What women really need from McCreevy
As we go to print, it appears that Charlie McCreevy is preparing to
make concessions on his Budget taxation proposals with regard to
double-income married couples, following a wave of protests. Here,
Anne Maguire gives her personal analysis of the issue that has raised
so many hackles and spoiled what was supposed to be a feel-good budget
for Fianna Fáil and the PDs.
BY ANNE MAGUIRE
There has been a storm of protest unleashed by Charlie McCreevy's
Budget proposal to award extra tax relief to double-income married
couples while not affording the same benefits to married families
where only one spouse is in the workforce.
In the midst of the public outcry, groups and individuals are lining
up to condemn the move, creating unlikely bedfellows. Norah Gilligan,
Chairwoman of the Women in the Home group, Dr Desmond Connell, the
Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, and Rosemary `Dana' Scallon, MEP, find
themselves allied with the Labour Party, the Irish Family Planning
Association and journalist Emily O'Reilly.
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The budget has begun a shift of the whole basis of taxation from
families to individuals not in attempt to remove the discriminatory
aspects of our tax and social welfare system, not to promote real
choices for parents but to facilitate the growth of the free market.
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What exactly is the change to the tax code? Husbands' and wives'
eligibility for the standard rate will no longer be calculated on a
joint basis where spouses have chosen to share tax free allowances:
instead each will be treated separately - a move towards what is known
as the individualisation of the tax bands over the next three years.
d what does it mean in real terms? Paid work will be considerably
more attractive than working in the home through the implementation of
a tax wedge in favour of people in paid taxable employment, in part
recognising that there are costs as well as benefits to participation
in the labour market.
Rosemary Scallon, MEP, has gone on record to say that there will be
little to celebrate this Christmas for married, single-income
families. Why? While it does represent a big boost for all dual-income
married couples, one-income married families will not be worse off
than before the change.
From media coverage it seems that a lot of public representatives
agree with Dana on this one. Fine Gael has pledged to force a reversal
of the tax proposals. The Labour Party has called on Independent TDs
to examine their consciences and not to support what Ruairi Quinn has
termed a right-wing anti-family divisive measure. While we can all
sympathize with the opposition's unenviable task of rallying against
£1.4 billion-worth of budget giveaways, I would question their
decision not to critique the truly questionable slant of the budget
towards business and high earners and instead content themselves with
whipping up hysteria.
If this change is antifamily, inequitable and socially divisive, does
that mean that the current tax system is pro-family and socially
inclusive? Feminists, including the leadership of the National
Women's Council, have never been that keen on the workings of the tax
and social welfare systems. The supposedly family friendly polices to
date are based on the mainstream orthodox definition of economic
activity, which no one can view as women friendly or gender neutral.
So what's at the heart of the problem? Firstly, let's separate out the
issues.
There is no doubt that the Budget has done nothing to recognise
women's unpaid work. There was no spirit of the Partnership 2000
commitment to an evaluation of unpaid work and its contribution to the
country's Gross National Product contained in any aspect of the
Budget. Neither did it give any indication of how the government
plans to honour Fianna Fáil's 1997 Manifesto promise to introduce a
£2,000 tax allowance for stay-at-home parents.
There is no doubt that it has done next to nothing to help parents
access affordable childcare. Whether the childcare in question is
needed by parents five days a week to participate in the paid labour
market or for occasional use to give stay at home mothers a break from
full time care, this is not a budget focusing on the issue of
accessible affordable quality childcare.
There is no doubt that little or nothing will change to help
low-income families provide their offspring with the proven benefits
that pre-schooling activities bring children's early educational and
personal development, allowing them to participate fully and compete
equally in economic and societal life.
It is without question a budget aimed at higher earners, not about
social equity. There is no question at all that the measure is about
the need of employers for older married women to bring their skills to
bear in the ever-tightening labour market. It is not about providing
women with real choices. Unquestionably, the change is about
increasing tax revenues over the long term, making further tax cuts
sustainable without calling on businesses to dig into their profits to
sustain economic growth through facilitating working parents.
