Three principles of human
security to guide social development: Ref: United Nation
International Year of the Family 1994, Occasional Papers Series, Families:
Agents and Beneficiaries of Socio-economic Development, No 16, 1995
Three
intersecting concepts of justice: intergenerational equity, gender equity and
social equity are used in the present paper to develop a framework concerned
with the key principles underlying human security.
Intergenerational equity
The
concept of intergenerational equity highlights the cross-generational flows of
material, emotional and cultural resources generated by families and by their
work of care and nurture in all its dimensions; for children, young people and
other family members made vulnerable by age, disability or severe illness. This
contribution, in the so-called private domain, is of such magnitude that it
demands not only reciprocal public responses in recognition of it, but also a
fundamental reconceptualization of family policies not as social expenditure
but social investment. Such policies would include family payments, health and
welfare services for women and children, recognition in the workplace of the
family responsibilities of employees and the expansion of adequately
remunerated employment for both men and women. The consequences of such a
reframing would see good family policy not as a drain on national budgets, but
as social investment and a key element of economic and social development. As
such, the three false and misleading dichotomies of : (a) the public and private
spheres of life and their social contribution; (b) independent labour force
activity and the dependency of family- based carers; and (c) economic policy
and family/social policy must be abandoned and replaced by the recognition that
family-centred policies are central to social and economic development.
It
is the very recognition of the material and symbolic value of the
intergenerational work of families, and their production of public goods that
calls forth and legitimates a public policy response in both national and
international programmes of action and social development.
Gender equity
In
recent decades, theories and practices of economic development have been
challenged for failing to serve women, especially poor women, and in so doing,
missing vital opportunities to invest fully and equitably in social development
and the well-being of all members of the population, particularly children.
The
principle of gender equity is therefore intrinsic to the rationale of placing
families at the heart of social development. Women are the major producers of
the family-based services of care and nurture as well as the contributors to
all aspects of the formal and informal sectors of the economy. Ignoring the
role of families is to obscure the work largely carried out by women in their
kinship and local networks and therefore to miss a fundamental human investment
opportunity.
Social equity
The
third of the intersecting concepts is social equity, which calls for the
redistribution of income and resources to those families whose experience of
inequality is greatest, and carries with it the most damaging consequences for
the life chances and opportunities of their children. These include families
who are unemployed, who have low incomes, who are headed by women, who are
migrants and refugees, who have been displaced by war and civil strife, or
those families, particularly indigenous families, who experience the deeply
entrenched disadvantages of discrimination.
At
a systemic level, social equity calls for measures that empower families as
full participants in the processes of economic and social life. Fundamental to
such empowerment are forms of social protection that would entrench the right
to employment and the right to an adequate income during periods of
unemployment, under-employment or withdrawal from the work force to fulfil
family caring responsibilities. The other major foundation of social protection
for families is access to secure and affordable housing. Paying proper
attention to social equity would also prompt action regarding economic policy
to stimulate job creation and growth, to establish measures to ensure that
low-income families do not bear the costs of industrial restructuring, to
support women seeking to participate in employment if that is their choice, and
to address gender-related wage differentials.
A
more socially just distribution of resources to families, and in particular to
families who are disadvantaged by social and economic processes, will only
occur if strong and sustained investment is made in the provision of
employment, education and training; affordable housing; redistributive family
income support; good and sufficient health and welfare services for families,
women and children; and services for care of the disabled and the elderly. When
such investment is made as the key input to social, economic and family
development, families and their individual members are enabled to be full
participants in the life of employment, community, politics and civil society.
The
exclusion of families from traditional economic development paradigms reveals
the limitations of ignoring a whole sphere of production. If there is no
recognition, or insufficient recognition of the contribution made by families
to social and economic development, then there are no institutional responses
that might begin to redress those inequalities in the course of life (differing
levels of economic welfare at different stages of the family life cycle), and
vertical inequalities ( inequalities of income and wealth between families).
The interactive nature of the principles of intergenerational equity, gender
equity and social equity thus dissolves the distinction, indeed the dichotomy
of private and public spheres of activity and responsibility, signaling that
the two are intrinsically interdependent.