Understanding Gender Economic Inequality Across Welfare Regimes

Abstract

The process of “farewell to maternalism” (Orloff, 2006) has taken diverse forms in different societies over the last few decades. With the massive entry of women into the labor market, significant cross-country variations have emerged not only in the level of women’s employment but also in their patterns of integration and in the nature of gender stratification in the labor market. To keep pace with this process, the literature on welfare states and gender stratification has branched out to cover a variety of gendered outcomes, besides women’s participation rates. This variability has yielded contradictory conclusions concerning the implications of welfare states for gender stratification.