Examining the Autocracy-Gender-Family Nexus

: “Internal prosperity can be generated only if citizens contribute their capital and their labour to productive activities. Autocrats, in other words, need compliance and cooperation” (Gandhi 2008,xvii-xviii).

Examining the Autocracy-Gender-Family Nexus DORIAN R. WOODS.ROLF FRANKENBERGER It has been four years since Femina Politica published its 2012 journal focused on autocracies.At this time the Arab Spring seemed to electrify the news in western democracies and throughout the Middle East with a renewed interest in democratizing developments.This issue of Femina Politica was unique in that it opened a forum to discuss the understudied topic of gender in autocracies.The editors of the volume, Silke Schneider and Gabriele Wilde, together with the volume's authors explore gender as a factor for autocratic wielding of power and examine the construction of gender and power relations in society theoretically.Unique about this Femina Politica volume is the editors' and authors' proposal to incorporate feminist state theory as a possible way of approaching the issue of gender in autocratic regimes.Also refreshing is the focus on autocratic societies as a whole and not necessarily just on an autocrat himself.Whereas there has not been much published on this topic within the last 3 years, a continuation of this theoretical direction of approach seems quite promising to us and we therefore propose to expand these ideas in the article at hand.We use policy analysis and a comparative approach to explore available data and the insight they allow regarding autocracies, gender and society.By exploring family policies, we have a good starting point to examine institutionalizations of gender roles in autocracies.In this article we ask: 1) What kind of comparable data is available on family policies in autocracies?
2) What can this data tell us about the institutionalization of gender roles in autocracies?3) How does the comparison of family policy in autocracies contribute to the current research on family policy analysis and autocratic research?
By taking a closer look at family policy in autocratic regimes, we compare policy and gender roles across regimes and offer some valuable input into autocratic and family policy theory.We argue that policy plays an important role in legitimizing autocracies.Autocratic regimes set up family policy depending on their power bases.Since autocratic rulers want to legitimize their power, we suppose that certain family policy patterns will emerge, depending on the varieties or subtypes of autocracies or the ideological legitimization of their hold on power.Therefore, the regime type will steer family policy instruments and goals and ultimately have distinct approaches to gender.

Family policy instruments and types of autocracies
According to Gabel/Kamerman (2006) explicit family policy can be divided into several instruments.We find this differentiation useful for policy categorization in examining what kind of policies can be found in autocracies as well as which policies might be available and comparable.The categories are: 1) Family allowances 2) Family leave or flex-time measures 3) Benefits-in-kind 4) Other family in-kind services The first instrument, family allowances, incorporates money transfers in the form of cash or tax benefits.The second type of family policy instrument, employment leaves and flex-time measures, covers regulations to leave the workforce in instances of caring for children or adults.Leaves can be paid or unpaid, based on work history or types of employment and entail specific circumstances for a leave.The third type of instrument, benefits-in-kind, is just another term for government services.These entail either provision or the regulation of services, for example, in early childcare education, child and elderly care or home-help services.The fourth instrument, other family in-kind services, refers to specific supports that might not provide direct caring services, but individual supports for specific clientele, such as councelling or information services for families (Gabel/Kamerman 2006).
Even though there is a vast body of case study literature on family policy, finding comparative data on family policy in autocracies is not easy.The same holds true for general demographic information.We went through several rounds of selection in order to find comparable family policy instruments in autocratic countries.We assume that family leave or flex time measures are best for comparisons of autocratic regimes.This is because almost all countries have some sort of family leave and these instruments are easier to measure across countries than other family benefits, such as allowances or benefits-in-kind.Leaves are bound by comparable time limitations and specific cash reimbursements but benefits-in-kind and other in-kind services are extremely hard to quantify.The latter often tend to have functional equivalents and undefined boundaries.Not only is family leave more easy to compare than other instruments, it also intersects care and employment in one policy, thus it gives a good illustration of institutionalized expectations for employment and care activities of women.Family policy from a political perspective provides insight into how states shape political goals and institutionalize gender roles.Family policy is instrumental in shaping lives and it concretely shapes ideological visions of ideal families.In some cases family policy provides choices for families but in most cases it steers family (members') behavior, and in the case of family leave, policy steers mothers' and fathers' choices for entering the labor market, staying at home to care for children or doing both.Family leave usually specifically addresses women or men, specifying gender roles for the responsibilities of taking care of children.Maternity leave incorporates not just a woman's biological birth of a child (and recovery) but it also includes time for the care of children afterwards.Paternity leave addresses fathers or the second non-birthing parent.Almost all countries in the world provide maternity leave 1 but from 182 countries viewed, just 94 countries grant paternal leave (WPAC 2015).Another type of leave includes parental leave, which designates the period where both parents are protected to leave employment to take care of their children.This can occur subsequentely to a leave that is taken after the birth of a child or it can incorporate a leave that is available to parents at some future date, if needed (such as short-term employment leaves when an older child is ill).Relatively few countries have paid parental leave 2 that is not consecutive to the birth of a child and is available for parents of older children.
