Anette Borchorst

The women-friendly welfare state revisited

The concept of the women-friendly welfare states, introduced by the Norwegian political scientist Helga Maria Hernes in 1987, has had a considerable influence on welfare theory and research. In this article the normative basis and the analytical potential of the concept are explored. The concept can be criticized for its bias towards social democratic welfare states, which has challenged its analytical potential. Instead of abandoning it altogether, the authors suggest that an alternative could be to reformulate and contextualize the concept with gender equality as the key notion. The reformulation would make it possible to distinguish analytically between women-friendliness and policies that promote gender equality between different dimensions of welfare, and between civil and political from social aspects of citizenship.

Institutionalizing Intersectionality in the Nordic Countries: Anti-Discrimination and Equality in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden

Addressing multiple inequalities through anti-discrimination measures has become a new policy priority across Europe. This trend is also reflected in the Nordic countries, where equality politics is currently undergoing great changes. Public policies increasingly take an ‘integrated’ and ‘multiple’ approach to inequality and discrimination, moving away from a single gender equality framework. A central debate over these reforms has been whether the multidimensional framework threatens to ‘downgrade’ gender equality measures.

The EU’s Gender and Diversity Policies and the European Public Spheres

In the history of European integration, policies addressing race and ethnicity are a relatively new phenomenon. Gender equality policies were part of policymaking in the European Community (EC) from the outset. The principle of equal pay for equal work of women and men was first enshrined in the Treaty of Rome of 1958, but it had a mainly a programmatic purpose and was later followed up by a directive on equal pay that had more direct national implications. The 1980s and 1990s brought issues of gender equality, such as how to reconcile work and family, gender and violence and women’s role in decision making, onto the political agenda. The European Parliament and its Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality (FEMM) have been important players in this development.