What Has Gender Equality Got to Do with It? An Analysis of Policy Debates Surrounding Domestic Services in the Welfare States of Spain and Sweden

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1 NORA Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research ISSN: (Print) X (Online) Journal homepage: What Has Gender Equality Got to Do with It? An Analysis of Policy Debates Surrounding Domestic Services in the Welfare States of Spain and Sweden Elin Kvist & Elin Peterson To cite this article: Elin Kvist & Elin Peterson (2010) What Has Gender Equality Got to Do with It? An Analysis of Policy Debates Surrounding Domestic Services in the Welfare States of Spain and Sweden, NORA Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, 18:3, , DOI: / To link to this article: Published online: 27 Jul Submit your article to this journal Article views: 1411 Citing articles: 23 View citing articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

2 NORA Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, Vol. 18, No. 3, , September 2010 ORIGINAL ARTICLE What Has Gender Equality Got to Do with It? An Analysis of Policy Debates Surrounding Domestic Services in the Welfare States of Spain and Sweden ELIN KVIST* & ELIN PETERSON** * Umea Centre for Gender Studies, Umea University, SE Umea, Sweden; ** Departamento de Ciencia Polı tica y Administracio n II, Fac. CC Polı ticas y Sociologı a, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Pozuelo de Alarco n 28223, Madrid, Spain ABSTRACT As more and more political institutions stress the significance of gender equality policies, it becomes important to investigate the different interpretations and meanings attached to the concept of gender equality in diverse policy contexts. In this article we are interested in problematizing visions of gender equality by studying the challenges that the growing amount of paid domestic work performed within European households poses for gender equality policies and practices in two European countries. The aim is to reveal normative assumptions and silences in relation to gender equality by comparing how paid domestic work has been framed in policy debates in Sweden and Spain. As welfare states, Sweden and Spain are generally considered to be very different, and in policies on care for children and the elderly the differences are perhaps most apparent. In both countries, however, paid domestic work in the home has become more and more common in the last two decades. The rise of paid domestic services in European households has been interpreted as due to the limitations or decline of welfare states, the ageing populations, and the increasing numbers of dual-earner families. These services are most often provided by women, predominantly of immigrant background, and involve a wide range of tasks, including care work. The phenomenon of an increasing sector of domestic (care) work poses a theoretical and methodological challenge to gender and welfare studies. This article argues that the analysis of debates surrounding domestic service in private households is a useful starting-point for an intersectional analysis by means of revealing the normative assumptions and marginalization embedded in gender equality policies. It uses a comparative frame analysis in combination with intersectional analysis to assess how interactions between gender, class, race, and sexuality have been articulated in the policy debates on domestic services in Spain and Sweden. Correspondence Address: Elin Kvist, PhD, Umea Centre for Gender Studies, Umea University, SE Umeå, Sweden. elin.kvist@ucgs.umu.se, epeterson@cps.ucm.es Print/ X Online/10/ q 2010 Taylor & Francis DOI: /

3 186 E. Kvist & E. Peterson Introduction Gender equality has been defined as an important political goal on European political agendas. When studying the policies and practices created in the name of gender equality, it becomes clear that the meaning of this political ambition shifts and changes depending on the context (Lombardo et al. 2009). Hence, as political institutions stress the significance of gender equality policies, it becomes important to investigate the different interpretations and meanings attached to the concept of gender equality in diverse policy contexts. What are the dominant representations of gender equality shared across different national contexts, and what representations are marginalized? Historically, a dominant interpretation of gender equality has emphasized women s economic independence through labour-market participation. In this article, we are interested in problematizing this vision of gender equality by studying the challenges posed by the growing amount of paid domestic work performed within European households. By comparing how paid domestic work has been framed in the policy debates of two European countries, Sweden and Spain, the aim is to reveal normative assumptions and silences in relation to the problem of gender inequality. The analysis situates the debates on paid domestic work in relation to feminist welfare state studies and compares the articulation of paid domestic work within two very different welfare state models; Spain has traditionally been referred to as a strong male bread-winner state, and Sweden as a dual-earner state. The comparison is helpful, on the one hand, in pointing out dominant gender discourses that reinforce the privileges of some women and men at the expense of other women and, on the other hand, in indicating what is not being problematized in each context. 1 As Swedish feminist welfare state researchers located in Sweden and Spain respectively, we have been intrigued by the contextually specific way of thinking about domestic service. Domestic service is a much more common practice in Spain than in Sweden but has been widely debated in Sweden and not in Spain. For us, these differences in public policy and debate raise questions surrounding the shifting nature of the welfare state and the ways in which domestic service encompasses gender inequalities, as well as class and ethnic divisions. These are the links that we will demonstrate in the article. Although analyses of the voices of domestic workers are very important (Mendez 1998; Lutz 2002; Hochschild & Ehrenreich 2003; Gavanas 2006; Escriva & Skinner 2008; Lutz 2008), our analysis is delimited to a topdown perspective, focusing on state constructions of domestic service as a way of problematizing normative assumptions in the visions of gender equality. Adopting a comparative frame analysis, we examine both dominant and marginal representations of gender inequality as a policy problem in key policy documents (Bacchi 1999; Verloo 2007). We consider this analytical approach a useful way of analysing gender, given the focus on underlying normative and exclusionary assumptions. By focusing on language and the processes by which meanings and categories are constituted in a specific historical moment in Sweden and Spain, the article raises questions about which women (and men) are the subject of gender equality, which visions of gender equality are dominant, and who is excluded or marginalized from the problem of gender inequality. Through an intersectional

