The social content of macroeconomic policies

There is now widespread recognition of the need to integrate macroeconomic policy and social policy, but the mainstream approach is one of adding on s ocial policy. We argue for transformatory approach which would mainstream g ender-equitable social policy within macroeconomic policy. We identify thre e interlinked biases which prevent this from happening: deflationary bias, "male breadwinner bias" and commodification bias. We illustrate a transform atory approach with the example of the Canadian Alternative Federal Budget. We argue that a social dialogue is necessary for the formulation of such a lternatives. (C) 2000 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserve d.