engleski

Inequality dynamic of childcare-related policies development in the post-Yugoslav countries

Intensive reforms of childcare policies in Europe have gained a profound interest among scholars. However, still little is known about both the developmental pattern of childcare policies in various contexts and their implications. That particularly refers to the potential of childcare policies to overcome the risk of deepening socio- economic cleavages between various social groups. Namely, recent findings show that in some contexts childcare policies have a higher propensity to be socially stratified favouring (children of) parents in (stable) employment. There is an indication that these effects may be closely related to the childcare policy design, especially to the eligibility criteria that often see a (stable) parents’ employment as a primary condition to exercise childcare-related rights. If we consider these findings within a European context of increasingly precarious, underinsured and nonstandard employment and growing financial strains put in front of the parents, they ask for an urgent need for a deeper and more nuanced investigation of childcare policies, especially broader thinking about the inter-connection of childcare policies design and gender and social inequalities. This paper thus contributes to the emerging critical social policy debates on how to redesign childcare policies to become more equitable. It engages in this discussion by comparatively examining an (in)equality dynamic and priorities of childcare policies reforms in the post-Yugoslav countries (PYC) in the last three decades. Due to the multidimensional nature of childcare policies design (understand here in terms of childcare- related leaves and services), the paper first develops an analytical framework, which connects the entitlement-conferring statuses with the scope of the rights. The framework will allow a closer and systematic look at constituent elements of childcare policies in the PYC and their reforms to assess their effect on shaping gender and class (in)equalities in parents’ opportunities to work and care. The paper sheds a light on the redistributive dynamic of reforms and a possibilities childcare policies provide for a different group of parents ; as well as on elements of policy design that may challenge or reinforce parental (in)equality and thus also children’s equal opportunities. The PYC countries provide an interesting case as in the last three decades they have experienced abrupt shifts in gender assumptions behind childcare policies reforms, additionally divided along social and ethnical lines. The fact that these policy shifts occasioned frequent changes in entitlements to childcare-related rights and redistribution among various groups of mothers and fathers provides a vibrant ground for exploration of an (in)equality dynamic of childcare policies reforms and their effects. It also reveals methodological and theoretical complexities in assessing the inter-connection of policy design and multiply determined and intertwined inequalities in care. The paper shows that although these countries childcare policies are becoming more inclusive, allowing wider groups of parents to access childcare-related rights (e.g. self-employed, parents with short-term contracts, farmers, inactive mothers and to lesser extent fathers), the ‘stratified effect’ of childcare policies strengthened, i.e. policy reforms intensified gender and social inequalities in work-care relations.

childcare, post-Yugoslav countries, inequalities

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