key: cord-0739131-kmaikr9q authors: Yuda, Tauchid Komara; Rezza, Muhammad title: The forms of decommodification and (de)familisation measures during COVID‐19: What is the impact on female's welfare? date: 2021-08-17 journal: Public Adm Dev DOI: 10.1002/pad.1955 sha: 7a08a1c580280b160bad2b52f628267c3b12eff6 doc_id: 739131 cord_uid: kmaikr9q Using the decommodification and (de)familisation framework, this paper examines the two main Social Safety Net programme during the pandemic and its effect on female welfare in Indonesia. It is argued that despite expansion of decommodification measures through unemployment benefits, females tend to benefit less because the existing labour force structure is highly dominated by males. Hence, the only way of being financially secure is to have access to Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT), which means it then exposes them to greater risk of familisation. This is because to be eligible for CCT, they are (informally) required to perform unpaid caregiving. This article concludes that familial ethics has become a rationale for the state to push females to seek social support through a family relationship, resulting in social risk internalisation during the COVID‐19 crisis, rather granting them citizenship rights‐based welfare. During the pandemic, Indonesia has experienced the largest rise of unemployment when compared to other East and Southeast Asian countries . Indonesia is also a country where 55.7% of the population depends on the informal sector, with males situated as the main breadwinners. Given the background, it is increasingly urgent to introduce Social Safety Net (SSN) programmes that are oriented towards strengthening family resilience in terms of the socio-economic dimension during the current COVID-19 crisis. With a focus on the research areas of decommodification and defamilisation/familisation, this succinct paper is designed to bring an exploration of the two main SSN programmes during outbreaks in Indonesia, namely the Unemployment Benefits Programme (Program Prakerja) and the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) (Program Keluarga Harapan [PKH] ). It focuses on demonstrating (1) how Program Prakerja allows or inhibits females maintenance of their livelihoods at a socially acceptable level, independent of market forces; and (2) how PKH pushes or prevents females to be exposed to 'the familisation risks' during the crisis. Familisation risks are understood as a 'lack of sufficient opportunities to choose not to perform a particular role (such as the role of care provider) in the family and/or maintain a socially acceptable standard of living' (Chau & Yu, 2013, p. 3). On the basis of our review, we found that the Program Prakerja has less benefit to females because it appears to be more accessible for males. As data of mid-May 2021 shows that the number of Prakerja beneficiaries for men is 55%, while women represented only 45% of the total 5.6 million beneficiaries. Meanwhile, in the case of the PKH, we find, instead of improving the bargaining position of women, the programme legitimises their subordinate position in the family, resulting in higher time spent on unpaid care responsibility. This argument is consistent with evidence showing that women spent 72.4% more time on unpaid household chores rather than man (SMERU, 2017; see also Roumpakis, 2020) . From the findings, it argued that despite expansion of decommodification measures to all citizens in need, the female tends to benefit less because the existing labour force structure is highly dominated by the male which amounted to 82.41% (Central Bureau of Statistics, 2019). Hence, the only way of being financially secure is to have access to the PKH service, which exposes them to greater familisation risk. This is because to be eligible for the PKH; they are required to perform unpaid caregiving in advance. The next section explains the concepts of decommodification, familisation and defamilisation as a frame of reference to analyse the case presented here. It is also explained the justification of why Pra-Kerja and PKH are selected as a case study. The third section discusses the importance of female's welfare in times of pandemic, highlighting the considerable disadvantage that female faced while welfare outcome received depends on their status in the family (Croissant, 2004, p. 515) . The fourth section demonstrates the application of the decommodification, familisation and defamilisation framework to analyse Program Prakerja and PKH. This article ends with a discussion and conclusion, including a brief policy recommendation. All in all, this paper provides a frame of reference to policy-makers to formulate intended measures to grant women a reasonable standard of living in a time of crisis. Decommodification represents the degree to which citizens' control of their lives is based on their social rights, rather than their status as 'pure commodities' in the labour market (Esping-Andersen, 1990) . In this sense, social policies are a series of instruments for bringing greater space for individuals to meet a socially acceptable standard of living, regardless of their status in the labour market (Veil, 2010) . Operationally, this paper focuses on unemployment benefits (Program Prakerja)which was one of the pivotal elements in measuring decommodification (Esping-Andersen, 1990 )-and analyses its impact on females' welfare, especially for those who belong to disadvantage groups. The concept of decommodification has been received with criticism for being 'insensitive to the risk faced by women in dealing with family issues' (Yu et al., 2018, p. 2) . For many feminist scholars, rather than labour market dependency, the female was heavily dependent on family, and that was the major problem that social policy should solve (Bambra, 2007; Daly & Rake, 2003; Sainsbury, 1996) . Due to this dependency, it is