Social Dialogue Institutions Transforming Gender Equality: A feminist political economy perspective on the case of Belgium from 1950 until the present day

Abstract

Social dialogue between employers and workers plays a fundamental democratic role in capitalist market economies by giving workers a voice in employment relations. Next to protecting workers, it also has the potential to reduce inequalities within the labour force by giving a stronger voice to groups of workers who have historically had less bargaining power in the labour market, such as women (EC 2023, ILO 2021, OECD 2019, UN Women 2023). The extent to which the social partners, i.e. trade unions and employers’ organisations, and social dialogue institutions have actually advanced gender equality in practice is, however, the object of empirical investigation and theoretical debate. Gender equality research in employment relations, the labour market and the welfare state has pointed to the historical part of social dialogue institutions in both advancing as well as inhibiting gender equality. On the one hand, research has demonstrated that social dialogue institutions have (indirectly) advanced gender equality by negotiating minimum labour standards, universal social benefits and welfare services. On the other hand, research has also shown that the labour standards and welfare arrangements negotiated by employers and workers have often institutionalised a conservative division of paid and unpaid labour between women and men based on the male breadwinner–female carer model, which still impacts women’s labour market position and perpetuates their economic dependence on household members or the state. According to the gender equality literature, whether social dialogue hampers or advances gender equality is therefore open to empirical investigation because its impact depends on the particular national context, the historical trajectory of social dialogue institutions, and the gender equality objectives and strategic choices endorsed by employers, trade unions and the state during bipartite or tripartite social dialogue. Taken together, current explanations of the gender equality impact of social dialogue institutions are mainly based on national institutional differences and/or the political strategies of actors and thus mainly focus on the functioning of the institutions themselves. National institutional processes are understood as developing relatively independently from the pressures of the capitalist world economy and the contradictions and crises inherent in it. Moreover, gender inequalities are often implicitly understood as the cumulative but ontologically separate effect of political-ideological gender norms originating in the social sphere and class inequalities originating in the economic sphere, i.e. gender oppression and class exploitation are ontologically interpreted as originating from two relatively autonomous systems of oppression, gender order/ patriarchy and class inequality/ capitalism. In contrast with these prevailing explanations, this dissertation adopts a feminist political economy perspective on the relation between social dialogue and gender equality. Such perspective foregrounds that social dialogue institutions operate in an environment fundamentally shaped by capitalism which operates at the global level. To understand how gender inequalities are (re)produced in global capitalist society, I adopt an integrative unitary perspective on gender and class relations mainly based on feminist-marxist social reproduction theory (SRT). SRT has argued that the capitalist accumulation process crucially rests on the unpaid work carried out largely by women to socially reproduce labour forces needed for capitalist accumulation. However, this reproductive work inherently contradicts with capitalist economic production’s tendency to force more and more individuals into wage work, intensifying competition among workers and lowering wages to the detriment of labour’s social reproduction. The SRT literature has shown how these contradictory needs of capitalist economic production and social reproduction provoke conflicts and crises, which become particularly visible in the labour market position of women and the non-recognition and undervaluation of (un)paid care work. By adopting a feminist political economy perspective, this dissertation aims to make a theoretical contribution by showing how social dialogue institutions have profoundly shaped gender relations and gender inequalities through their attempts to buffer the contradictions inherent in capitalism. Empirically, the dissertation rests on a longitudinal case study of gender (in)equality in national social dialogue institutions in Belgium, a coordinated market economy. It is conducted based on a corpus of data, including the national collective agreements and the opinions of the National Labour Council in the period from 1950 to date. Three empirical studies point to 1) the important role of the EU ‘market-making’ macro-economic and gender equality policies in shaping the social partners’ national collective agreements on gender equality; 2) the role of social dialogue institutions in (re)producing gender inequalities in the labour market through the negotiation of gendered working time and employment arrangements that primarily respond to the flexible labour needs of economic production while subsuming and undervaluing the social reproduction needs of workers; and 3) the role of social dialogue institutions in the evolution of gender (in)equality in the welfare state through their attempts to buffer the contradictory demands of economic production and social reproduction during periods of labour shortages and periods of labour surplus, and how this has shaped women’s labour market position in the welfare state over time. The complementary insights from the three papers reconstruct the evolution of gender (in)equality over the last 70+ years as being shaped by social dialogue institutions’ attempts to buffer contradictions between capitalist production’s cyclical needs for women’s flexible and cheap paid labour and capital’s long-term need to socially reproduce adequate labour forces for capital accumulation. It shows how the inherent contradictions of capitalist accumulation have induced the evolution of Belgian institutions from a gender-unequal male breadwinner–female carer model after WWII to the current ‘partial gender equality’ of the one-and-a-half breadwinner model, which, despite progress in certain indicators, still perpetuates gender inequalities in the labour market and society. These results show that the post-war gendered labour market and welfare arrangements negotiated by social dialogue institutions have been shaped by four periods of capitalist economic production’s cyclical needs for women’s flexible and cheap paid labour, with two periods of economic growth and labour shortages (1953-1975 and 1989-2003) and two periods of transnational restructuring of production (1976-1988 and 2004-to date). Moreover, these periods in capitalist accumulation have differently impacted the organisation of social reproduction, i.e. the distribution of (un)paid care work between households, the state and the market, and between women and men. Over time, the increasing impact of EU ‘market-making’ macro-economic and gender equality policies have – through the state – substantially limited the buffering capacity of national social dialogue institutions in managing and containing the contradictory needs of economic production and social reproduction. Moreover, the macro-economic austerity policies implementing cost-reductions in public care provision have induced the refamilisation and privatisation of reproductive work, and mainly to women, while it has maintained the undervaluation of paid care work. This has strongly shaped the gendered distribution of paid and unpaid work and the distribution of care work between the state, the market and households. This evolution has resulted in the persistence of gender inequalities in the labour market and in society, as visible in the gender pay gap and the gender pension gap. The empirical results of this dissertation contribute to the literature on gender (in)equality and social dialogue by showing how the gender equality outcomes of national institutions are fundamentally shaped by the inherent contradictions of capitalist accumulation at the global level and the growing impact of supranational institutions. In particular, the findings provide empirical support to the unitary perspective on gender and class relations by demonstrating how the contradictory needs of capitalist economic production and social reproduction (re)produce gender inequalities in the labour market and society in this coordinated market economy.