4 Domestic Services in the Welfare States of Spain and Sweden 187 perspective on policies surrounding domestic services, we can discern the gender, class, and race privileges that these policies (re)produce. We also think that this analysis can shed new light on normative assumptions on gender and work embedded in feminist welfare state studies. We will first situate the case-studies of domestic service within feminist welfare state studies, arguing that the analysis of policy discourses surrounding domestic service can help us to expose some of the challenges of gender and welfare state studies in a globalized world. We suggest that it is useful to examine the ways in which certain groups are privileged by and/or excluded from public policies in different contexts. Second, we present the methodological approach adopted in this article, a comparative policy frame analysis with a focus on intersectionality. Third, we present the policy frames that emerge surrounding the issue of domestic service in each of the two case-studies. Finally, we discuss and compare the frames in the two case-studies in terms of underlying normative assumptions and silences. Gender, Welfare States, and Paid Domestic (Care) Work It is useful to highlight the ways in which the Swedish and Spanish welfare states have been characterized in recent welfare state literature, since the characteristics of these welfare states are important in order to contextualize the interpretations of paid domestic work in the two countries. While analyses of gender and welfare states largely ignore issues related to paid domestic work or domestic services, we argue that putting this issue at the centre of the analysis can help us to reveal some of the challenges of gender and welfare state studies in a globalized world. It is important to analyse the ways in which the states articulate domestic service as a policy problem/solution because through this analysis we will be able to explore and problematize some dominant discourses on gender equality and the welfare state. The Swedish and Spanish welfare states have generally been considered to be very different, and perhaps the differences are most striking in policies on care for children and the elderly (Williams & Gavanas 2008). In Sweden, the state and local governments provide generous and flexible leave policies, and there is good availability of child care services (Boje & Leira 2000). Elderly care has also been provided through extended public care provisions (Szebehely 2005). Women have a high labour-market activity level, even though it is common that women work part time. Women s official labour-market activity rate is much lower in Spain than in Sweden, but there is a high quota of women working in the informal labour-market of the submerged economy in Spain (Boje & Leira 2000). In Spain, there is a high reliance on the family for supporting individual and household needs, both in terms of child care and elderly care, and social spending on family, infancy, and elderly care is low in comparison to other EU countries (Eurostat 2007). However, some important changes have been taking place, and among the recent developments in social policy is a law from 2006 that laid the foundations of a System of Autonomy and Attention to Dependent People (mainly focusing on state responsibility in elderly care) which has been defined as the fourth pillar of the Spanish welfare state. In both Sweden and Spain, though, paid domestic work in private households has become more and more common during the last decade (ILO 2008; Williams & Gavanas 2008).

5 188 E. Kvist & E. Peterson The growing demand for domestic services has often been interpreted as related to the context of the limitations or decline of welfare states, the ageing populations, and the increasing number of dual-earner families. Feminist scholars have challenged mainstream welfare state analyses, pointing out their gender blindness. Researchers have criticized the fact that welfare state studies have been concerned with paid work and income maintenance programmes, and have largely ignored issues such as care and services provision (Hobson et al. 2002; Towns 2002). The male bread-winner model that became established post-war built on an assumption of regular and full male employment and stable, heterosexual families in which women would be provided for via their husbands. Changes in women s labour-market participation and family structures in Europe have, to a certain extent, undermined this model, and dual-earner families have challenged existing social policies (Lewis 2001). As welfare state regimes, Sweden and Spain have often been represented as opposites. Nordic welfare states have been characterized as based upon a dual breadwinner model, where both women and men have been entitled to be carers and earners, and where the aim has been to enable women to become workers and men to become care-givers (Sainsbury 2000; Lewis 2001). A distinguishing feature of the Nordic welfare state model is claimed to be an extensive social policy directed at more or less all sections of the population, based on citizenship and universal benefits (Bergqvist et al. 1999). Probably due to Sweden s tradition of extended public care provisions, domestic services have predominately been associated with cleaning and not care work. But domestic services have also been conceived as a way of compensating for the shortcomings of the public care system. Since the recession in the 1990s, more care responsibilities have been redirected towards the household, due to the decline of the welfare state (Szebehely 2005; Calleman 2007). Researchers have emphasized the cut-backs in the provision of quality child care services and the need to fill the gaps between day care and work schedules. Cutbacks in public home help for the elderly have led to an increase in family care and in the demand for private domestic services among better-off pensioners. Indeed, studies indicate that there is now a large informal market of domestic services (Gavanas 2006; Lister & Anttonen 2007; Platzer 2007). The Nordic states have been defined as potentially women-friendly, due to the fact that women s political and social empowerment has been made possible through the state and with the support of social policy (Hernes 1987). Within this vein, the Nordic welfare state model has often set the norm for comparative welfare state research, while the Mediterranean welfare states have been seen as lagging behind. In Sweden, gender equality has been constructed as part of the national identity, wanting to set an example for other countries and the EU (Hobson et al. 2002; Towns 2002). Nevertheless, the idea of Sweden as a women-friendly welfare state can be criticized for not taking into consideration differences among women. According to the critics, this notion is based upon a normative assumption of women, where gender equality predominantly means equality for white, heterosexual, working mothers (Staunaes 2003; Holli et al. 2005; Kantola & Dahl 2005; Kantola 2006). As a contrast, Sweden can be now seen as forming part of the global care chains, where cheap migrant labour is demanded by medium- and high-income households aspiring to combine employment and family life (Hochschild & Ehrenreich 2003; Yeates 2004;

