Gender and path-shifting changes in a "hybrid" welfare regime: Argentina in comparative perspective

This paper focuses on welfare regime change and the constitution of a new social paradigm in Argentina, with particular attention to the role that ideas and their institutionalization play in reconfiguring social policy. Using a gender perspective, I analyze, the emergence of the risks associated with the decline of the male breadwinner/female caregiver family form in Argentina and the resulting “crisis of care” (Daly & Lewis, 2000). My hypothesis is that the Argentinean welfare state is evolving towards a model more readily identified as the liberal residual type of welfare regime in which the market is an important provider of welfare, with all the negative consequences for equity, which that entails. Yet the current situation consists of a dual system of welfare provision: the old income-maintenance model, still focused primarily on the male breadwinner - and a new liberal residual component, based on mean-tested programs. I argue that the crisis of the male breadwinner family form and the emergence of dual-earner families (and women head of households) are the result not only of changes in contextual factors like demographics (ageing population) and/or women’s participation in the labor force. Institutional change is also the result of different competing interests and views on welfare redesign. Most of the analysis of contemporary reforms is rooted in the dichotomy between globalization vs. national varieties. Thus some have focused on the neo-liberal paradigm imposed by international organizations such as the IMF and the World Bank via structural adjustment policy (Teichman, 2003) while others have emphasized the processes of resistance to welfare retrenchment in Argentina, with particular emphasis on the role of trade unions (Etchemendy, 2003). This may be true for the first stage of economic reforms when government policy was reoriented toward welfare retrenchment. Yet, the second stage of reforms is an emergent phase of active state-building and regulatory reform in which both transnational and national forces are operative. Moreover, the post-Washington agenda is less monolithic than the neo-classical economics view of the 1990s. The second wave reforms involve the diffusion of ideas of a new governance paradigm that emphasizes innovation and learning during the implementation process. It purports to be ‘flexible’ in the way this set of ‘best practices’ is to be applied. In contrast to the ‘constraints’ faced by domestic actors during the first stage of reform, in this second wave, path-shifting changes are achieved through a process of engagement between international actors and local community-based organizations, making the national state a ‘chain’ for the diffusion of new ideas In addition, there is a gender dimension to the transnational flow of ideas. In particular, organizations like United Nations (UN) and in ternational conventions such as Convention on all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979) (CEDAW) are involved in providing directives for social policy formulation. I highlight the constitution of networks of feminist experts among different political spaces and the flow of ideas among them. Thus the institutionalization of a gender-oriented social agenda in Argentina is in part related to the rise of state-feminism, linked to international organizations that promote gender equality across different public policy areas. This has given rise to a new type of