ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on women to connect the private and the public, or the personal and the political. It explores the welfare state debate from a woman’s point of view’, sets out many of the themes which run through the collection. The book offers it as a contribution to the extensive discussion about the crisis of the welfare state and as part of a feminist project to analyse contemporary society. It discusses questions about the welfare state from a feminist perspective by women who live in Norway and Denmark. The book examines a large amount of American and British literature on the concept of patriarchy, the private–public split, and the determinants and effects of public policy, Drude Dahlerup challenges the argument that the state upholds and re-establishes the subordination of women.