assumed that females are eventually unable to choose whether to be 'engaged' or 'not involved' in unpaid caring responsibilities (Chau & Yu, 2013) . It has rendered women dependant on men to achieve social welfare. To this point, the defamilisation concept was developed as a theoretical framework to measure the extent to which a person's standard of living, especially women, is no longer determined by membership status in their family (Yu et al., 2018) . Additionally, the concept also measures how and to what extent the welfare state supports defamilisation or familisation through its social policies (Wang, 2014) . For example, the provision of public childcare-related services can be categorised as defamilisation measures. The reason is the provision can increase a woman's freedom to choose whether or not to provide childcare services in the family while enabling them to fully participating in the labour market (Leitner, 2003) . Meanwhile, carer allowances are assumed as measures intended to enable female to serve as a full-time family carer at home, 'but maintain a reasonable standard of living at the same time' (Chau et al., 2017, p. 2) . The PKH fits this illustration. The more extensively the family policy scheme is introduced, the higher the level of defamilisation. Unfortunately, in developing countries, rights-based social policies for families are minimal, rudimentary, even absent (Croissant, 2004) . At the same time, most workers depend on the informal sector with men occupying the main role as breadwinners. This condition contributes to developing countries having a low level of decommodification and defamilisation rates (Yu et al., 2018) . Global South countries context where the formal labour market is not highly developed and the post-modern family structure has not fully matured. Notwithstanding, recent debates argued that those concepts should reach out to non-advanced capitalist countries. The reason is that Global South countries pursue 'similar patterns to the pioneer welfare-state countries in terms of social policies' features and generosity despite the fact that much of their economic composition is informal' (Yuda, 2021, p. 2). In the context of COVID-19 in Indonesia, it would be very difficult to measure defamilisation/familisation using family policies as they remain underdeveloped features, as commonly found in many developing countries. Instead, we measure defamilisation by broadening its scope towards any sort of public policy aimed at eliminating the burden of care responsibility for the family. Given this rationale, we assessed the concept of defamilisation through PKH, one of the main SSN programmes during the pandemic. It is performed by exploring to what extent PKH promotes defamilisation/familisation. The current pandemic condition has a sizable impact on women. Evidence shows that the women's welfare before the pandemic is Another important issue is the temporarily economic shut that has resulted in the termination of employment or temporary dismissal of contract/honorary workers. The potential risk of losing their jobs was improved, especially, for those who are previously working in the informal sector. Compared to men, the female has more affected by this causation as they are generally found in the informal job sector with low-income activity, leaves them often without adequate social protection benefits. The percentage would potentially be increased in view of women in the informal job before the pandemic, had reached 61.80% (Central Bureau of Statistics, 2019). Unfortunately, the updated evidence for this illustration is still yet able to be accessed. In addition, a female who stays in the labour market also experiences a double burden which stresses them to be able to allocate their time in the public and domestic spheres at one time. Women domestication through unpaid domestic chores and care work is more intensified along with the policies of isolation and Work From Home (WFH). Evidence by Roumpakis (2020) Many Indonesians have lost their jobs in the coronavirus recession. The implications were notably harsh, especially for vulnerable groups. The Indonesian Ministry of Manpower, for example, announced that as of July 2020, 3.5 million Indonesians had been laid off and furloughed as much of the economy was temporarily closed (Hirawan, 2020) . If this problem is not resolved immediately, it will bring vulnerable people, which currently reached 45% of the total population, to the brink of becoming new poor groups, thus contributing to strikingly high poverty rates. With the potential explosion in the number of poor, the Government of Indonesia has introduced two flagship programmes, namely Prakerja and PKH. The Prakerja Program originally is the populist promise of President Joko Widodo during the campaign periods in 2019. The aims of the programme were to increase the skills of job applicants in order to compete in the labour market. However, the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic has imposed the government to accelerate its programme implementation in order to help workers affected by COVID-19. Although the Pra-Kerja scheme was designed by following the unemployment benefits ideas (Active Labor Market Policy), it, in fact, resembles regular social assistance programmes with additional features of online job training included. Individuals enrolled in the programme are required to take part in online job training tailored to their preferences as a prerequisite to receiving cash of US$250. The training is aimed at upskilling vulnerable workers or those who are being laid off with appropriate training in accordance with market preferences. In a longer view, this measure is also in accordance with the medium government's economic plan which aims to raise the number of entrepreneurs in Indonesia to 4% of the total population by 2030. It worth noting here, although this programme reaching