Gender and Welfare State Regimes

Abstract

Gender and Welfare State Regimes focuses on how social provision, taxation, and labour market policies structure and transform gender relations in several advanced industrial democracies. A central question is whether gender policy regimes coincide or cut across welfare state regimes. The first chapters examine the construction of gender in policies of countries representing the same welfare state regime—the conservative, liberal and social democratic regimes—while the subsequent chapters compare policies across welfare state regimes. The book argues that policy variations across the countries are shaped by differing strategies and demands of women's movements, the organizational strength of labour and industrial relations frameworks, and the constellations of parties supporting equality measures, policy legacies, and state structures.