Choice Feminism and Adult Worker Model in Neoliberal Era. Some Effects of Inclusive Policies

In the last decade, the adult work model has been invoked, both by the EU socialreformers and at an international level, to orient their respective policies on femininework and social inclusion at different levels. Such neoliberal model assumes thatfeminization of work implies treating women as autonomous individuals free to choosetheir carrier in the job market or to decide whether to work, to take care of theirfamily or to find time and spaces to conciliate both. In the western legal tradition andpolicies, the ideological approach of separation between public and private sphere isstill dominant, and care has been confined in a private space concealed within thefamily. At the same time, feminization of paid work has become a synonym forprecarious life, which involves both women and young men, and the rhetoric ofindividual responsibility and empowerment has been combined with harshstabilization and structural adjustments policies and reduction of social policy.Consequently, a premise grounded on free choice is misleading. Differentmethodological approaches, both deductive and inductive, will be used in this paper,together with comparative and philosophical insights on statistical data and scholarlywritings.