ABSTRACT
Domestic life and employment are organised around an implicit ‘social contract’ with two components: a gender contract and an employment contract (OECD 1994c: 19). This contract is manifested in institutional arrangements and dominant social norms concerning gender relations, thus encouraging certain behavioural patterns rather than others in both the labour market and the household. The particular form that the contract takes is historically rooted, and evolves into a new form in response to both economic and political pressures and conflicts of interest (Hirdmann 1988, 1990; Pfau-Effinger 1993, 1996). The resulting social contract is a compromise arrived at through relations between social actors with different bargaining power. Although the contract is rarely articulated explicitly, it may be partly spelt out in state policies, particularly those to do with family policy or welfare provisions, for example in the Beveridge plan laying the foundation for the development of the British welfare state in the post-war period (Wilson 1977).