For the purpose of this paper, we analyse maternity, paternity and parental leave as separate entities in order to better understand the gender dynamics of the leave policy.Following the definitions of the ILO, we call protective leaves that are available for mothers at the birth of a child "maternity leave".In the same vein, we call "paternity leave" the protective leaves that are available for fathers at the birth of a child.Parental leave, in turn, is defined a "long-term leave period for the care of an infant or young child typically following the expiry of maternity or paternity leave" (ILO 2014, 164).We understand that policies in themselves are not indicative of the take-up rates for parents.Countries across the world keep very little track of who actually goes on leave and the reasons for not taking up leave.However we argue that policies in themselves are very good indicators of state shaping or imaging of gender roles.
We define "autocracy" as any political system in which the rulers are insufficiently, or not at all, subject to antecedent and enforceable rules of law -enforceable, that is, by other authorities who share in the government and who have sufficient power to compel the lawbreaking rulers to submit to the law (Friedrich and Brzezinski 1965, 5).
Assuming that different types of autocratic rule make a difference for social and family policy, we used Kailitz's (2013)  Legitimation implies the basic organization of the political regime, namely who has justified access to power, who is justified to select the government; and how and under what conditions and limitations rule is legitimately exercised (Kailitz 2013, 41).
Legitimation as one pillar of autocratic stability (Gerschewski 2013) is something that we expect to have implications for the gender roles that we will be examining, because family and gender policy are core ideological battlefields, as the political discourses on the role of women and the status of LGBT in autocracies and elsewhere illustrate.Kailitz distinguishes between six types of autocracies outlined below, including the thirty cases we selected for our analysis: ► Electoral autocracies hold controlled elections in order to legitimize: "To legitimate themselves, many electoral autocracies either directly refute that liberty and executive constraints bestow wellbeing to the society, or they argue that because of some important reason(s) -most often security -it is not possible to provide such liberties" (Kailitz 2013, 46).Examples are Azerbaijan, Belarus, Cote D'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, Russia, Singapore, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.► Communist ideocracies are the one contemporarily empirical important variety of ideocratic regimes (others are fascist/national-socialist and Islamist 3 ).They claim "to be a socialist/communist regime with a Marxist-Leninist ideology.The concrete ideological legitimization of a communist regime is that it takes the necessary measures to build a utopian classless communist society" (Kailitz 2013, 47).Contemporary examples are China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea and Vietnam.► One-party autocracies do not have an ideology, but only allow for a single party.
As in ideocracies, power is usually justified as reflecting the common interest of the ruling and the ruled.In this concept, electoral competition of political alternatives is necessary, but opposition is illegitimate.Examples are Chad, Gambia, Guinea, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.► Military regimes do not have a common procedural justification, but claim to be justified to decide on regulations and norms according to their own will."However, to appear as a rational-legal military regime and not as a regime of armed bandits, the military as an institution has to select the ruler in some way and the military needs to have a say in politics.The country is either ruled by a junta of high-ranking military officers -in which civilian bureaucrats may play a role or not -or by a high-ranking military officer, who is selected by the military as the ruler" (Kailitz 2013, 48).Examples of current military regimes are Myanmar until recently and, de facto, Egypt that turned out to be a military regime rather than a one-party regime.► Monarchies legitimize themselves by drawing on the "natural" right of the monarch to govern because of his descent."Hence, a monarch legitimizes him or herself by a strong divine or natural source outside the political regime" (Kailitz 2013, 48f.).Examples are Jordan, Morocco, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.► Personalist autocracies are characterized by a lack of institutionalization: "Personalist rule means that the ruler might change the rules of the political game arbitrarily" (Kailitz 2013, 421).Examples of personalist autocracies are Eritrea and Sudan.
Even though this classification is limited to legitimization aspects and therefore underestimates other functions and institutional aspects, the classification of Kailitz represents progress in the discussion of different mechanisms of legitimation, which we argue is important for the adoption and use of family policy.We assume for the empirical analysis that autocracies will differ in family policy because of diverging institutional settings and the different nature of power and legitimacy.We thus witness different types of engagement in welfare and social policy and different patterns of performance in this field and consequently, institutions of gender specific to autocratic types.

