The Social Content of Macroeconomic Policies

Summary. — There is now widespread recognition of the need to integrate macroeconomic policy and social policy, but the mainstream approach is one of adding on social policy. We argue for a transformatory approach which would mainstream gender-equitable social policy within macro-economic policy. We identify three interlinked biases which prevent this from happening: deflationary bias, ‘‘male breadwinner bias’ ’ and commodification bias. We illustrate a transfor-matory approach with the example of the Canadian Alternative Federal Budget. We argue that a social dialogue is necessary for the formulation of such alternatives. Ó 2000 Published by Elsevie