6 Domestic Services in the Welfare States of Spain and Sweden 189 Gavanas 2006). Today, the Swedish state does not grant work permits for migrant domestic workers through quotas or regularization policies as in other European countries (Apap 2002: 322). But historically there have been such exceptions in immigration policies for domestic workers. In the 1930s, domestic work was the most common occupation among women in Sweden, work mainly performed by young women moving from rural to urban areas (Wikander 2006). As the expansion of the welfare state offered other work opportunities for these women, an emerging deficit in domestic workers became apparent. The Swedish state tried to resolve this deficit through exceptions in the immigration polices where no work permit was required for immigrant domestic workers between the years But, due to the expansion of the welfare state, domestic work became more and more rare until finally becoming obsolete in the s (Calleman 2007). Then, as a consequence of the decline of the welfare state during the 1990s, and the transfer of more care responsibilities back into the home, paid domestic work re-emerged in Swedish homes. At the same time, domestic work was brought firmly back onto the political agenda through the intense debate caused by a suggestion of a tax credit on domestic work (Pa lsson & Norrman 1994; Calleman 2007; Platzer 2007). The Southern European welfare states traditionally attribute a key role to women s unpaid work within the family, which has been the focus of criticism by feminist scholars (Carrasco et al. 1997; Threlfall & Cousins 2005). The Spanish welfare state has been characterized as based upon a strong male bread-winner model with a strong ideology of the sexual division of labour according to the norm of male breadwinner/female care-taker. Nevertheless, recent studies indicate that the expectations of women s unpaid work within the family can no longer sustain the weight placed upon them (Stark & Regne r 2002; Anttonen 2005; Martı nez Buja n 2005). Spain can be interpreted as shifting towards a dual bread-winner model in the context of an (until the economic crisis) increasing participation of women in the labour-market, an ageing population, and new migration patterns. There have been some tendencies to look at the Nordic countries, as well as European Union policies, as good examples. However, research indicates that, rather than public care provision, private solutions are still dominant, although shifting in character. More and more studies underline the increasing role of female migrant domestic workers in child and elderly care work (Cordo n & Tobı o Soler 2005; Martı nez Buja n 2005; Tobı o Soler 2005; Escriva & Skinner 2008). Following from this, we can say that theories on global care chains have a special relevance in the Spanish context. 2 Spain has rapidly shifted from a country of emigration to a country of immigration (Escriva & Skinner 2008). The incorporation of migrants in domestic work in recent years can to a certain extent be seen as a replacement of the earlier internal migration of women from poor rural working-class backgrounds to work for well-off families in the big cities (King & Zontini 2000). The supply of domestic workers has been promoted by the state through its immigration policies. The successive modifications of the Foreigners Law have established a policy designed to meet demographic, labour, and economic needs, and the incorporation of migrants in domestic work has been promoted through a quota system (Anthias & Lazaridis 2000; Lutz 2002). Domestic service often forms part of the submerged economy and, for undocumented female migrants, jobs other than in informal domestic service are hard to find, and as a result

