Social exclusion, labour market participation of women and social care

Since the mid-1970s, increasing signs of political and social crisis have emerged due to restructurings in the capitalist mode of production resulting in changing patterns of employment. The European model of social inclusion via labour market participation, and with it access to social rights, seems to be in a crisis. The concept of ‘social exclusion’ has been developed as a tool to analyse the dimensions of new forms of social cleavages and to define new forms of research strategies for the issues of ‘social inequality’ and ‘poverty’ (see, for example, Roche and van Berkel, 1997; Askonas and Stewart, 2000; Sen, 2000; Steinert and Pilgram, 2003).

Although the concept is mostly used in a gender-neutral way, the debate almost entirely reflected changes in the patterns of male employment. Only since the end of the 1990s, has the debate opened up towards a gender perspective; that is, the analysis of the labour market situation of women and the related processes of inclusion and exclusion. Relating Esping-Andersen's (1990) approach of welfare state regimes to Silver's (1994) paradigms of social exclusion, Cousins (1998) investigates the labour market participation of women and the corresponding access to social security systems in different European countries.

Despite her innovative approach, Cousins neglects the wider function of the welfare state for women already revealed in gendered welfare state research. Especially, the role of the welfare state in defining and developing paid and unpaid social care proved to be decisive for the mode of social integration of women. The division of social care work and responsibility between state, market and the family enables an analysis of the integration process of women in different spheres in a society and their access to systems of social security. On this basis, the process of female labour market integration since the 1960s and the phenomenon of social exclusion can be examined simultaneously. Research findings on social care reveal it not only as a gendered activity but also show the patterns of social structuring reflecting signs of inequality between different groups of women. Social care as a research unity can illuminate processes of social integration and social exclusion of different groups of women.