Diane Sainsbury

Gender and welfare state regimes.

Part I. Gender Inequality and Welfare State Regimes 1: Jet Bussemaker and Kees van Kersbergen: Contemporary Social Capitalist Welfare States and Gender Inequality 2: Julia S. OConnor: Employment Equality Strategies in Liberal Welfare States 3: Diane Sainsbury: Gender and Social Democratic Welfare States Part II. The Gendered Impact of Policies Across Welfare States 4: Marcia K. Meyers, Janet C. Gornick, and Katherine Ross: Public Childcare, Parental Leave, and Employment 5: Majella Kilkey and Jonathan Bradshaw: Lone Mothers, Economic Well-being and Policies 6: Diane Sainsbury: Taxation, Family Responsibilities, and Employment 7: Gender Equality in the Labour Market Part III. Gender Regimes and Welfare State Regimes 8: Diane Sainsbury: Gender, Policy Regimes and Politics.

Immigrants’ social rights in comparative perspective: welfare regimes, forms in immigration and immigration policy regimes

In analysing the social rights of immigrants, this paper draws on insights from comparative welfare state research and international migration studies. On the premise that the type of welfare regime has an impact on immigrants’ social rights, it utilizes Esping-Andersen’s welfare regime typology as a point of departure. However, this typology must be complemented by two analytical constructs borrowed from the international migration literature: the immigration policy regime and entry categories associated with the form of immigration. The paper examines the social rights of immigrants in three countries generally regarded as exemplars of the welfare regime types: the United States, representing the liberal regime; germany, the conservative corporatist regime; and Sweden, the social democratic regime. It maps out immigrants’ formal incorporation into the welfare systems of the three countries and pays special attention to legislation from 1990 onwards in order to understand the interplay between welfare regimes, the forms of immigration, and the immigration policy regimes in shaping immigrants’ social rights.

State feminism and political representation

1. Introduction 2. Gendering political representation: debates and controversies in Austria Regina Kopl 3. The Belgian paradox: inclusion and exclusion of gender issues Petra Meier 4. A politics for presence. State feminism, womens movements and political representation in Finland Anne Maria Holli and Johanna Kantola 5. Gendering the Republican system: debates on womens political representation in France Claudie Baudino 6. WPAs and political representation in Germany Lynn Kamenitsa and Brigitte Geissel 7. Gendering the debate on political representation in Italy: a difficult challenge Marila Guadagnini 8. High tides in a low country gendering political representation in the Netherlands Jantine Oldersma 9. The womens movement, gender equality agencies, and central-state debates on political representation in Spain (1983-2003) Celia Valiente 10. Party feminism, state feminism and womens representation in Sweden Diane Sainsbury 11. Party government and womens representation debates: the UK Joni Lovenduski 12. Womens policy agencies, the womens movement, and representation in the US Janine A. Parry 13. Conclusions: state feminism and political representation Appendix 1. Tables of womens representation in eleven countries Appendix 2. The RNGS model.

Migrants' Social Rights, Ethnicity and Welfare Regimes

Comparative welfare state research has devoted little attention to the social rights of migrants or the ethnic/racial dimension, even though societies are becoming more ethnically diverse through international migration. Using data from the Luxembourg Income Study for the UK, the USA, Germany, France, Denmark and Sweden, this article represents an initial attempt to compare the social rights of migrants and citizens across welfare regimes. We examine the substantive social rights of migrants and ethnic minorities by focusing on their participation in social transfer programmes, and the impact of transfers on their ability to maintain a socially acceptable standard of living compared with the rest of the population. The analysis shows that there are major disparities between how migrant and citizen households fare in welfare states, and that the discrepancies widen for migrants of colour. When the analysis is confined to citizen households, the results largely correspond to the expected performance of welfare regimes. However, when migrants are incorporated into the analysis, intra-regime variations stand out in the case of the liberal and social democratic countries.

Poverty in Europe in the mid-1990s: the effectiveness of means-tested benefits

This article examines the income maintenance policies of several members of the European Union and three candidate countries: the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. It addresses the issue of the effectiveness of these policies and especially means-tested safety nets in alleviating poverty. To assess the effectiveness of the policies, we use data from the Luxembourg Income Study. We analyse the incidence of poverty based on the EU poverty line and poverty reduction for the entire population and vulnerable groups - the unemployed, solo mothers, large families, and the elderly. During the 1990s the poverty rates increased in most countries and for most vulnerable groups. Means-tested benefits assumed growing importance in alleviating poverty, and several countries have improved their schemes to guarantee a minimum income. At the same time reforms have produced diversity in the safety nets across Europe.

