Gender and Welfare Regimes: Further Thoughts

Abstract

This article reviews the feminist critique of Gøsta Esping-Andersen's typology of welfare regimes and revisits my earlier (1992) analysis of gender and welfare regimes together with criticisms of that work. I briefly discuss some methodological issues and attempt to justify my own choice of variables and of an explanatory model derived from empirical historical work. I pay particular attention to critiques that insist on the use of caring regimes as a basis for gender-centered typologies, not least because the two main questions for feminists concerning the provision of unpaid work remain (i) how to value it, and (ii) how to share it more equally between men and women. I argue that women's relationship to paid work, unpaid work and to welfare makes the search for gender-centered measures complicated.