Women, Vulnerabilities and Welfare Service Systems

Marjo Kuronen, Elina Virokannas, Ulla Salovaara

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000203943
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Social Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book studies welfare systems in Europe and beyond from the standpoint of women in vulnerable positions in society. These systems are under major transformations with new models of service delivery and management, austerity measures, requirements for cost-effectiveness, marketization, and the prioritization of services.

Divided into three parts:

• Welfare service systems (not) responding to vulnerable situations of women
• Women's encounters with the welfare service system
• Contradictions of informal support

this book considers the experiences and encounters with the service system of women in poverty, homeless women, women with substance use problems, women sentenced of crime, girls and young women in care, and refugees and asylum-seeking women.

Drawing upon research and critical discussions from Finland, Canada, Israel, Slovenia, Spain and the UK, this book provides new empirical findings and critical insights, and a valuable resource for the academics and students in social work, social policy, sociology and gender studies, but also for policy makers and professionals in social and health care.

1 Introduction
Women, vulnerabilities and welfare service systems

Marjo Kuronen and Elina Virokannas

Why this book?

Over the years and even decades, much has been written about the relationship between women and the welfare state and the categorisations of different welfare states and their ‘generosity’ towards women (e.g. Wilson 1977; Hernes 1987; Sainsbury 1999; Esping-​Andersen 2009). In recent years, the focus has been on caring, care work and care services. Important feminist conceptualisations of care began in the late-​1970s (e.g. Finch and Groves 1983; see also Dahl and Eriksen 2005). Since then, care services have become a political agenda globally, with increasing academic interest first in childcare and more recently in care for older people because of aging societies (e.g. Lewis 1999; Michel and Mahon 2002; Pfau-​Effinger and Rostgaard 2011; Kutsar and Kuronen 2015). In addition to care policies, other major recent issues have included family policies, pensions and employment policies, which are all often considered from the perspective of the economy and the promotion of labour market participation (see e.g. Natali and Bonoli 2012). In spite of the strong feminist tradition in social policy research, the gender perspective is still often lacking in these academic and policy debates.

The main interest in academic research as well as social policy debates has been the welfare services and social security for the ‘majority’ whereas those on the margins of society have gained less attention. There has also been more research on women as care providers than on women as care receivers or as individuals in need of care and other welfare services for themselves, or on women as service users of different welfare service institutions and women’s encounters with these institutions’ professionals. Even less is known about the services for and service needs of women on the margins of society and in vulnerable life situations. These women include poor women, women with substance abuse issues, homeless women, women with experiences of violence and abuse, women as forced migrants and asylum seekers, women who have been convicted of a crime, who have experiences of interventions by child protection either as children or as mothers of these children and so on. Often their vulnerable situations intertwine and women have experiences of several of these hardships over their life course, some of which might continue over generations.

This book is about those women and their daily lives, but it is especially about their needs for social protection, support and services and their experiences as service users. Most of the chapters in this book begin from the experiences of these women. However, the aim is not to simply report the experiences and struggles of their daily lives and give them a ‘voice’. Instead, their experiences are the ‘point of entry’ (Smith 1987, 157) to how the welfare service systems operate for them. The aim is to show how the service systems in different countries, their institutions and professional practices organise women’s daily lives and define them as women and as service users. With the empirical research done by the authors, we wish to show what the welfare service system looks like from the standpoint of these women, and how it should be developed to better meet the complex needs these women have in order to improve their lives.

From vulnerable women to vulnerabilities and vulnerable life situations

Vulnerability is a widely used concept but it is also a complex, criticised and problematic one. It is defined in various ways in different disciplines, contexts and research fields (e.g. Fineman and Grear 2013; Butler, Gambetti, and Sabsay 2016; Cole 2016; Henrickson and Fouché 2017; Virokannas, Liuski, and Kuronen 2020). In this book, the primary aim is not to delve into theorising or dig deep into the conceptual discussions of vulnerability, which many authors have done elsewhere. In this book, the critical element consists of the reflections by social policy and social work academics, who have been warning about the risk of using the concept of vulnerability in association with specific individuals or groups in a stigmatising way (Fawcett 2009; Brown 2011; Virokannas, Liuski and Kuronen 2020).

We emphasise that vulnerability is not something static but contextual, intertwined and changing in time and place. Referring especially to Martha Fineman’s (2010) theorising of the concept, we see vulnerability as a universal human condition meaning that, in some stages of our life and in some situations, we might all end up being vulnerable. This is not to deny the consequences of social inequalities and that some of us are more at risk of vulnerabilities than are others (Cole 2016). According to Fineman, “our individual experience of vulnerability varies according to the quality and quantity of resources we possess or can command” (Fineman 2010, 269).

When discussing the daily lives, problems and service needs of the women studied in this book, we understand them as women in vulnerable life situations instead of as vulnerable individuals or groups. Vulnerability is not their individual characteristic or part of their identity. Thus, the authors use either vulnerable situations or positions, ‘vulnerable’ in quotation marks or vulnerabilities in plural or specified, for example, as ‘economic vulnerability’ or ‘situational vulnerability’. Vulnerability is conceptualised and used in slightly different ways in different chapters. Some of the authors analyse its connections with other concepts, such as marginality, risk or social exclusion. However, all the authors share a critical approach and the commitment of not seeing vulnerability as an individual or group characteristic but rather as something that is (re)produced, governed and constructed in social structures, relations and practices.

