Between Activation and Supporting Women – Alternative Operation of Welfare‐to‐work Programmes

Abstract

With the emergence of activation policies, researchers are intrigued by the extent to which welfareto-work (WTW) programmes reflect the ideological orientation of policymakers, while leaving the ideological orientation of their operators unexamined. This aspect may be of particular importance when women's non-governmental organizations operate non-coercive WTW programmes. Directing attention to the contribution of the operator, we ask how women who operate these programmes distinguish between the feminist goal of increasing women's independent access to material resources, and the activation rhetoric of 'work first'.Moreover, as not enough is known about how participants benefit from the incongruence between the feminist discourse and the activation one, scholarship contemplating women's resistance to WTW programmes remains focused on specific welfare histories, and this form of feminist work remains neglected.The importance of the specific operators and the policy implications of the benefits of feminist operation of WTW programmes receive attention in the study reported on herein. We used a non-coercive activation programme operated by a feminist organization in Israel (among other operators) as an opportunity to deepen our understanding of how programme trainers voice their position between feminism and activation discourse, and how their form of speech enables participants to insist on decent employment as a policy issue. Implications for policy are discussed.

Low-income mothers in an Israeli welfare-to-work program: Symbolic violence and its limitations

“…The awareness of complicity suggests that 'voices' should be scrutinized for the possibility that they reflect the ideological environment rather than the best practice/policy for the voice owners. Elsewhere we have shown that the participants in the studied WTW program do have critical voices when it comes to labor market policy (Herbst and Benjamin, 2016). Our argument, then, is consistent with Chambers' suggestion (1997), according to which critical voices can develop in participation and empowerment projects, but the critical character of these voices should be carefully analyzed in the context of the values practically undertaken by organizers.…”

From Physical Violence to Intensified Economic Abuse: Transitions Between the Types of IPV Over Survivors’ Life Courses

“…Furthermore, as a consequence of Israel's having adopted a neoliberal economic policy since 2002, the social services have accorded greater attention to the issue of economic independence for IPV survivors. As part of this process, specialized employment programs were developed, most of them financed by social services or by feminist nongovernment organizations (Herbst & Benjamin, 2016).…”

Uneasy passages between neoliberalism and feminism: Social inclusion and financialization in Israel's empowerment microfinance

“…Although neoliberal policies were introduced in the mid-1980s with the economic stabilization programme (Fischer, 1987), it was only in the early 2000s that neoliberalization and its detrimental effects set in on a large scale. These involved welfare cuts, the privatization of public services and a sharp shift from welfare to workfare policies, all of which resulted in mounting rates of poverty and increased socioeconomic inequalities (Filc & Ram, 2004;Fogiel-Bijaoui, 2005;Herbst & Benjamin, 2016). These transformations particularly affected women, both as major recipients of welfare and as workers in the public welfare sector (Herbst, 2013).…”