In partnership with Jobs Australia, the Social Policy Institute and the Tax and Transfer Policy Institute at the Crawford School of the ANU are delighted to host Associate Professor in Law at the University of Canterbury, Annick Masselot. In this workshop, Annick will present on social investment and gender equality.

The EU and in NZ have increasingly made reference to “social investment” in the area of social policy development in recent years. Social investment approaches support strong female labour force participation through the help of state subsidized work-family conciliation policies, early childcare and education. The central aims of social investment are to invest in children in order to develop their human capital in order to prepare them for future employment, and to end the intergenerational transfer of poverty.

As women continue to do most of the unpaid care, these child-centred policies should directly be concerned with gender equality. However, a critical inspection of the policies on childcare in the EU and of lone-parents welfare benefits in NZ reveals that gender equality concerns are in fact quasi-inexistent. In both cases, gender equality has been hijacked to become an instrument designed to realise economic and demographic aims. The focus on children is moreover contributing to reduce complex gender relations to a limiting concept of motherhood.

Respondents to the presentation will be Professor Miranda Stewart, Tax and Transfer Policy Institute, ANU and Professor Peter Whiteford, Social Policy Institute ANU. Followed by a Q&A session.

This workshop series is in partnership with Jobs Australia and is by invite only.