ABSTRACT

This chapter gives an overview of the considerable modifications of the role of the state in the field of social policy since the 1980s. While the 1980s brought improvements in the field of social and minimum pensions, the early 1990s, as in Sweden, saw serious proposals to cut benefits. Since the 1980s developments in Austria with respect to its employment-oriented social security system may be characterised as 'adaptation' to international developments on the one hand and to changing political options and economic and social conditions on the other. In contrast to other European Community (EC)-member states Italy had already passed a law comprehensively redefining the positions of men and women in labour and social security law in 1977. In contrast to Great Britain, French equal treatment policy went beyond the EC directives and was innovative in the early 1990s by adopting a law on sexual harassment.