Feminism and Basic Income

The idea of introducing a basic, unconditional income has been a divisive issue amongst feminists. Its supporters see it as an effective, and maybe the best, means of freeing women from dependency on male bread-winners, abusive domestic relationships and exploitative, meaningless jobs. But many feminists have also worried that an unconditional basic income would sponsor, to some extent, women's exit from the labour market. This, in turn, would deepen the economic gap between women and men. Moreover, feminists are concerned with the ways in which an unconditional basic income could consolidate various social gender norms. I will discuss these feminists arguments with the aim of arriving to an all-things-considered assessment of the feminist credentials of an unconditional basic income. I shall concede that its introduction would indeed be likely to consolidate gender norms which, in turn, shape women's and men's unequal opportunities to various important goods. This, at least, would be the case if we failed to introduce, at the same time, other, mitigating, policies. Some think that, if correct, this conclusion determines a feminist case against the unconditional basic income.However, it is not clear that the principle of equal opportunities has much normative weight in a world characterised by very large inequalities of outcome. In such circumstances we ought to be more concerned instead with the situation of the worst off. If a universal basic income would, on the whole, advance the interests of the worst off women – as it probably would – feminists should support it even if it came at the price of setting back some of the interests of other, less worse-off, women and men.