ABSTRACT
Gender is a primary feature of the institutions that make up welfare states, the politics that shape them and the policy outcomes that result. It is central to contemporary transformation of advanced economies, from the industrial societies of the post-war period to the post-industrial societies of the future. Its empirical importance is obvious in labour market shifts towards a substantially female service sector, demographic changes in family structure and fertility, and the increased salience of gender issues in politics and community affairs. Theoretically, questions about gender have driven productive engagement between mainstream theory of politics and the state and feminist theorising of gender, power and agency. Comparative study of welfare state development has been a particularly effective area of this intersection (Orloff 2009).