7 190 E. Kvist & E. Peterson these women are especially vulnerable to abuse (Kofman et al. 2000). Yet, it should be noted that in Spain, in contrast to other European countries like Sweden, Germany, and the UK, rights to health care and education are recognized regardless of legal status (Caixeta et al. 2004). Comparative Policy Frame Analysis and Intersectionality As welfare states, Sweden and Spain have been described as very different, but within both countries paid domestic work has become an important social phenomenon. In this section, we focus on competing ways of framing domestic service. The concept of framing refers to the process of articulating meanings, and this process involves shaping reality. Our constructionist approach is inspired by Carol Bacchi s What s the problem approach (1999). This approach rests on the presumption that there are no objective policy problems and that truths are constructed within discourse. Further, discourses have important material and immaterial effects. Absences in the political agenda are significant for the analysis, given that they say something about what is being excluded or marginalized. The way in which people talk about a problem is always only one interpretation among other possibilities. Competing ideas about what the problem is can be discovered as we ask questions about who is regarded as responsible for the problem, what are the causes and effects of the problem, and what solutions are proposed to solve the problem (Bacchi 2005). Here, we adopt a comparative policy frame analysis, analysing key policy texts surrounding domestic service in Sweden and Spain. The documents used for the analysis presented in this article are laws, law proposals, parliamentary debates, and policy plans. 3 The article delimits its focus to analysing recent policy debates. More specifically, the Swedish case focuses on the 2007 law on tax credits on domestic service and the related parliamentary debates and policy documents. The Spanish case focuses particularly on the 2005 law proposal regarding improvements in the social protection of domestic workers, the following parliamentary debate, and the Equality law that arose from it in The textual analysis draws upon critical frame analysis developed within the European research project QUING. 4 As researchers in this project, we selected and analysed the policy texts used in this article. The starting-point of this approach is an awareness that there are multiple ways of framing gender inequality as a policy problem and, thus, that there are multiple visions of gender equality embedded in problem representations (Bustelo & Lombardo 2007; Verloo 2007; Lombardo et al. 2009). Within this vein, a frame on gender equality can be defined as a configuration of positions on various dimensions of diagnosis and prognosis, including positions on roles, on location, on norms, on causality and mechanisms, on gender and intersectionality (Lombardo et al. 2009: 11). In line with this definition, our textual analysis asks questions on diagnosis and prognosis: what is the problem represented as being? and what are the solutions represented as being? We see these dimensions as intimately intertwined; a policy measure can be seen as having an implicit or explicit interpretation of what the problem is, and a problem representation involves ideas on what the feasible solutions might be.

8 Domestic Services in the Welfare States of Spain and Sweden 191 The comparison between Swedish and Spanish policy debates on paid domestic work serves to illuminate the problem of gender inequality in the context of changing European welfare states and helps us to reveal both shared normative assumptions and context-related silences. In other words, the comparison is helpful in pinpointing both dominant discourses and what is not being problematized in each context. Our research process involved, first, analysing national policy documents and identifying the dominant frames, and then proceeding to the cross-country comparison. We use the idea of dominating frames to refer to the problem representations and normative assumptions that appear repeatedly in different official policy documents. Since the mid-1970s, black feminists have criticized white feminists for ignoring black and third-world women s experiences within mainstream feminist theory. Feminist theory has been accused of focusing on a homogenized womanhood and ignoring differences between women (Ludvig 2006). However, according to the intersectional approach used in this article, it is not possible to single out different dimensions of social life, and therefore it is necessary to analyse the intersecting power dimensions together (Brah & Phoenix 2004; Carbin & Tornhill 2004). In this article, we see categories such as gender, race, class, and sexuality as mutually constitutive, interrelated, and multi-faceted (Williams 1995; Carbin & Tornhill 2004). Hence, it is important to underline that there are no separate structures of oppression. The concept of intersectionality is a way of understanding the variety of structured divisions that constitutes everyday life and its power relations (Phoenix & Pattynama 2006). The social phenomenon of paid domestic work functions as a good illustration of intersectional power relations, as it is predominantly performed by racialized groups of women within private homes and enables middle-class women and men to avoid conflicts around household tasks (Anderson 2000). That domestic work encompasses categories of gender, class, and race/ethnicity is not a new phenomenon, as post-colonial scholars reveal (Lewis 2006). Yet, the global migration of women from the South, performing the often invisible household and care work in the North, reinforces the need for feminist analysis with an intersectional approach to paid domestic work. A shift in focus from women s unpaid care and domestic work, dominating in feminist welfare state research, towards domestic service can unveil how inequalities linked to gender, class, and race/ethnicity are entwined with the meanings and values attributed to household and care work (Graham 1991). The frame analysis approach used in this article enables an analysis of paid domestic work which emphasizes underlying normative assumptions and silences on gender inequality and reveals how the policy discourse (re)produces privileges and power relations. Framing Domestic Service in Sweden In the golden years of the Swedish welfare state, between 1970 and 1990, paid domestic work was rare in Swedish households (Calleman 2007). The issue of paid domestic work had not been on the Swedish political agenda for many years when the issue suddenly became the centre of a tremendous debate at the beginning of the 1990s. In 1994, a proposal was put forward that private households should be allowed

