
Antoinette Hetzler
Professor emerita

"Women, Work and Welfare - An Analysis of Social Change in Sweden!
Author
Summary, in English
This article focuses on processes of social change in Sweden, an advanced welfare state. it starts by pointing out the failure of contemporary welfare state theory to deal with the imbalance between the goal of equlality and the goal of efficiency in the production and distribution of both capital and social values. Three processes of social change are examined: the marginalization of women in the labor market, increased use of decommodification processes by women, and the delayed entrance of young women into the labor market. It is argued that these processes are strong indicators that gains in equality won by and for women in the advanced welfafe state may be ephemeral. Furthermore, recent research shows that women, anticipating this change, have already readjusted their role within the household to accommodate macro marginalization processes. The article concludes that within the welfare state, equality is forced to take a ack seat to processes that enhance efficiency in the basic relationship between capital and labor
Department/s
- Sociology
Publishing year
2008
Language
English
Pages
12-35
Publication/Series
International Journal of Sociology Special Edition. Changing Conceptions of Gender
Volume
85
Issue
2
Document type
Journal article
Topic
- Sociology (excluding Social Work, Social Anthropology, Demography and Criminology)
Keywords
- women equality
- labor markets
- women and work
- marginalization
- sociologi
- sociology
Status
Published