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It is without question a budget aimed at higher earners, not about
social equity. There is no question at all that the tax relief measure
is about the need of employers for older married women to bring their
skills to bear in the ever-tightening labour market. It is not about
providing women with real choices
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On these points we can all agree. But is it discriminating against
one-income families? Is it an attack on women who wish to exercise
their choice to stay at home and rear their own children? Does a
change to help working couples really undermine the recognition of
women's work in the home as carers, on the farm and other family
business and as the mainstay of volunteers in the wider community?
There has been a lot of talk about the unconstitutional nature of the
change and how it forces women from their traditional role within
Irish society. Article 41.2.2 of the Constitution recognises the
value of woman's ``life within the home'' and goes on to say that ``The
State shall, therefore, endeavour to ensure that mothers shall not be
obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of
their duties in the home''.
As I listened to the entire outcry and outrage a couple of nagging
points came to mind. With the narrow interpretation of women's
contribution to Irish society and no mention of fathers in the home
Article 41.2.2 has never struck me as pro-women or indeed pro family.
The argument that it is an attack on women working full time in the
home ignores the fact that women in the workforce also have family
responsibilities and so also lose out when unpaid work continues not
to be recognised or rewarded. It also ignores the fact that a
significant number of women have always headed households, have always
had to work to support their families as well as choosing to work
outside the home. It also ignores the fact that the State has a role
to play in the nurturing of our children and care of dependants.
The second point all but lost in the recent furore is that the option
of transferring tax-free allowances has only ever applied to married
couples not families in all their forms. In addition, it only brings
savings to households where either one spouse is not in paid
employment at all or where one earns considerably less. Dual income
couples, with or without children, on similar earnings find no
advantage.
Amid all the wailing and gnashing teeth is a presumption that the
present system was somehow fair and equitable and the proposed change
deeply unjust. This is simply not the case. ERSI economist Tim Callan
has given the example of two couples each earning £40,000, one couple
needing two earners to achieve this while the other couple can do so
on one income. He says, and I quote: ``At present, each has a similar
tax bill, as if each had the same total resources and ability to pay.
But is the system fair? Which family is better off, the one which
earns £40,000 and has one parent available to care for the children
and manage the home, or the couple which earns the same cash amount
but does not have the benefits arising from having one partner in the
home.'' This simple mathematical equation shows how the existing system
is biased in favour of the single income family where one partner
stays at home. Though the benefits and therefore bias has impacted
more on high earning households. In that context its telling that the
Combat Poverty Agency has come out in support pointing out that the
change towards individualisation of the tax code only affected
well-off tax-paying households.
d what about the effects on married women themselves? It is well
recognised that the current practice of transferring tax-free
allowances between married couples has long militated against women's
re-entry to education, training and participation in the labour
market. Women's groups, trade unions, and community networks have
campaigned about the use of the live register as a gateway to
education opportunities, because of its inherent discrimination
against women. Married women who have been out of the labour market
truly feel that they do not have a tax free allowance at all as once
it has been transferred to their husbands it ceases to bring them
direct benefits in terms of individual PRSI derived benefits. To
compound this, the disposable family income becomes dependant on the
husband's full use of the double tax free allowance and attempts to
re-allocate it when women wish to return to paid work can prove
personally difficult as well as financially unrewarding. Married women
who choose to combine employment and family responsibilities therefore
face very real disincentives, as pointed out by SIPTU's Equality
Officer, Ms Callender, when welcoming the move towards the
individualisation of the tax bands in principal rather than how it is
being implemented.
So is this change all about the need to balance home and working life?
A recognition that most couples need two incomes to make ends meet?
That choosing to stay at home and nurture children is either a luxury
confined to high single income families or belies the lack of option
for low income families as they could not earn enough to pay for
childcare? As recognition that there is a financial cost as well as
gain to paid work, abet crudely presented? Is it hell.
