THE first major post-Covid election for Holyrood next year must focus on reform of care and the creation of a more equal Scotland, an academic has argued.
Kirstein Rummery, professor of social policy at the University of Stirling, said the pandemic had exposed how both paid and unpaid care – which is carried out mainly by women – had been undervalued for years.
She said more investment in care, along with policies such as a National Care service and universal basic income, should be at the centre of plans to rebuild the country.
And she said having a “full range of legislative powers” in an independent Scotland would make it easier to bring about major reforms.
Rummery, who has published a paper in the journal IPPR Progressive Review on the issue, said there were long-term issues around the social care system.
“There is a huge burden on unpaid carers who are disproportionately women,” she said.
“The paid carers in the system are disproportionately women as well, and there are issues like levels of pay.
“It is a systematic failure, but it is also a systematic failure of appreciating women’s work. So we undervalue care work because it is women’s work, and we undervalue women because they do the care work.”
Rummery said investing in social care in the same way as the NHS would result in a more gender-equal society.
She also pointed out during the pandemic around 19% of disabled people provided care for someone outside the home, compared to only 7% of non-disabled people.
“Disabled people are doing the caring as well as receiving care and that is not acknowledged,” she said.
“I would love to see any political party say ‘I am running for Holyrood, and I want to rebuild the economy and how we do everything in partnership with the people who were most affected by Covid – with disabled people and carers and families’.”
RUMMERY said having universal basic income would have been more effective than furlough during the pandemic.
In summer, a feasibility study looking into whether Scotland should implement a basic income for every citizen backed proposals to run a pilot scheme, while First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said the pandemic has led to her having “active support” for such a system.
“If we had universal basic income, people wouldn’t have been particularly well-off, but they would have had that safety net and that would have removed the uncertainty,” Rummery said.
“Particularly in non-pandemic times, universal basic income would support women much better and it would also support unpaid care, because people wouldn’t need to work just to gain a living. The unpaid labour that we all do could carry on.
“It will not eradicate poverty, but the incentive would then be care work should be paid properly – as you don’t have to do it.”
WHEN it comes to creating a more gender-equal society in Scotland, Rummery, who is on the National Committee of Women for Independence, said her research had shown it was key to have rights written into the constitution of a country.
“We can’t have a written constitution unless we have a new country,” she said.
“It is very powerful – try and ban guns in America and you can see how powerful the constitution can be.”
But she said the case for independence was also strengthened by the fact there were many different aspects involved in major reform of social care.
“You need a full range of legislative powers across lots of different departments – it is a complex issue,” she said.
“It is not that you pass one bit of legislation where there is capacity to do so, you tinker with it and suddenly it will all be great. You need to be really systematic across the board and you need all of the legislative levers. So you would get further in an independent Scotland.”
She added: “That doesn’t mean to say if you got independence that would happen.
“You would also have to make sure women, women’s rights groups, disabled people and carers were at the heart of that constitutional building process – so those voices were heard and so that became part of building the new country.”
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