Family leave in autocracies
Family leave policy is diverse in autocracies.It varies to the extreme: offering zero to more than 52 weeks of paid leave.Some types of autocracies have generous and "egalitarian" approaches to gender and employment and offer both mothers and fathers a full 52 weeks of leave.Yet, other autocracies have scanty maternity leave and no paternity leave at all.As in democracies, maternity leave in autocracies is far longer than paternity leave and is usually compensated better (in terms of percentages of wages paid). 4But we found that gender roles, in general, are diverse in autocracies, depending partly on autocratic types and geographical regions.Using World Policy Analysis Center and ILO-Data (ILO 2014) on family leave for an analysis of variance, we can identify two main explanatory factors for clustering countries: First, there is a highly significant correlation between regime type and length of maternity leave (Eta²: .477) 5 .Communist ideocracies and electoral autocracies do have the longest maternity leaves with an average of 17 weeks, and 16.9 weeks respectively.Monarchies (9.4 weeks) and personalist autocracies (8.5 weeks) have the least generous regulations.Second, there is an even stronger correlation between the region a country belongs to and the length of maternity leave (Eta²: .606).We find the longest average maternity leaves in American (22 weeks) and European autocracies (18 weeks), whereas the Middle East (9.2) and African autocracies (12.5) have the shortest leaves.Bearing in mind this overview, we examine autocratic legitimacy and regional clustering in the following sections to shed more light on the clustering of gender roles in autocratic societies.
The first clustering includes the countries with the most generous paid maternity leaves.These are the former Soviet Union Countries Russia (20 weeks), Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Belarus, and Azerbaijan (18 weeks).They all compensate for 100% of the last earnings and offer up to 156 weeks of consecutive parental leave.Compensation ranges from 20 to 80% of the last earnings for at least 52 weeks.Cuba also belongs to this generous group of maternity (18 weeks with 100% coverage) and parental (39 weeks with 60% coverage) leave.All these countries offer hardly any paternity leave specifically (except Azerbaijan with 14 and Kazakhstan with 5 days unpaid leave).These countries have communist heritages that transcend the actual type of autocracy.While Cuba is geographically an outlier, it has historically shared close diplomatic ties to Russia and was isolated from its geographical neighbours.Such "generous" policies might not be surprising in countries that have communist ideological foundations, or, at least strong historical heritages.One would assume that if employment is expected similarly of both men and women, then employment leave regulations would address men and women equally.Relatively long periods of leave time might be also explained through this heritage: if both men and women are sharing a leave equally, then they might want to have a relatively long period to exchange times.Another group of clustering has slightly less generous maternity leave than the first group and almost no paternity leave.They are electoral autocracies that have communist and Confucian cultural heritages.They all grant approximately three months of maternity leave with replacement rates ranging from 66.7% (Myanmar) to 100% (China, North Korea, Laos and Singapore).Vietnam has only recently enlarged maternity leave to 26 weeks with 100% coverage.None of the countries has additional parental leave.China, Laos, Vietnam and North Korea also have no paternity leave, which is surprising, given that these countries are communist ideocracies and thus strongly influenced by communist ideology.Only Singapore (7 days) and Myanmar (6 days) grant minimal full paid paternity leave.Whereas the first is an electoral autocracy, the latter is a military regime.Family policy patterns here point to strong cultural influences mixed with autocratic legitimacy, so that communist heritage and other ideological beliefs seem to be influential, such as Confucianism in China, Singapore, Laos and Vietnam.Sub-Saharan African countries are either one-party (Chad, Gambia and Guinea) or electoral (Cote D'Ivoire, Tanzania and Zimbabwe) autocracies.They have a middle range of maternity leave and little or no paternity leave.All of them offer 14 weeks of maternity leave with 100% reimbursement, except Tanzania with only 12 weeks.Whereas Chad (52 weeks) and Guinea (38 weeks) offer unpaid parental leave, the others do not have this at all.The lowest rates of family leave, both in length and replacement rates have been in Middle East and North African autocracies.Eritrea and Sudan are personalistic regimes.Ethiopia and Egypt are electoral autocracies (with the latter being rather a de-facto military regime).Iran is an Islamist ideocracy and Jordan, Morocco, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are ruled by monarchies.The monarchies with an average of 9.4 weeks and personality regimes with an average of 8.5 weeks offer slightly less maternity leaves than Ethiopia, Egypt and Iran (13 weeks each).Except Eritrea (50%) and Iran (66.7%) all countries offer a replacement rate of 100%.Egypt, Morocco and Jordan offer unpaid parental leave exclusively to mothers and the others do not offer any consecutive parental leave.Paternity leave is limited to one day in Saudi Arabia, three in Morocco, and five in Ethiopia.There seem to be clear effects of tradition, culture and religion in this cluster.The autocracies strongly relying on traditional and religious values offer the least generous leaves.This is especially the case in the gulf monarchies and Iran as an Islamist ideocracy, where family leave polices reflect conservative and traditional values of the country.Looking at the results, there seem to be overlapping patterns of regime type and regional factors that affect family policy.The wide range of gender approaches in maternity and paternity leaves is hard to explain, but some clustering has emerged.We surmise that employment structures need a closer look as well as other factors, such as cultural and religious ideologies that legitimize autocracies and prescribe gender roles.Just as in western democracies, family policy in autocracies seems to be influenced by cultural and religious ideology.Hints of this are apparent in the differences between Asian and Eastern Block autocracies that have communist foundations -groupings of countries that align themselves to Islamic or Confucian traditions.All in all, we have only scraped the surface of a larger comparative study of family policy and autocracies.