Dual Welfare and Sex Segregation of Access to Social Benefits: Income Maintenance Policies in the UK, the US, the Netherlands and Sweden

In examining the sex of beneficiaries of income maintenance programmes, several country-specific studies suggest a pattern of segregation between women and men in access to types of benefit. Men are more likely to be recipients of social insurance benefits, whilst women often must rely on means-tested programmes, and frequently their claims to insurance benefits are via their husband. This conclusion is re-examined through a comparison of insurance and means-tested programmes in the UK, the US, the Netherlands, and Sweden. The purpose is to determine, first, to what extent such a pattern of segregation emerges in the four countries and, second, what mechanisms operate to exclude or include women. The comparison reveals that the Swedish case deviates from the other three countries, and policy constructions inhibiting and promoting greater equality between women and men in access to social benefits are discussed. The results also have theoretical implications for dual welfare as an analytical framework and feminist thinking about the welfare state.

The Promise and Pitfalls of Gender Mainstreaming : The Swedish Case

This article examines gender mainstreaming in Sweden, which is an interesting case because several favorable conditions make its implementation likely. It addresses two main questions: (1) to what extent has gender mainstreaming been implemented and (2) what are the consequences? The article first discusses the pros and cons of gender mainstreaming as reflected in the international feminist debate. It then briefly describes the favorable conditions of the Swedish case and subsequently maps out the introduction of gender mainstreaming since 1994, focusing on the process and its politics. It concludes with a discussion of the Swedish experience in terms of the promise and pitfalls of gender mainstreaming identified in the feminist debate and the implications of the Swedish case for feminist theorizing on gender mainstreaming.

Swedish State Feminism: Continuity and Change

In an international context, Sweden and the other Nordic countries have attracted attention because of their policies to combat inequalities between women and men and their high rankings on various gender equality indicators. Central to the countries’ gender policy regime have been policies to encourage women to become earners and men to become carers, such as individual taxation, provision of affordable childcare, and generous paid parental leave with rights of leave for mothers and fathers. Women have further benefited from the social democratic welfare regime, which has promoted equal social rights. The countries also established women’s policy agencies — or gender equality agencies in Scandinavian parlance — at an early date (Bergqvist et al., 1999; Sainsbury, 1999).

European Anti-Poverty Policies in the 1990s: Toward a Common Safety Net?

Using the notion of the poverty regime as a heuristic device, this paper examines the safety nets of several members of the European Union and three candidate countries: Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. It addresses two board issues: 1) Has there been a convergence in the safety nets of these member countries of the European Union during the 1990s? 2) What are the implications of enlargement of the European Union for the creation of a common safety net? Initially several dimensions of the poverty regime are employed to compare the safety nets. Subsequently we analyse the incidence of poverty and poverty reduction for the entire population and vulnerable groups - the unemployed, solo mothers and large families, and the elderly - in the countries using data from the Luxembourg Income Study. In analysing poverty reduction effectiveness we utilise both relative and absolute measures to gauge the impact of income maintenance policies, distinguishing between the safety net and other transfers. The analysis reveals that during the 1990s the poverty rate increased in most countries and in many instances for vulnerable groups; an exception was the elderly. Means tested benefits assumed growing importance in alleviating poverty, but reforms also produced diversity in the safety nets across Europe. Contrary to earlier theorising that means tested benefits are marginalized in the social democratic welfare state regime, we find that the safety nets in these countries often equalled or surpassed that of the UK in reducing poverty. Finally, apart from impressive poverty reduction, the policies of the three candidate countries did not form a distinctive poverty regime. Instead they tended to cluster with other member countries.

The Electoral Difficulties of the Scandinavian Social Democrats in the 1970s: The Social Bases of the Parties and Structural Explanations of Party Decline

More specifically, the Danish and Norwegian parties incurred the worst electoral defeats in their histories in 1973. The share of the vote of the Danish Social Democratic party (Socialdemokratiet, SD) dropped from 37.3 to 25.6 percent. In the subsequent elections of the decade, the SD eventually staged a comeback, and in the 1977 and 1979 elections the party recouped its losses, receiving 38.3 percent of the vote in 1979. But in the 1981 election SD support slipped back to 32.9 percent and continued to decrease slightly in the 1984 election. The Norwegian party (Det Norske Arbeiderpartiet, DNA also experienced devastating losses in the 1973 election, declining from 46.5 to 35.3 percent of the vote. In the next election in 1977 the DNA bounced back and won 42.3 percent. At the close of the decade, party popularity began to sag again, and in the 1981 election the DNA received 37.2 percent. Both the Danish and Norwegian Social Democrats, however, managed to stay in office during most of the 1970s but lost control of the executive in the early 1980s.