1. Connell, R. W., Gender and Power (Stanford, 1987) describes “gender regimes” as the state of play in gender relations in any given social institution.Google Scholar

2. Marshall, T. H., Class, Citizenship and Social Development (Garden City, 1965);Google ScholarFraser, Nancy, Justice Interruptus (New York, 1997).Google Scholar

3. Alcoff, Linda, “Cultural Feminism versus Post-Structuralism: The Identity Crisis in Feminist Theory”, in Culture/Power/History: A Reader in Contemporary Social Theory, ed. Dirks, Nicholas, Eley, Geoff, and Ortner, Sherry (Princeton, 1994), 96–122; quotation 111.Google Scholar

4. Orloff, Ann Shola, “Gender and the Social Rights of Citizenship: The Comparative Analysis of Gender Relations and Welfare States,” American Sociological Review 58 (1993):303–28;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Orloff, , “Gender and the Welfare State,” Annual Review of Sociology 22 (1996):51–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. For example, Rosemary Pringle and Sophie Watson argue for shifting attention away from the question of “how women's interests can be most accurately represented to the processes whereby they are constituted”; see their “‘Women's Interests’ and the Post Structuralist State,” in Destabilizing Theory: Contemporary Feminist Debates, ed. Barret, Michele and Phillips, Anne (Stanford, 1992), 53–73;Google Scholar quotation 63. An institutionalist view calls attention to the interests and identities constituted by virtue of existing political and institutional structures and policies and in the course of specific political struggles, with their characteristic alliances and oppositions. See Weir, Margaret, Orloff, Ann Shola, and Skocpol, Theda, ed., The Politics of Social Policy in the United States (Princeton, 1988).Google Scholar For further commentary on gender interests, see Jonasdottir, Anna, “On the Concept of Interest, Women's Interests, and the Limitations of Interest Theory,” in The Political Interests of Gender ed. Jones, Kathleen D. and Jonasdottir, Anna (Newbury Park, 1988), 33–65;Google ScholarBorchorst, Anette, “Welfare State Regimes, Women's Interests, and the EC,” in Gendering Welfare States, ed. Sainsbury, Diane (Thousand Oaks, 1994), 26–44;CrossRefGoogle ScholarMolyneux, Maxine, “Mobilization without Emancipation? Women's Interests, the State, and Revolution in Nicaragua” Feminist Studies 11 (1985): 227–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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7. Bock, Gisela, “Antinatalism, Maternity and Paternity in National Socialist Racism,” in Maternity and Gender Politics: Women and the Rise of the European Welfare States, 1880s–1950s, ed. Bock, Gisela and Thane, Pat (New York, 1991), 233–55;Google ScholarGordon, Linda, Pitied but not Entitled: Single Mothers and the History of Welfare (New York, 1994);Google ScholarKoonz, Claudia, Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family and Nazi Politics (New York, 1987);Google ScholarKoven, Seth and Michel, Sonya, Mothers of the New World: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of the Welfare State (New York, 1993);Google ScholarMink, Gwendolyn, Wages of Motherhood: Inequality in the Welfare State, 1917–1942 (Ithaca, 1994);Google ScholarRoberts, Dorothy, “Race, Gender, and the Value of Mothers' Work”, Social Politics 2 (1995):195–207.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Concerns about the division of caring labor need to include not only how this work is divided between women and men, but also how it is divided along lines of race, ethnicity, and nationality. For example, Evelyn Glenn has pointed to the role of women of color in taking some of the burden of caring labor from white women's shoulders in the United States in her “From Servitude to Service Work: Historical Continuities in the Racial Division of Paid Reproductive Labor,” Signs 18 (1992):1–43.

8. See, for instance, Nelson, Barbara and Chowdhury, Najma, Women and Politics Worldwide (New Heaven, 1994).Google Scholar

9. Mouffe, , “Feminism, Citizenship and Radical Democratic Politics.”Google Scholar See also three essays collected in Social Postmodernism: Beyond Identity Politics, ed. Nicholson, Linda and Seidman, Steven (New York, 1995);CrossRefGoogle ScholarMohanty, Chandra Talpade “Feminist Encounters: Locating the Politics of Experience”, 68–86; Linda Nicholson, “Interpreting Gender”, 39–67; and Iris Young, “Gender as Seriality: Thinking about Women as a Social Collective”, 187–215.Google Scholar

