Abstract
The contemporary debate about basic income and gender primarily adopts an external perspective according to which women as a group are pitched against men as a group. This article examines tensions internal to women as a group. We distinguish three types of tensions, each of which lead to a so-called intra-gender trade-off: (1) horizontal tensions trade off different spheres of activities in which women have an interest (e.g. labor market vs. family); (2) vertical tensions pitch better-off women against worse-off women (e.g. high educated vs. low educated); (3) temporal tensions trade off impact in one part of the life-cycle against another (e.g. early vs. later in life). The article argues for the importance of acknowledging the internal perspective on gender equality and the challenges this poses for the basic income proposal while also suggesting how it may constructively address avenues for designing and implementing a gender-sensitive basic income.
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We also have to consider the plight of black women, disabled women, and Indigenous women in the intra-gender configuration. Racism, ableism, colonialism, capitalism, the nation-state and male supremacy have constructed the hierarchies of power that must be taken into account as a framework for basic income development.