Flexible Work and Women’s Participation in the Labor Market as Democratic Equals

• In Event: Capitalism in Flux: Flexible Work and Digitalization

Abstract

Relational egalitarians argue that how citizens regard and treat one another are an equally (if not more) important aspect of equality as interpersonal distributions of divisible goods. However, what it means to treat and regard one another as equals, as well as the conditions under which relational equality can be realized are contested questions. This paper contributes an answer to both sets of questions. It argues that the individual and collective capacity for political participation is intrinsically and instrumentally valuable for relations of equality. It shows that citizens’ capacity to participate in political life either as individuals or collectively can both realize and instantiate relational equality. On the question of under what conditions citizens can relate to each other as equals, it identifies flexible work (work from home, flextime, and part-time) as a type of employment arrangement that has the potential to undermine citizens’ capacity for political participation. Existing patterns of flexible work threaten to entrench the gender division of labor, which has deleterious consequences for women’s interest, skills, and associational ties that are crucial for political participation. But rather than eliminating flexible work all together, justice requires a less gendered and more egalitarian distribution of flexible employment to comply with the demands of relational egalitarian justice.

Author

• Begum Icelliler, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill