The neo-liberal upsurge of the last twenty years and the neo-liberal case against the welfare state has gained much of its emotional force from a sub-text which is highly gendered. Whereas social liberalism had contained the promise of more autonomy within the private sphere and more caring values in the public sphere, neo-liberalism depicts the results of social liberalism as a loss of self reliance – through ‘over-protection’ by the state in the public sphere and usurpation of male roles in (...) the private sphere. The identification of the welfare state as female (the ‘nanny state’) helps fuel resentment on the part of those already confused by rapidly changing gender roles. This paper tracks the sex change which took place in the image of the liberal state as it evolved out of the night watchman state – the link between the women's suffrage movement and social regulation, maternal principles of distribution and demands for the public organization of caring. It examines the neo-liberal rejection of the breast and neo-liberal claims that the maternal state is incompatible with ‘self-reliance’ and a barrier to competitiveness in the world market. (shrink)

A synthesis of rights and participatory approaches to citizenship, linked through the notion of human agency, is proposed as the basis for a feminist theory of citizenship. Such a theory has to address citizenship's exclusionary power in relation to both nation-state ‘outsiders’ and ‘insiders’. With regard to the former, the article argues that a feminist theory and politics of citizenship must embrace an internationalist agenda. With regard to the latter, it offers the concept of a ‘differentiated universalism’ as an attempt (...) to reconcile the universalism which lies at the heart of citizenship with the demands of a politics of difference. Embracing also the reconstruction of the public-private dichotomy, citizenship, reconceptualized in this way, can, it is argued, provide us with an important theoretical and political tool. (shrink)

Can feminists count on welfare states—or at least some aspects of these complex systems—as resources in the struggle for gender equality? Gender analysts of "welfare states" investigate this question and the broader set of issues around the mutually constitutive relationship between systems of social provision and regulation and gender. Feminist scholars have moved to bring the contingent practice of politics back into grounded fields of action and social change and away from the reification and abstractions that had come to dominate (...) models of politics focused on "big" structures and systems, including those focused on "welfare states." Conceptual innovations and reconceptualizations of foundational terms have been especially prominent in the comparative scholarship on welfare states, starting with gender, and including care, autonomy, citizenship, dependence, political agency, and equality. In contrast to other subfields of political science and sociology, gendered insights have to some extent been incorporated into mainstream comparative scholarship on welfare states. The arguments between feminists and mainstream scholars over the course of the last two decades have been productive, powering the development of key themes and concepts pioneered by gender scholars, including "defamilialization," the significance of unpaid care work in families and the difficulties of work-family "reconciliation," gendered welfare state institutions, the relation between fertility and women's employment, and the partisan correlates of different family and gender policy models. Yet the mainstream still resists the deeper implications of feminist work, and has difficulties assimilating concepts of care, gendered power, dependency, and interdependency. Thus, the agenda of gendering comparative welfare state studies remains unfinished. To develop an understanding of what might be needed to finish that agenda, I assess the gendered contributions to the analysis of modern systems of social provision, starting with the concept of gender itself then moving to studies of the gendered division of labor and of gendered political power. (shrink)

Research on the intersection of race and gender suggests that, for African Americans, racial inequality is more salient than gender inequality. However, theoretical perspectives on the multiplicative effects of status positions and “outsider within” models suggest that minority group membership can be a catalyst for the development of feminist attitudes. This article examines three issues central to feminism: recognition and critique of gender inequality, egalitarian gender roles, and political activism for the rights of women. The authors found that support for (...) feminist ideology was common for both African American women and men, although the level of support varied depending on the issue and by gender. Factors predicting the endorsement of feminist ideology also varied depending on the issue and by gender. The authors found partial support for the race saliency hypothesis, but there was also evidence of the multiplicative effects of status positions on African Americans' feminist attitudes. (shrink)

This article focuses on social reformer Caroline Bartlett Crane and her association with club women for municipal reform during the Progressive Era. Using archival material, the author examines the actual process of Progressive social reform in which Crane used social networks, sociology, and Social Gospel ideals to achieve positive social change. The author also addresses recent critiques of Progressive women reformers regarding their motivations, accomplishments, and their ultimate legacy in Progressive Era social change.

Recent scholarship on gender and the state suggests that women's agency has been critical to the formation of welfare policy. Yet, nations with strong, mobilized feminist movements do not necessarily develop the most supportive welfare policies. By historically analyzing the emergence of British and French family allowance policy, the author suggests that the key to this conundrum lies in the interaction between women's movements and the value given to women's paid and unpaid labor. Woman-friendly state policy requires an active women's (...) movement and ideologies valuing women's paid and unpaid labor. In addition, women's movements must be able and willing to strategically use those ideologies to pursue their goals. (shrink)

The Asian Debt Crisis of 1997–2001 led to drastically higher levels of unemployment, resulting in enormous social anxiety and shock. For the first time in its history, South Korea's attention was forcibly drawn to homeless people. Both the new government of the first civilian president, Kim Dae Jung, and an emerging civil society began to pay unprecedented attention to homeless issues. In this new context, homelessness was constructed as a product of the economic crisis. However, although certain homeless men who (...) fit the category of employability and rehabilitation were considered ‘deserving’, long-term street living people and homeless women were disregarded and further marginalized through specific gendered processes. In particular, homeless women were rendered invisible and considered ‘undeserving’ because they fell outside of normative gender expectations, including the idea that a woman's place was in the home, regardless of their ability or desire to work. Building upon ‘needs-talk’ analysis created by Nancy Fraser, this paper exposes the important role of gender norms in the making of a neoliberal welfare citizenship in South Korea, by arguing that the narratives of homeless policy administrators and shelter managers designated homeless women as ‘undeserving’ welfare citizens. (shrink)

From the perspective of gender theory, the intersections among gender, class, and race make it difficult, if not impossible, to assign political issues and identities to just one social movement. Instead, the negotiation of movement ownership of issues and identities occurs through interaction among social movements, including interactions that create denial and distance. This article takes the interaction of labor organizing and feminism as the lens for studying movement interaction at three levels: opportunity structure, organizing practices, and framing ideas. Using (...) a case study of a strike of day care workers in West Berlin in the winter of 1989-90, it contrasts inclusive and exclusive forms of solidarity and their consequences for organizational practices. This particular strike received little support from either feminists or the labor movement and eventually failed, an outcome that can be seen as reflecting the weakness of structural and organizational supports for frames favoring inclusive solidarity. (shrink)

In examining the practice of power in the Birth Planning Policy of China, the author argues that the theorizing of the public-private frame and public patriarchy based on the welfare state in the West fails to capture the specific gender and state relations in the Chinese socialist context. With the convergence of the traditional familial order and the development of a modern nation-state, the “public” sphere of the Chinese socialist state is a disrupted space where the “state” still calls for (...) its people's sacrifice for the collective good and yet at the same time, a terrian where citizens can claim their rights. It is also a domain where Chinese women's reproduction is collectivized for the cause of socialist modernization and yet a realm where they claim their voices. In the conclusion, the author addresses the question of Chinese women's agency in maneuvering through the patriarchal system and using the policy as a springboard to effecting changes in it. (shrink)

The mutual interaction and interdependence of race, class, and gender create profound political dilemmas for feminist activists. How can we create coherent, inclusive political movements when the very oppressions we seek to dismantle also divide us internally? This article seeks answers to this question by exploring the history of the Southeast Women's Employment Coalition, which throughout the 1980s sought to unify working-class women in the South across the divide of race. The article concludes that gender is insufficient to effect political (...) unity among racially diverse women, but that a “politics of solidarity,” based on an appreciation of the intersections of race, gender, and class, is possible. (shrink)