Discussion
This study has revealed some interesting findings in terms of gender, family policy and autocracies.Autocracies differ widely when it comes to gender roles in employment and care, according to their leave policies.We have found some evidence that autocratic regimes group together in their generosity of maternity and paternity leave depending on political-structural and religious/ideological foundations.Former communist countries in the Eastern Block tend to have the most generous maternity and paternity leave, with the least gender differences -topping even some democracies.Monarchy autocracies in the Middle East have the least generous maternity and paternity leave.Asian (electoral) autocracies tend to have low or average generous maternity leave but no paternity leave.Also, Sub-Saharan African countries have similar average maternity leaves and very little to no paternity leave.The broad spectrum of family policy in autocracies is not surprising, given that autocrats can more easily change policy to suit their needs.Indeed, autocracies are defined as having absolute power to push through whatever policy they prefer and whatever serves their short-or long-term interests.However, we argue that autocracies are not entirely free to change policies as this definition suggests: First, repression and repressive capacity might serve well to remain in power for some time, but it is not a long-term means to secure it, as "the use of force is costly and may not always be effective" (Gandhi/Przeworski 2007, 1281).The extent to which autocrats can do what they want to is limited by the way coercion is employed as well as by the amount and nature of resources the regime controls (for a discussion of coercive power in autocracies, see Way/Levitsky 2006).Second, any political regime needs a certain degree of legitimacy to remain in power, in order to prevent situations that make the use of force and coercion necessary, e.g., economic discontent, social unrest, or rebellion.As autocracies are political systems with "limited, not responsible, political pluralism" (Linz 2000, 159), without free and fair elections, they lack pro-cedural legitimacy on the input side.Third, the production of resources, wealth and public goods are best generated under well-ordered conditions: "Internal prosperity can be generated only if citizens contribute their capital and their labour to productive activities.Autocrats, in other words, need compliance and cooperation" (Gandhi 2008,xvii-xviii).
Last, and strongly related to the previous argument: even autocrats might be accountable to someone.Gandhi andPrzeworski (2007, 1280) suggest that "the ability to navigate among various political forces and to build crucial coalitions is important for staying in power", regardless of regime type.Therefore, instead of solely relying on a non-accountable monopoly of the use of force, it is in the interest of autocratic leaders to use the "entirety of all co-existing modes of collectively regulating social matters" (Mayntz 2004, 66), such as the provision of a minimum of public goods.Thus, the institutionalization of welfare production and its distribution (in this case, family policy) depends on these power dynamics.This finding is relevant for gender researchers and family policy analysts of democracies.Family policy is often defined in terms of its functions, goals and instruments (see Dienel 2002;Gerlach 1996;Wingen 1993).For example, family policy helps to shape a country's demographics, it might buffer families from poverty or it betters social problems for families or family members (Zimmermann 1995;Woods 2012).What gender researchers long know is that the state institutionalizes gender roles through policy, but this analysis has reflected little on how family policy legitimizes a regime.This is perhaps because family policy is mainly examined from a western democracy perspective -it is assumed that policy is made as a response from the electorate and a people's will to have this policy.Standard family policy analysis does not reach into the political dynamics of control and legitimization of a government -for which this paper provides evidence.A closer study of family policy and its relationship to the types of autocracies, in terms of how they legitimize themselves and their power structures, would provide more insight into viewing this issue and transferring it comparatively to capitalist democracies.In addition, more research is needed to examine economic and employment structures as well as an indepth comparative examination of the political dynamics of legitimacy and control.

Notes
1 In 2015 the only countries that do not provide maternity leave are the United States, Suriname, Papua New Guinea, Tonga, Palau, Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru, and the Marshall Islands, although some unpaid leave is available or individual states have paid leave. 2 The United States, Latin and South American countries generally have no federally mandated paid parental leave.Similarly, the African countries, Middle East and South Asia countries (outside of Japan and Korea) have no paid leaves.3 We also included Iran as an example of an Islamist ideocracy.4 For global comparative overviews of family leaves, see Woods 2014 and Moss 2011.5 Eta² is a statistical measure for effect sizes of group mean differences.It can be defined as the