9 192 E. Kvist & E. Peterson to claim tax credits on domestic work. This reform in Sweden was initiated by a wellknown female economist arguing that a tax credit on domestic services would enable a transformation of unpaid house-work to paid work, allowing households to become part of the market (Pa lsson & Norrman 1994). This contentious debate, which came to be known as the maid debate ( pigdebatten), was morally and ideological charged and caused controversies articulated in parliamentary debates, the media, and civil society (Öberg 2004; Gavanas 2006; Platzer 2007; Kvist et al. 2009). This long-lived debate comprises controversies related to gender, class, and race (Platzer 2007). Feminists were divided in the debate; some women s and feminist organizations and the Swedish trade union confederation argued against the suggestion, other women s organizations and trade unions were positive towards it. The employment of care and domestic workers in private homes was regarded by many as something that belonged to the past, to a traditional, patriarchal, class society (Williams & Gavanas 2008). However, two state commissions 5 were set up, in 1994 and 1997, to investigate the potential effects of tax deductions and state subsidies on domestic service work. The centre and right-wing parties presented parliamentary bills on numerous occasions to make domestic services tax-deductible. The Social Democratic Party, which was in government between 1994 and 2006, rejected the proposals, together with the Left Party and the Green Party. After 2002, the Moderate Party, the Liberal People s Party, the Centre Party, and the Christian Democratic Party agreed upon a common proposal for tax deductions on domestic services. 6 They promised to introduce the reform if they were elected to government. A law on tax deductions on domestic services was finally adopted in 2007 after the centre-right Alliance had formed a government in In the Swedish policy debate on tax credits on domestic services, three major representations of the policy problem were articulated. The proponents of the law proposal from 2006, the centre-right government, articulated the reform of tax credits on domestic services as a way of stimulating employment and economic growth, but also as a way to improve the possibilities of reconciling work and family. The opponents of the proposal, the Social Democratic, Left and Green Parties, mainly argued along the lines of equality, emphasizing the social inequalities involved in domestic services in relation to class and gender. Both opponents and proponents of the reform framed the problem of domestic services in relation to gender equality and workers rights, but from basically opposite positions. Employment and Economic Growth Both the government bill and the parliamentary debate that preceded the legislation on tax credits on domestic services were dominated by a frame that emphasized employment and economic growth. The centre-right government s main argument was that tax reform would stimulate private households to buy domestic services; reducing unpaid work in the home and increasing the time spent in formal paid employment. A lower tax on market-produced domestic services would raise the household s potential to perform work that is more favourable to the household. In this way

10 Domestic Services in the Welfare States of Spain and Sweden 193 both the households and society are gaining from this profit specialization and economic efficiency (Prop. 2006/07: 94). 7 Tax credits on domestic services would stimulate the establishment of new enterprises within the formal domestic service sector, gaining market share over the black sector. At the time, a majority of the domestic service work that was performed within private households constituted informal employment (Skatteverket 2006). The tax credits would make it more affordable for private households to buy domestic work on the formal market, instead of using informal employment. It was argued that the reform would create employment opportunities for poorly educated persons and groups with low employment opportunities, such as immigrant women, and provide them with a gateway to the labour-market. In sum, the tax reform was expected to facilitate the establishment of a new labour-market sector and to create work opportunities and economic growth. Work and Family Reconciliation Domestic service was also framed as a way of facilitating the reconciliation of work and family life. Among the right-wing parties, a common argument was that the tax reform on domestic services would, in particular, reduce women s double burden of domestic work and paid employment and increase their career opportunities in the labour-market. A tax credit would reduce the unpaid domestic work. When unpaid work is replaced with paid work it increases above all women s labour-market position and economic independence (Prop. 2006/07: 94). Domestic services were represented as a way of improving women s opportunities to participate in the labour-market on equal terms with men, as women would be able to manage their life-puzzle. Since women perform most of the unpaid household work, tax credits on domestic work would provide opportunities for women to perform more work on the paid labour-market. This in turn would improve women s positions as professionals and increase their economic independence. The focus on the creation of opportunities for women to participate more fully in the labourmarket locates the obstacles that women face in their family responsibilities and unpaid domestic work. This frame articulated the reconciliation of work and family life as a gender equality question, with an emphasis on the female employers of domestic workers. Equality/Workers Rights The major frame articulated by the opposition to the reform was the equality frame, in which the unequal consequences of the tax reform were discussed. The equality frame is multi-faceted and brings to the agenda different, mutually constitutive power relations, such as gender, class, and education. The representatives of the Social Democratic Party, the Left Party, and the Green