The failure of the Minister's proposal to make a distinction between
two income couples with or without children clearly illustrates that
concern for the struggles of working parents has not prompted this
change. The need for stay at home parents - women - to take up
relatively meaningless, low paid part time jobs is at the heart of the
proposal. It recognises that a growing number of women who could
afford to do so voted with their feet and left the paid work force
refusing to struggle in what Maev-Ann Wren describes as a straitjacket
of working hours designed for men with wives at home.
More tellingly, that a cross section of Chambers of Commerce
spokespeople and IBEC welcome the move to an individualization of tax
bands illustrates that the measure is about employer gains and
employer gains only. It allows employers to benefit from the increased
number of women in the work force without placing any obligation on
employers to promote family friendly work practices. It places the
full burden of securing quality care for children of working parents
on those parents refusing to recognise that the care of our children
is everyone's responsibility for the benefit of children not
employers.
But in terms of discrimination and paid work this is not forcing women
out of the home - their financial position has not worsened. Rather
the financial position of women in married partnerships in paid
employment has got a boost - not the massive boost it may appear when
the costs of participation in the labour market for women with caring
responsibilities are taken into account. For couples who can already
afford to have one parent stay at home, the extra tax relief will not
act as an incentive and for couples who can't afford to both
participate in the workforce the realities of childcare costs and
availability will quickly diminish any benefits.
The bigger issue is the Minister's fudging of the right to have a
gender-neutral tax and social welfare system. Our tax and social
welfare system puts women working in the home in a position of
economic dependency, rendering them invisible in their own right and
denying them access to the full range of individual PRSI benefits. Non
individualised tax and social welfare systems are based on the
presumption that household income is automatically shared and
controlled equally. There is no recognition that fair and equitable
allocation of resources does not exist within all households. While
small changes have been introduced to rectify this, huge areas of
discrimination remain, most notably in terms of pensions. A bigger
issue is the lack of right-based access to social benefits for all
women. The National Anti Poverty Strategy specifically refers to the
need to individualise social welfare payments to end women's
dependancy status within social welfare, for example.
So is this a first step? Maybe. It is a way of tweaking with
inequality without ever having to fully acknowledge it or compensate
the women affected to date. In the absence of any real change on these
fronts, the fact remains that women are better off being economically
independent and that economic independence comes not from our
contribution to creation of wealth through caring roles but from
direct participation in the labour market. The move to
individualisation of the tax codes allows women to benefit more fully
but does not deal with the central issue of why this is. The Budget
has begun a shift of the whole basis of taxation from families to
individuals not in attempt to remove the discriminatory aspects of our
tax and social welfare system, not to promote real choices for parents
but to facilitate the growth of the free market.
But then social norms and traditions have always stemmed from fiscal
priorities. In the 1940s, throughout the western world, women worked
full time in munitions factories for the benefit of their nations.
When the men came home they needed the jobs and women were told that
the home needed their skills most, for the benefit of the nation of
course. So our precious tradition of the full time stay at home mum
was borne of economic necessity in the 1950s, not from a recognition
of the contribution of women's unpaid work. Women who could, have
always paid other women to clean their houses, care for their children
and nurse their parents without society being unduly concerned for the
well-being of the wet nurse's own offspring.
As Inez McCormack said in the Irish Times on Wednesday, ``those of us
who fought for individualisation of income on the basis of equality
are angry this has been distorted into removing riights from women who
want or need to stay at home''.
Charlie McCreevy is clearly saying that equality will come only when
it suits the market economy and only on free market terms. This is
where the anger should be directed and changes sought.
It is without question a budget aimed at higher earners, not about
social equity. There is no question at all that the tax relief measure
is about the need of employers for older married women to bring their
skills to bear in the ever-tightening labour market. It is not about
providing women with real choices
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