Barbara Hobson

Making Men into Fathers: Men, Masculinities and the Social Politics of Fatherhood

List of figures List of tables Preface Introduction: making men into fathers Barbara Hobson and David Morgan Part I. Who Fathers?: 1. Coresidential paternal roles in industrialized countries: Sweden, Hungary and the United States Livia Sz. Olah, Eva M. Bernhardt and Frances K. Goldscheider Part II. Men in Social Policy and the Logics of Cash and Care: 2. Citizens, workers or fathers? Men in the history of US social policy Ann SholaOrloff and Renee Monson 3. Compulsory fatherhood: the coding of fatherhood in the Swedish welfare state Helena Bergman and Barbara Hobson 4. The problem of fathers: policy and behaviour in Britain Jane Lewis 5. A new role for fathers? The German case Ilona Ostner 6. Transformations of fatherhood: the Netherlands Trudie Knijn and Peter Selten Part III. Resisting and Reclaiming Fatherhood: 7. Making sense of fatherhood: the non-payment of child support in Spain Ingegerd Municio-Larsson and Carmen Pujol Algans 8. The Fatherhood Responsibility Movement: the centrality of marriage, work and male sexuality in reconstructions of masculinity and fatherhood Anne Gavanas Part IV. Theorizing Men, Masculinities and Fatherhood: 9. Men, fathers and the state: national and global relations Jeff Hearn 10. Epilogue David Morgan Notes References Index.

Contested Concepts in Gender and Social Politics

An important contribution to the current literature on gender and social politics, this book challenges mainstream thinking on welfare states, citizenship, family, work, and social policy. Contested Concepts in Gender and Social Politics analyses the corresponding shifts in political discourse, and the changes in socio-political configurations that mirror changing gender relations.

Birthstrikes? Agency and Capabilities in the Reconciliation of Employment and Family

Summary The purpose of this article is to analyze womens agency and fertility decisions in the context of policy configurations in welfare states for reconciling employment with having and caring for children and the changing aspirations and expectations forgender equality in families. Employing the concept of birthstriking, inspired by Amartaya Sens ideas on capabilities and agency freedom, we consider which individuals and families in the 1990s are delaying or not having children across 12 countries, representing four policy configuration models. Using household level data, we consider differences in education on the likelihood of having a first child. We find the clearest birthstriking effects in societies where there are weak reconciliation policies for motherhood and employment and few protections for families with uncertain economic futures.

Convergent care regimes? Childcare arrangements in Australia, Canada, Finland and Sweden

This article is about the transnational movement of policy discourses on childcare. It considers whether the spread of neoliberal ideas with their emphasis on marketisation, on the one hand, and a social investment discourse on the other, are leading to convergence in childcare arrangements in Nordic countries (Finland and Sweden) and liberal Anglo-Saxon countries (Australia and Canada). We find points of convergence around both themes at the level of policy discourse and continued diversity in the way these ideas are translated into actual policies. In other words, convergence is mediated by institutions and political realignments.

Cultural dialogues in the good society The case of honour killings in Sweden

Value conflicts involving gender equality are interwoven intocurrent multicultural tensions in many European societies. Theyare at the core of these tensions in Sweden, in which genderequality and ...

The Individualised Worker, the Gender Participatory and the Gender Equity Models in Sweden

Within the European Union (EU) policy framework, individualisation is cast in terms of self-sufficiency and independence, and coupled to the market activation of all individuals and groups. How will this model be translated into European societies with different histories, policy environments and political actors? I analyse how an individualised system of benefits emerged in Sweden and was anchored in the broader social policy model and discourse of participation parity. Using the Swedish example, I map out the differences between individualisation, participation parity and gender equity, each representing models with different policy goals and outcomes. In the final section of the article, I focus on retrenchment and restructuring in the Swedish welfare state and its impact on the gender participatory model.

Recognition Struggles in Trans‐national Arenas: Negotiating Identities and Framing Citizenship

Abstract The purpose of this article is to incorporate trans‐national actors and institutions into citizenship theory both theoretically and empirically. We analyze three cases of recognition movements promoting gender, ethnic/minority and indigenous rights. Using one societal context, Sweden, we map the processes and mechanisms of power and agency (boundary‐making and brokering) that shape how trans‐national institutions and actors offer new forms of leverage politics to recognition movements as well as constrain their agency. These mechanisms of power are formalized in a model showing the multi‐level effects of leverage politics on recognition movements. Our three cases of recognition politics demonstrate the increasingly complex links between actors in policy communities across regional, national, European and international levels. They also reveal the processes implicit in our model: that policy imports are reframed when translated into specific national political cultures; and more broadly, that national citizenship frames of membership and inclusion are not easily dislodged.

The Evolution of the Women-friendly State: Opportunities and Constraints in the Swedish Welfare State

Sweden is an interesting case in which to consider gender and social policy, looking through the lens of institutions, social actors and gendered discourses on equality. It has been one of the most interventionist states, mitigating the power of capital and markets to control workers and working conditions. It scores highest on the dimensions of social rights that decommodify workers, that is, policies that weaken a worker’s dependence on the market (Esping-Andersen 1990; Korpi and Palme 1998). In the literature on comparative welfare regimes, it is presented as the society where social citizenship and the pursuit of equality were shaped by class-based politics; the cultural narratives that resonate in the society have been those of working-class struggles (Acker 1992; Amark 1992). Social rights in this framework are the outcome of struggles over the distribution of society’s resources where unionized workers and employers have been the main protagonists (Korpi 1980). The redistributive effects of wage and social policies are evident in that Sweden scores very low on measures of social stratification and has one of the most compressed wage structures.

Cultural dialogues in the good society

Value conflicts involving gender equality are interwoven intocurrent multicultural tensions in many European societies. Theyare at the core of these tensions in Sweden, in which genderequality and ...

Cultural Conflict and Cultural Dialogues in the Good Society : The Case of Honor Killings in Sweden

Value conflicts involving gender equality are interwoven intocurrent multicultural tensions in many European societies. Theyare at the core of these tensions in Sweden, in which genderequality and ...