of marriage give rise to demands for pay equity, paid family leave, a higher minimum wage, universal pre-K, lowered college costs, more affordable health care, and broadly accessible reproductive rights…. Single women are also becoming more and more powerful as a voting demographic. In 2012, unmarried women made up a remarkable 23 percent of the electorate.”

Not only that, but Traister challenges the assumption that men have truly paid their own way, arguing that they have benefited from marriage in ways that women have not. Marriage and fatherhood correlate to higher earnings and career advancement for men, and have the opposite effect for women. Women who wait to get married until their 30s earn up to $18,000 more each year than their counterparts who marry earlier:

“Men, especially married wealthy white men, have for generations relied on government assistance. It’s the government that has historically supported white men’s home and business ownership through grants, loans, incentives, and tax breaks. It has allowed them to accrue wealth and offered them shortcuts and bonuses for passing it down to their children. Government established white men’s right to vote, and thus exert control over the government, at the nation’s founding and has protected their enfranchisement since. It has also bolstered the economic and professional prospects of men by depressing the economic prospects of women….”

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One possible component of a basic income would be the de-coupling of state welfare benefits, including Social Security, from marriage. Both liberals who find singlehood preferable, and conservatives who lament the decline of the American family, should find something to like here. A basic income would allow women to leave unhappy marriages without losing spousal benefits — or, to choose a traditional family life without sacrificing all income.

In Dissent Magazine, Suzanne Kahn writes:

“America’s biggest social insurance programs have promoted inequality within marriages by pushing couples to organize their household economies so that one spouse is in the workforce while the other performs unpaid care work in the home….. Single people in the workforce pay the same Social Security taxes as married people, but they do not earn this dependent benefit. In other words, single people only earn two-thirds of what married people can earn….When spouses earn roughly equal amounts in the workforce, they lose….”

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The feminist case for basic income is an important one — and as the fight over minimum wage laws and parental leave heats up, women will have a unique opportunity to drive the discussion. But as Shulevitz writes:

“I do not want to create the impression that feminists dominate this debate. On the contrary: They’re an overlooked part of a much larger conversation that has been going on for centuries.”

So far, the emphasis that female advocates have placed on co-operation and community stands in contrast to the more individualistic arguments for basic income that come from Silicon Valley.

In her article Less Work, More Time, Schwartz reminds us what we’re really fighting for — not just better pay, but more time to do what matters:

“More time would mean better and stronger friendships, relationships not crammed in between work hours, family obligations, and sleep. It would give people the chance to explore their interests, creating room for activism or artistic endeavors. It would mean the opportunity for creativity and taking chances…. Most importantly, more time would mean not having to justify its use. One wouldn’t need to do things with this time; one could spend it just by enjoying being alive. Rather than fighting for more and better work, we should fight for more time to use as we please.”

And that fight, for all its urgency, is long overdue.

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