11 194 E. Kvist & E. Peterson Party argued that the tax reform was a redistributive problem since it favoured highincome families. Another prominent aspect of the equality frame was that the tax reform has effects on gender inequality. Instead of making it possible for people to reduce their working hours, especially when they have small children, we are about to make it easier to hire someone else to do the domestic work. Not, as clearly claimed in the government bill, to gain more free time, but rather we are supposed to work even more. Instead of men taking their part of domestic work, an external party should be hired, sweeping the conflicts under the carpet (MP Helena Leander, Green Party, in parliamentary debate 2006/07: 116, 20 May 2007). By making reference to the uneven distribution of power and resources between women and men and the gender power system, the gender equality gains of the tax reform were questioned. Opponents suggested that men should be encouraged to take responsibility for their part of care and house-work instead of reinforcing the gender-based separation of domestic work through the income tax system. They claimed that the tax deduction on domestic services mainly meets the needs of the privileged classes at the expense of the working class. Thus they rejected the idea of raising the tax burden on women with low incomes, women who would not be able to buy domestic services even with the tax deduction. Equality in terms of workers rights was also called upon by both opponents and proponents of the reform. Opponents feared the sort of work and conditions that this tax reform would create, namely another female-dominated labour-market sector with precarious working conditions. On the other hand, the proponents highlighted workers equality and rights as they emphasized the importance of transforming the already-existing informal sector of domestic work into formal work to guarantee those workers protection under the labour laws and entitlement to pensions, parental leave, and other insurances. Framing Domestic Service in Spain While in Sweden domestic service has become a controversial problem of gender inequality, it has not constituted a divisive policy problem in Spain, although civil society actors and the feminist movement have demanded that domestic workers rights are put on the political agenda (INSTRAW 2009). In the last decade, in the context of welfare state (re)construction and modernization, the issue of domestic services has at times appeared as a solution to the problems of reconciliation of work and family/personal life and dependency, accepted by both left and right wing parties (Peterson 2007). However, in 2005, domestic services were debated in parliament as a policy problem related to workers rights and conditions. The existence of a Special Regime of Domestic Workers, established in law 1424/1985, 8 provides an important background to this debate. Since 1985, this social security regime regulates employment in domestic service, providing far less social protection than the General Regime of the social security system. The social security system certainly constructs paid domestic work as different 9 from normal types of work (Colectivo IOE 2001). Improving

12 Domestic Services in the Welfare States of Spain and Sweden 195 domestic workers rights was the aim of the parliamentary bill presented by the small Galician Nationalist Party and debated in parliament in The proposal involved equalizing the social protection of the Special Regime of Domestic Workers with the protection provided by the General Regime of the social security system. There was general agreement among all political parties that the Special Regime was obsolete, and yet the majority voted against taking the proposal into further consideration, including both the Socialist Party, PSOE, and the Conservative Party, Partido Popular, mainly on economic grounds. In 2007, the socialist government promised to improve the conditions of domestic workers by reforming the Special Regime and eventually incorporating it into the General Regime. The government also stated that it planned to take measures in order to professionalize this work, referring to the care work dimension of domestic service. The main trade unions, the General Workers Union (UGT) and Workers Commissions (CCOO), have supported the initiative to integrate domestic work into the general regime, but they have also been criticized by domestic workers organizations and the feminist movement for ignoring the problems of domestic workers. By the time of writing, the economic crisis seems to be constituting an obstacle for a potential reform of the Special Regime. In the Spanish debate on the Special Regime of Domestic Workers, three major representations of the policy problem were articulated. Both major political parties, the Socialist and the Conservative Party, framed the issue of domestic service as a matter of economic stability and employment. Second, there was general agreement across all political parties that the domestic service sector was necessary to facilitate the reconciliation of work and family life. A third frame emphasized domestic workers rights. The reconciliation of work and family life has been strongly linked to the problem of gender inequality in Spanish policy debates, but these debates seem to have marginalized the question of gender inequality in relation to domestic workers rights. Although the frames are the same as in the Swedish debates, there are crosscountry differences within them. Employment and Economic Growth Both the Socialist Party in government and the main opposition party, the Conservative Party, stressed the importance of economic stability and increasing employment opportunities. Improving the rights of domestic workers should by no means put state finances in danger. Granting domestic workers the right to unemployment benefits etc. would affect the sustainability of the social security system. The financial viability of the social security system was a primary concern, referring to the European Commission s argument that Spain needs to revise the system in order to be able to cope with an ageing population. There was also a fear that improving the rights of domestic workers would make their services too expensive for families and that this would lead to a decrease in formal domestic employment and an increase of the submerged economy. While in Sweden there was division over the desirability of the very existence of a domestic service sector, the Spanish debate never questioned the need for this sector. But rather than proactive policies to promote formal domestic service employment, the actors considered the risk of decreasing formal employment in the case of improving domestic workers rights. Within the frame stressing employment, women s incorporation in the

