Gender Issues

Gilbert, Neil

doi: 10.1007/s12147-006-0001-2pmid: N/A

Bertranou, Fabio

doi: 10.1007/s12147-006-0002-1pmid: N/A

This article summarizes gender-related aspects of the current social security reform paradigm in the countries of Latin America's Southern Cone—Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay. The author, Fabio M. Bertranou, begins with a review of the main elements that justify dealing with various aspects of social protection—old age, disability and survival. Bertranou then provides a summary of the main performance aspects of these reformed social security programs in the countries of the Southern Cone region in terms of providing protection for the risks of old age. Results for substitution (replacement) rates by gender are provided for Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay. The author also discuss other conceptual and empirical evidence produced by other international agencies such as the World Bank and ECLAC. Finally, Bertranou discusses some of the general implications for incorporating this dimension in the debate about public policies and reforms of social protection systems, particularly pensions and related programs.

Dahl, Espen; Pedersen, Axel

doi: 10.1007/s12147-006-0003-0pmid: N/A

Authors Espen Dahl and Axel West Pedersen in this article analyze how social policy and welfare reforms affect women's socio-economic position and living conditions The central question is how “gender blind” reforms influence women's labor market activity and wellbeing, in both the short—and the long-run, in a situation where important gender differences exist at the outset. In this article, the authors address the question of whether gender differences in welfare in Norway will change as the result of recent reforms in Social Insurance, family policies, and old age pensions. Dahl and Pedersen approached this question by describing the ways in which the socio-economic structures are gendered combined with a description of recent social policy reforms and an analysis of how these reforms will affect labor market activity and welfare differences between men and women.

Gilles, Christel; Parent, Antoine

doi: 10.1007/s12147-006-0004-zpmid: N/A

In the first section of this article, the authors Christel Gilles and Antoine Parent, argue that in France, public policy and the pension system provide financial incentives favoring early retirement. The implementation of “bridge jobs” to facilitate the transition from full employment to full retirement, could, in theory, lessen the long-term decline in employment rates of men and women. Gilles and Parent, in the second section, question the idea that rising labor force participation rates among women are adequate to narrow pension inequalities between men and women. Regarding this point, we also note that since women's careers are generally shorter than men's and their labor income remains, on average, lower, an increase, in female labor force participation would lead, in an occupational-based system, to a substitution effect between direct and indirect entitlements. The impact of this effect on pension gender inequalities remains uncertain. In the third section, the authors examine, from a gender perspective, other pension reform options that may, in theory, provide greater gender equality, but that are, in practice, far from the implementation phase.

St⇘hlberg, Ann-Charlotte; Birman, Marcela; Kruse, Agneta; Sundén, Annika

doi: 10.1007/s12147-006-0005-ypmid: N/A

This article analyzes the effects of pension reform for men and women by comparing the outcomes in the system after reform to the outcomes under the prior system. The authors also study the incentive effects on labor supply. The size of the labor force, however, is also influenced by the rules for retirement, social insurance programs (e.g., sickness insurance and unemployment insurance), collective bargaining agreements, and seniority rules. Using a simulation model, the authors compare women's pension benefits and contributions to those of men in the new Swedish system and in the old. The analysis includes simulating the wage and employment histories of representative men and women and the pension benefits these are likely to generate under the old and new rules. After showing the results of this model, the authors describe and discuss the supplementary pension systems, that is, the negotiated collective agreement schemes and different pathways to retirement. Based on empirical evidence from Swedish and Latin America simulated data, the final section of the article discusses gender impact of pension rules and how to design pension, systems to ensure adequate pension benefits for both women and men.