It finds “experts” to say policies that benefit working women are “unfair” to “women who want to stay home with their children.”
Keynote speaker Dr Catherine Hakim of the London School of Economics told the audience that social policies which assume all women want to work are unfair and act against the actual wishes of most women.
What about social policies that assume all men want to work? Is it only women who should benefit from social policies which assume some women don’t want to work? How about social policies that assume no one wants to work? Wouldn’t that be the fairest thing?
Swedish social policy expert Jonas Himmelstrand told the audience that Sweden’s experiment with daycare had failed. Swedish policy in this regard is frequently held up as a model for other countries to follow.
Mr Himmelstrand said: “Sweden is the pioneering nation in comprehensive highly subsidized daycare, a model which was put into practice 35 years ago. Today a full 92pc of all 18 month to 5 year olds are in daycare.”
However, while Sweden topped many statistics, including welfare with low child poverty, high life expectancy, low infant mortality and an admired social welfare system, in other areas the picture was not so bright, he added.
Yes we know, it gets dark way early there in winter.