The Impact of Conservative Discourses in Family Policies, Population Politics, and Gender Rights in Poland and Turkey
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Social Politics 2011 Volume 18 Number 3 UMUT KORKUT AND HANDE ESLEN-ZIYA TheImpactofConservative Downloaded from Discourses in Family Policies, Population Politics, and Gender http://sp.oxfordjournals.org/ Rights in Poland and Turkey at Universidad de Navarra. Servicio Bibliotecas on February 28, 2012 Abstract This article uses childcare as a case study to test the impact of ideas that embody a traditional understanding of gender relations in relation to childcare. Conservative ideas regard increasing female labor market participation as a cause of decreasing fertility on the functioning of a set of general policies to increase fertility rates. It looks into the Polish and Turkish contexts for empirical evidence. The Polish context shows a highly institutionalized system of family policies in contrast to almost unessential institu- tions in Turkey. Formally, the labor market participation of women is much lower in Turkey than in Poland. Yet, given the size of the informal market in Turkey, women’s labor participation is obviously higher than what appears in the statistics. Bearing in mind this divergence, the article suggests Poland and Turkey as two typologies for studying population politics in contexts where socially conservative ideas regarding gender remain paramount. We qualify ideas as conservative if they enforce a traditional understanding of gender relations in care-giving and underline Fall 2011 Pages 387–418 doi:10.1093/sp/jxr014 # The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected] Advance Access publication August 8, 2011 388 V Korkut and Eslen-Ziya women’s role in the labor market as an element of declining fertil- ity. In order to delineate ideational impact, this article looks into how ideas (a) supplant and (b) substitute formal institutions. Therefore, we argue that there are two mechanisms pertaining to the dominance of conservative conventions: conservative ideas may either supplant the institutional impact on family policies, or substitute them thanks to a superior reasoning which societies Downloaded from assign to them. Furthermore, conservative conventions prevail alongside women’s customary unpaid work as care-givers regard- less of the level of their formal workforce participation. We propose as our major findings for the literature of population poli- tics that ideas, as ubiquitous belief systems, are more powerful than institutions since they provide what is perceived as legitimate, http://sp.oxfordjournals.org/ acceptable, and good for the societies under study. In the end, irre- spective of the presence of institutions, socially conservative ideas prevail. Introduction Population politics concern ideas regarding gender relations, at Universidad de Navarra. Servicio Bibliotecas on February 28, 2012 families, and women’s employment more than formal institutions that regulate family policies. Parental leave and childcare institutions as well as family allowance are at the core of family policies. Family policies attest to the importance, which institutional practices occupy, in respect of the functioning of population politics. Whilst we recognize the importance of formal institutions in guaranteeing gender equality and work/family reconciliation practices in the regu- lation of family policies, we argue that at the expense of institutions, socially conservative ideas prevail in the functioning of population politics. Following Goldstein and Keohane’s (1993) work, we define ideas as beliefs held by people. These beliefs may reside in the back- ground as well as in the foreground of policy debates as normative concepts, but they give substance to frames of thinking (Campbell 2004, 98). In this effort, we are especially concerned with ideas about care-giving and, hence, women’s unpaid labor is required for population growth. We define population politics as a set of general policies to facilitate fertility increase and, hence, to ascertain popula- tion growth. Thus, we do not consider coercive efforts to reduce population growth within this realm. So, why do we specify care-giving? Despite the developments in gender equality, women are still the primary care-givers irrespective of the pervasiveness of family policies and their formal workforce participation. How do socially conservative ideas come to the fore? There are two mechanisms pertaining to the dominance of conserva- tive conventions: conservative ideas may either supplant the Poland and Turkey Population Politics V 389 institutional impact on family policies, or substitute them due to a superior reasoning that societies assign to them. Furthermore, con- servative conventions prevail alongside women’s customary unpaid work as care-givers regardless of the level of their formal workforce participation. We follow Gal and Kligman’s (2000) earlier work showing the importance of ideas about gender roles with regard to interaction with central cultural constructions such as the nation, the Downloaded from family, or the public good. We further show that these ideas out- weigh the institutions, which population politics establish, to bolster population growth. While we qualify such institutions as formal institutions, we also believe that pervasive ideas in the background forge an institutional impact on population politics. But whose dis- http://sp.oxfordjournals.org/ course become authoritative, and why? In this effort, we maintain that the effects—rather than the sources—of ideas are crucial (Goldstein and Keohane 1993, 7). Particular common beliefs related to gender issues, nationalism, social policy, and employment are taken for granted by social actors. These beliefs are ubiquitous and they have a significant impact on the operation of population policies. Both policy makers at Universidad de Navarra. Servicio Bibliotecas on February 28, 2012 and the public use these beliefs as normative yardsticks of value- judgment or tools in order to merge ideas and cultural or discursive frames. In this instance, as Campbell (2004, 93) states, ideas can represent underlying assumptions residing in the background of decision-making debates. As such, they are pervasive, largely accepted, and unquestioned. Following Schmidt and Radaelli’s (2004) methodology, we do not assess beliefs as objects by dissecting texts and deconstructing speeches, but we look for expressions of ideas through various means, such as media sources, political dis- course, and ubiquitous beliefs, in our attempt to demonstrate how they trump institutions. Throughout the article, gender is defined as the socially and culturally produced ideas about male–female differ- ence, power, and inequality that structure the reproduction of these differences in the institutionalized practices of society (Gal and Kligman 2000, 4). In this article, we follow Be´land’s (2009) research attempting to establish a constructive dialog between researchers of gender, on the one hand, and the growing number of policy scholars who explore the role of ideational processes, on the other, and con- tribute to the literature with a case study wherein we can conjoin gender and policy research. The article uses care-giving as a case study to test the impact of socially conservative ideas on the functioning of formal institutions regulating family policies. We look into the Polish and Turkish con- texts for empirical evidence. This is an important case selection given the divergence between Poland and Turkey with respect to the 390 V Korkut and Eslen-Ziya levels of institutionalization of family policies and formal participa- tion of women in the labor market. Hence, our article suggests Poland and Turkey as two typologies for studying population poli- tics in contexts where socially conservative ideas regarding gender reign supreme. As Haas (2005, 502) maintains, typologies make it possible to draw abstract pictures of reality that may in turn be com- pared, analyzed, and further developed on a theoretical level. We Downloaded from will show that in the face of the impact of the ideational factors on family policies—the conservative conventions regarding gender roles generally, and women’s breadwinning and care-giving roles specifically—the existence of institutions matters little. The nature of women’s work—unpaid in the domestic sphere http://sp.oxfordjournals.org/ and, at times, informal in the public sphere—is the primary reason why family policies supporting work/family reconciliation are non- operational. Dominant social conventions related to women’s private duties promote care-giving as women’s public responsibility. While this expectancy is evident in the cases of unemployed or infor- mally employed women, even in the cases of formal employment women find themselves under the dual obligation of family work at Universidad de Navarra. Servicio Bibliotecas on February 28, 2012 and extra-family employment. This issue of double-presence is par- ticularly important as it is directly linked to social norms about motherhood and women’s roles as mothers (Guerrina 2005, 125). From this angle, we argue that Turkey, on the one hand, is a context whereby family policies do exist but are unessential or even irrele- vant given the size of unregistered (i.e., informal) employment of women. Poland, on the other hand, has better-defined family poli- cies. Yet, despite the difference between the two countries on the level of institutionalization of family policies, women are the primary unpaid care-givers in both societies. Moreover, this role