around 5.5 million individuals, many studies found that there is no guarantee for participants to be channelled to companies after attending the online job training . The low female labour force participation is caused by the persistent patriarchal family structure (Wang, 2014) . It has resulted in many women being unilaterally directed to be economically dependent on their husbands, fathers or brothers (Croissant, 2004) . This social structure means women do not have sufficient choice as to their involvement in domestic activities (Gracia & Esping-Andersen, 2015) . Different from Prakerja, PKH is not a novel programme. It has been introduced since 2007, and the operational features of this programme included the CCT model (Kwon & Kim, 2015) . The target groups were poor families selected through an integrated database. Cahyadi et al. (2018) found that after 6 years, the programme was running; PKH has been succeeded to give large incentive effects on remarkable health and educational investments. In health, for example, PKH has proven to significant contributions to the usage of public health facilities for childbirth and other medical purposes, which also impacts stunting reduction for young children (Ministry of Social Welfare, 2020). In education, PKH has also encouraged more than half of the share of children aged 7-15 to be enrolled in school. During COVID-19 outbreaks, the number of beneficiary families doubled (see Figure 1) , with diverse targets ranging from pregnant women and families living with children and the elderly. In relation to the relevance of the defamilisation and familisation framework, we assume PKH has pushed the woman to be increasingly dependent on family relationships. It is supported by evidence pointing out that the provision of PKH acknowledges the importance of wives as the recipients of cash transfers (Table 1) . Also, PKH required female beneficiaries to perform caregiving for children, disabled people and the elderly within the family in order to 'pursue the goal of raising the human capital of poor families' (Leyer, 2020, p. 12) . Consulted with an executive report of SMERU (2021), it is found that during pandemic 'mothers were three times more likely to care for children than fathers: 71.5% of households said the mother was taking the lead in supporting children with homeschooling compared with only 22% of households who said it was the father' (SMERU, 2021, p. 5) . It has diminished the option for women to choose not to engage in unpaid caring work. Moreover, the case shows rather than promoting gender equality and improving the bargaining position woman, PKH increasingly legitimises women's subordinate position in the family, causing them to spend more time on unpaid care responsibility. In a broad discussion on the relevance of females as citizens, the participation of women in PKH has kept them away from the public sphere while maintaining their position in the domestic sphere (Sainsbury, 1996) . From this case, now we can infer that although PKH succeeded in bringing decommodification for females, it has increasingly situated females under high familisation risk. For females who serve as breadwinner, the pandemic brought extra pressure upon women's careers, either in their role in economic activity or as caregivers during the lockdown period. This paper claims that the SSN programme during the pandemic has had two opposing effects on female welfare. Program Prakerja, as we examined, was merely designed as a decommodification measure, instead of defamilisation. This is mainly because the targeted beneficiaries of this scheme are those who have previously recorded participation in the labour market, while at the same time, the labour market was dominated by male employees (82.41%). This provision means that Program Prakerja has excluded most of the female population from its benefit. involved in economic activity equal with males (Cha et al., 2018; Yu et al., 2018) . Defamilisation measures, however, are necessary to boost the household economy in favour of achieving family resilience during and post-crisis. Besides, defamilisation policy can be an instrument to enhance women's choice to decide whether or not to engage in unpaid work through welfare provision as a kind of social right. All in all, the implementation of decommodification and defamilisation measures mayfacilitate females to perform the role of a parttime family carer, despite their participation in the paid labor market. Or, even to choose the role as a full-time family career because their welfare is granted by the state. The case above demonstrates that the state is experiencing the difficulty in fully promoting decommodification and defamilisation measures, because familial ethics remain significant ideational factors in defining current policy arrangements of the Indonesian state,which itself resembles familistic regimes (Yuda, 2021) . It becomes a rationale for the state to push women to seek social support through a family relationship as part of social risk internalisation during the COVID-19 crisis, rather granting them citizenship rights-based welfare. The argument of the greater dependency on kinship and familial network for welfare is consistent with previous studies (Yuda, Damanik & Nurhadi, 2021; Mok, Ku & Yuda, 2021; Yuda, 2021) which found that the response of welfare regimes to COVID-19 in Indonesia was dependent on mixed-welfare system trajectories with greater emphasis on the informal system. This configuration arises as existing formal provision have yet well-established. Given this issue, the development of social policy have integrated family (especially women) as a alternative social service's actor in addition to the state and market welfare. The author(s) received no financial support for this research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. 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