13 196 E. Kvist & E. Peterson labour-market was underlined. This norm was strongly articulated in the Organic Law for De Facto Equality between Women and Men from 2007: Employment policies will have as a priority the objective to increase women s participation in the labour-market and to advance the effective equality between women and men. Therefore, women s employability and permanence in employment will be enhanced, promoting their level of training and adaptation to the requirements of the labour-market (Organic Law 3/2007 for De Facto Equality between Women and Men). This law left the Special Regime of Domestic Workers intact, and at the same time it emphasized women s employability. The goal was women s adaptation to labour-market rules and conditions, not the reverse. Women s labour-market participation, in domestic work or any sector, was considered beneficial for Spanish society and the economy. Work and Family Reconciliation Domestic service was framed as an issue related to the problem of reconciling work and family life by both left- and right-wing parties. Domestic service was then represented as an important aspect of solving middle-class families reconciliation problems and of promoting families interests and quality of life. In other words, domestic workers were debated in terms of providing solutions for Spanish women and men. This private solution to the problem of reconciling work and family life was also expected to be a key solution in the future, given women s labour-market participation. We should be aware that domestic work or employment will become more in demand in Spain due to the increasing incorporation of women in the labourmarket, as occurs in our neighbouring countries. It is work that becomes more and more necessary every day in order to better reconcile work and family life (MP Lourdes Méndez Monasterio, Conservative Party, in parliamentary debate, 21 June 2005) How to satisfy the demands of middle-class dual bread-winner families was framed as a central issue. Any reform of the Special Regime should by no means imply making the services more expensive for the middle class. The task of a potential reform of the Special Regime was seen as two-fold: The reform of domestic service should improve workers rights (see equality frame below) and the rights of families to access support in domestic (care) work. The reform should not penalize families possibilities of reconciling work and family life. Domestic service was also related specifically to women s possibilities of reconciling work and family life. As in the Swedish case, when domestic service was discussed in terms of relieving women s double burden of paid and unpaid work, domestic workers were rendered invisible. They were represented as a solution to women s double work-day, although accessible only to more economically privileged women. The Socialist Party used this idea to argue for extended public care services.

14 Domestic Services in the Welfare States of Spain and Sweden 197 Equality/Workers Rights Domestic service was also framed in relation to equality as a norm, particularly in terms of workers equal rights, but this was a more marginal frame than the other two and so the law proposal in favour of domestic workers rights did not prosper. This frame was articulated by the Left Party and both left- and right-wing nationalist parties. The law proposal formulated by the Galician Nationalist Party to improve the rights of domestic workers highlighted the notion of dignified work and the need to achieve basic workers rights. This would, for instance, involve the right to unemployment benefits and new rules on sick-leave and work-related accidents. In the parliamentary debate following the bill, the problem of the servitude historically inherent and still present in domestic service was addressed by the Basque Nationalist Party. At the same time, this party argued that, given the positive social changes towards a dual-earner family model, domestic work has changed in nature, increasingly involving child care. The changing character of the work should involve a higher recognition. The shift from Spanish women working in domestic service, regarded as a complement to the male breadwinner, towards migrant women working to maintain their families, served as an argument why there is a need for improved social protection. It is evident that the level of needs of those women traditionally found in domestic service, who frequently contributed their salary to a family unit where there already existed a principal salary from the husband and where the level of need, for that reason, was lower in the case of losing the income, has nothing to do with the needs situation of today s domestic workers. The profile has changed, and so the social protection has to change too (MP Tarda I Coma, Catalonian Left Republican Party, in parliamentary debate, 21 June 2005). The Left Party associated domestic workers rights with women s rights. Improving the conditions of domestic work was articulated as doing justice to the many women working in the sector and equality between domestic workers and other workers. This party also underlined that the Special Regime represented an unequal treatment of women in the Spanish economy. The augmentation of migrant women in the sector of domestic work was creating a new kind of social and economic inequality in Spain, and this would have a negative effect on the integration of these women and their families. In contrast to the Swedish case, the perpetuation of the gendered division of labour by transferring care and domestic work to other women along class and ethnic divisions was never questioned. Neither was men s involvement in care and domestic work seen as an alternative solution to domestic service. Comparing the Swedish and Spanish Policy Debates: What Has Gender Equality Got to Do with Domestic Service? When analysing policy debates on paid domestic services in Sweden and Spain, it becomes apparent that in both countries the debates operated within the premise of women s labour-market participation as the key to gender equality. This is a predominant normative assumption in both countries (with some reservations made