It is also important to recognise that the concept of vulnerability is used differently in different countries and languages. In some countries, especially in the UK, it is used not only as an academic concept but also in many policy areas, law and professional practices in defining service users and their access to services (Herring 2016; Brown, Ecclestone and Emmel 2017). In other countries, for example, in Finland, where many of the authors come from, vulnerability is a concept that has only been adopted recently, and it is difficult to even translate into Finnish accurately. Academics have learned to use it while reading books and articles in English, but the nearby concepts such as ‘marginality’, ‘social exclusion’ or ‘people with special needs’ or most recently ‘people in need of special support’ have been more common in academic and policy texts. Thus, in this book, we find it important to define the social and cultural context where and how the concept is used, especially when used in legislation or in the service system for classifying entitlement to services, care and benefits.

The perspective of this book is strongly on how women themselves understand, experience and define their vulnerable life situations without putting any labels on them. The vulnerability of these women is not taken for granted but the authors are asking what is causing vulnerable situations or positions, how some women or groups of women become defined as vulnerable, what are the consequences of such definitions and how women themselves are responding to them. We want to analyse and understand the processes and conditions that lead women to vulnerable situations. We also see women as active agents in their own lives and as service users instead of as powerless victims of the ‘system’ or social conditions. Several authors show how women resist being labelled as vulnerable or they analyse the coping strategies women have developed to protect themselves and survive in vulnerable situations.

Welfare service systems from the standpoint of women

Instead of ‘vulnerable women’, we turn our attention towards societies, social conditions and institutions. We give special attention to the welfare service systems that are expected to prevent and reduce vulnerability and social problems, but that might also generate and (re)produce them with their own actions or through a lack of services and gaps in them.

In this book, welfare service systems or specific parts of them are studied from the standpoint of the women that need them, use them or, in some cases, are forced to use them. These women include poor women, especially poor lone mothers, women with substance abuse issues, women convicted of a crime, young women considered vulnerable, sexually exploited girls and young women, and girls and women who have experiences of interventions of child protection either as children or as mothers of these children. These women encounter severe obstacles in coping, and face stigma, social inequalities and oppression in their everyday life. They are often seen as ‘the margin of the margins’, not only because they face social problems but because they are women with these problems. Sometimes, as in the case of women with substance abuse issues or a criminal background, they are a marginal group in numbers, but their marginality or vulnerable situations also have specific features. Because of their marginality, they are easily forgotten in the service system and often ignored even in social science research.

The welfare service system is broadly understood in this book as all health and social services, including social security and benefits that women have needed, used or applied for in different life situations. The system includes universal services for all residents such as public health services or maternity care, as well as more specific services, such as those for substance abusers, refugees or homeless people and social work and child welfare/protection for children and families. In some cases, the use of the services is not their own choice but a state intervention into their lives. In general, there is a thin line between women seeking and applying for services and being forced to do so. In many cases, they would rather not use the services and apply benefits, which they might find controlling, stigmatising and even humiliating. As many of the chapters show, women sometimes try to avoid encounters with the service system and its professionals and instead search for other coping strategies. Thus, the standpoint in analysing the welfare service systems is in the women’s daily lives and their use and need for services, not in the analysis of the service system or its specific institutions as such. Some of the chapters focus on specific parts of the service system while others analyse it more broadly.

The focus is on public services and social security, and the responsibility of the national or local governments to provide them, but in many countries, non-​governmental organisations also have an important role in providing services. The chapters of this book cover the welfare systems in Finland, Canada, Israel, Slovenia, Spain and the UK and their service provision and benefits differ considerably. However, the starting point of this book is not the comparison of different welfare states and their service systems but women’s experiences of their service needs and use. Our aim is to show that even if the vulnerable situations and welfare service systems differ, women still have shared experiences as service users.

There are also similarities in how social policies and welfare systems in different countries have been transformed in recent decades. Welfare service systems all over Europe and beyond have experienced new models of service delivery and management, austerity measures, requirements for cost-​effectiveness, marketisation and priorisation of services (e.g. Natali and Bonoli 2012; Martinelli, Anttonen and Mätzke 2017; Taylor-​Gooby, Leruth and Chung 2017). Too often, these transformations have meant hard times for people who already struggle in their daily lives and who are most in need of services and financial support from the state. The divide between the deserving and undeserving poor has returned to the welfare policies of many countries, personal responsibility for one’s welfare has increased and cuts in services and benefits have most affected those in vulnerable situations (e.g. Kamali, Jönsson and Alseth 2018). The authors of this book are not able to show whether, and to what extent, the problems women face as service users are consequences of or directly influenced by these transformations. However, the ‘times of austerity’ (Martinelli, Anttonen and Mätzke 2017) are the context in which women’s experiences are located.

Yet the authors of this book are able to show, based on empirical findings from different countries, that the societies, their policymaking and welfare systems are involved in (re)producing or worsening vulnerable situations and the risks for vulnerabilities of these women by not providing adequate services and support that would recognise women’s specific needs. The welfare state, its institutions and professionals should take responsibility to improve the life situation of these women, empower them and provide them with means to improve their lives (Fineman 2010). Instead, when seeking services and benefits, women often experience rejection, the complexity of the system and stigmatisation.

There are strong cultural and moral expectations regarding adequate womanhood and motherhood, which influence the ways these women are seen in society but also as service users (e.g. Smith 2006; Lavee 2017). Women are judged for not fulfilling the cultural and social expectations of ‘proper’ women. Often their sexuality and sexual behaviour is under suspicion and surveillance. Most often, these women become visible for the welfare ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: Women, vulnerabilities and welfare service systems
• Part I Welfare service systems (not) responding to vulnerable situations of women
• Part II Women’s encounters with the welfare service system
• Part III Contradictions of informal support
• Index