The Scandinavian Welfare States: towards sexual equality or a new kind of male domination?

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    Abstract

    The paper studies the debate about the Scandinavian welfare states from a feminist persepctive, forcusing on the differences between a feminist perspective and the dominant liberal and critical marxist understanding of the welfare state. In particular it focuses on the argument that the Scandinavian welfare states are the most advanced in relation to women and dicusses both the potentialities and the dangers in the Scandinavian welfare states in relation to women. The paper points to the need to integrate gender relations in the theoretical model for an analysis of the welfare state and emphasises the need to explore the relationship between the family and the state ( and the family and the economy) in difefrent wefare states. The paper emphasises that the qualitative difference in the organization of care work are important for understanding the institutional differences for between the welfare states, and especially the Scandinavian welfare states, where motherhood and care work has to day bef´come part of social citizenship The auther argues that even though women have in important ways been empowered in the Scandinavian woefare states as mothers, workers and citizens, they have at the same time become subsumed under a new kind of male domination in the public sphere.
    Translated title of the contributionDe skandinaviske velfærdsstater: mod lighed mellem køn eller en ny slags mandlig dominans?
    Original languageEnglish
    Article number3/4
    JournalActa Sociologica
    Volume30
    Issue number3/4
    Pages (from-to)255-270
    Number of pages15
    ISSN0001-6993
    Publication statusPublished - 1987

    Keywords

    • Social Citizenship
    • Paternalism
    • Political Culture
    • feminist critique
    • patrirarchal-capitalist welfare state
    • public-private split
    • theoretical challenges

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