15 198 E. Kvist & E. Peterson in the Swedish case that will be further elaborated later). In both cases there is also a strong focus on the importance of economic growth or stability, and the potential of the domestic service sector in promoting work opportunities both for employers and employees. The importance of the employment and economic growth frame in both Sweden and Spain can be seen as yet another example of how dominant growth has become in politics (Ro nnblom 2009). Furthermore, women s place is considered to be in the labour-market. Consequently, gender inequality was strongly linked to the problem of reconciliation of work and family life. The policy debates in both countries tended to enhance the implicitly heterosexual dual-earner family as norm, emphasizing that today both men and women work outside the home. In this sense, the policy debates indicated a shift away from the norm of the male breadwinner model in the Spanish case. The dominant vision of gender equality was a liberal vision of inclusion; women should participate in the labour-market in the same way as men do (Squires 2000). When gender equality is understood in relation to growth, women s participation in the labour-market is seen to be mainly about changing women in order to make them fit the labour-market s demands and expectations (Ro nnblom 2009), as articulated in the idea of women s employability. When women s subordinate role in the paid labour-market appeared in the policy debates at all, it was mainly viewed as being due to women s primary role in unpaid care and domestic work. Increasing paid work in the formal labour-market was considered a good thing, both in economic terms and in terms of gender equality. These similarities between the Swedish and Spanish policy debates can be interpreted as related to the supranational context of the European Union, where reconciliation has been an important issue since the 1970s and where gender equality measures have been shaped by the agenda of the European employment strategy (Rubery, 2002; Stratigaki 2004; Outshoorn & Kantola 2007). Even though there are similarities in the policy debates, it is still important to situate them in the context of the Swedish and Spanish welfare states in order to fully understand the complexities. In Sweden, the controversy raised by the proposal for tax credits on domestic services can be interpreted in relation to the changes within the welfare sector. Sweden has had a tradition of extended public care provision, but since the recession in the 1990s the public care sector has declined and more care responsibilities have been redirected toward private households (Szebehely 2005). An important feature of the Swedish debate is the labelling of the debate as the maid debate in contrast to the proponents label of domestic services (Hall 1997; Kvist et al. 2009). The maid can in this case be understood as a strong symbol, clearly associated with class society, whereas the proponents label domestic services carries completely different associations. For many left-wing politicians, the expansion of a private domestic service sector and other private care providers was viewed as an acceptance of this welfare transition and the dismantling of the Swedish welfare model and also a reinforcement of class society. The refusal to accept private solutions had interesting consequences in terms of the debate on workers rights. Left-wing voices paid little or no attention to the already-existing often female and with a migrant background workers performing low-pay domestic work in the informal economy of the world s most gender-equal country. On the other hand, while right-wing MPs emphasized the importance of providing domestic workers

16 Domestic Services in the Welfare States of Spain and Sweden 199 with social protection according to the labour laws, they avoided the issue of precarious working conditions and the gender, class, and race inequalities involved in formal domestic service (see also de los Reyes & Mulinari 2007). In Spain, the welfare state has been extended and developed in some areas during the last decade for instance, in care of the elderly and maternity and paternity leave. However, private and individual solutions to the problem of care work remained generally unproblematized; for both left- and right-wing parties, domestic care service was a taken-for-granted work sector and source of welfare. In the light of the limited welfare state and the strong focus on the needs and interests of middle-class dualearner families, we can understand why domestic service has not been articulated as a controversial issue and (working-class and migrant) domestic workers rights remain marginal to the agenda. The general acceptance of domestic service as a form of care provision can be seen as reinforcing the legitimacy of the non-caring state. There are clearly different views on whether, how, and to what extent domestic service is linked to gender (in)equality. In Sweden, the issue of paid domestic work has been a highly controversial subject, but all political actors argued in favour of gender equality. Right-wing parties argued that domestic service increases women s equality since it provides opportunities for women to participate in the labour-market on an equal footing with men. The left-wing parties argued that making domestic service more accessible increases gender inequality due to the predominance of precarious feminized and racialized work in the domestic service sector. In Spain, there was less explicit controversy over this issue; the general argument was that domestic service is necessary to make family and work-life feasible, since women are increasingly participating in the formal labour-market. Since the general idea, promoted by both Socialists and Conservatives, was that women s labour-market participation increases gender equality, it can be argued that the dominant vision was that domestic service contributes to gender equality, both in terms of helping women reconcile work and family life and by providing job opportunities in the particular sector of domestic work. Critical voices from the Left Party questioned this view, emphasizing that the precarious working conditions affect migrant women in particular. The frame analysis attributes importance to the silences in the agenda. The frames presented above can be examined in terms of what they do not problematize. As Carol Bacchi (1999) argues, the association of paid work with success and emancipation can be seen as overshadowing the problems of precarious working conditions among women workers as well as devaluing unpaid domestic and care work. In the case of Spain, the dominant policy frames on employment and the reconciliation of work and family life enhance the status of the working mother/parent combining care and formal employment as a norm such that the ways in which the welfare state often relies on the precarious paid work of female migrant domestic workers are overshadowed. This category of women was not included in the vision of gender equality. The perpetuation of the gendered division of labour, along divisions of class, race, and nationality, was not questioned at all, as in the Swedish debates. In the debate on domestic services in Sweden, the claims of right-wing MPs echoed the Spanish policy debate in suggesting that women s labour-market participation is the key to gender equality, including women as employers and employees of domestic services. They consequently ignored the gender, class, and race relations involved in paid domestic work. The left-wing