10. Molyneux, , “Mobilization without Emancipation?”Google Scholar

11. Anthias, Floya and Yuval-Davis, Nira, Woman, Nation, State (London, 1989);Google ScholarStasiulis, Daiva and Yuval-Davis, Nira, ed., Unsettling Settler Societies: Articulations of Race, Ethnicity, and Class (Thousand Oaks, 1995);Google ScholarBock, and Thane, , ed., Maternity and Gender Politics; Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland.Google Scholar

12. Molyneux, , “Mobilization without Emancipation?,” 232. Of course, feminists are not the only ones who make political, moral, and strategic use of claims about “long-run interests.” For example, politicians of the Right, enamored with the magic of the market, promise that the pain of welfare cutbacks in terms of women and children's poverty will be compensated for by the better-functioning society that they are sure will result when their reforms have unleashed the power of the market from its welfare-state shackles.Google Scholar

13. See, e.g., Rhode, Deborah, “Feminism and the State” Harvard Law Review 107 (1994):1181–1208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14. Molyneux, , “Mobilization without Emancipation?”, 234.Google Scholar

15. In response to difficulties of these types, some analysts (e.g., Jonasdottir, “On the Concept of Interest”) have tried to avoid making claims about the content of women's gender interests at all. Rather, they emphasize that women's only real interests are in participating in the decisions that affect them and in creating the conditions for and expanding the capacities for choice with respect to engaging in paid versus unpaid work or any other significant issue. Then, analysis can focus on how well “needs” are met. Yet this has its own set of problems. Moreover, it can be argued that an organic view of society and women's place in it cannot accommodate choice. Indeed, some would argue that this worldview is undermined by the very possibility of exit from the social connections or the traditional roles for men and women that it valorizes. It is therefore entirely consistent for exponents of this view to oppose the legalization or toleration of divorce, abortion, atypical family forms, and the undermining of “natural” roles for men and women.Google Scholar

16. On men's interests, see Connell, R. W., Masculinities: Knowledge, Power, and Social Change (Berkeley, 1995).Google Scholar

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19. Korpi, Walter and Palme, Joakim, ed., Contested Citizenship, Manuscript, Swedish Institute for Social Research, Stockholm University, 1996.Google Scholar

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23. See Shaver, Sheila, “Body Rights, Social Rights, and the Liberal Welfare State”, Critical Social Policy 39 (1993):66–93, for a discussion of the legal rights of personhood and the links between a focus on “body rights” and liberalism and individualism. Shaver contends that the concern with “body rights” in the United States is strong even relative to other countries with robust liberal traditions, such as Britain and Australia.Google Scholar

24. Orloff, , “Gender and the Social Rights of Citizenship.” Bodily and economic autonomy have been consistent themes in women's movements' demands on the states of the developed countries. This is especially true among those with a strong liberal tradition, reflecting a pervasive individualism characteristic of modern societies and reflected in both the welfare state itself and in most western feminisms. By no means have all women accepted this vision. The essentially liberal conception of the individual is contradicted by an organic view of society and family reflected in some religious views and religiously inspired political movements and groups. I would make no claim that conceptualizing women's strategic gender interests as being about the capacity to make free choices about reproduction, family, and work reflects their “real” or “objective” interests or their “needs.” I simply think that it correspond with the political demands of contemporary movements for gender equality and reflects the strategic logic of many modern feminist political projects.Google Scholar

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32. Even generous welfare states like the Swedish one depend on the majority of citizens, both men and women, to work and pay taxes in order to offer some measure of decommodification and independence with respect to families and marriage. Men and women can get time away from employment for certain defined periods of time and reasons, but full-time and lifelong housewifery is not a state-supported choice in Sweden. And this does not even consider the constraints placed on social policy generosity of all kinds in the current era of restructuring, budgetary pressures, and the ideological strength of liberal policy models.Google Scholar

33. This has also been called “policy feedback” or “stratification.”Google Scholar

34. I would also raise some questions concerning the characterization of the American welfare state as a gendered “two-track system.” It is important to understand, first, that a system bifurcated between social assistance and social insurance is not uniquely American— both the British and German systems follow such a pattern. More relevant for gender issues, it is critical to emphasize that the upper tier now serves stable workers, whatever their gender or race, and their dependents (including the majority of women clients of the welfare state) relatively well. Social assistance for the long-term unemployed (both men and women) and those outside the labor force, including many solo-mother families, is another matter, with benefit levels falling, the removal of any entitlement to relief, short-term and lifetime limits on assistance, and disincentives to work replaced by work requirements that may or may not be accompanied by adequate child care or health insurance. While protections available to those on the lower tiers of European and Canadian systems have not deteriorated so precipitously as in the United States, there are some commonalities regarding intensifying work “incentives.”Google Scholar

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