ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on some concepts and empirical details, to trace social care services as a gender issue. In Scandinavian countries informal care has been supplemented, and even replaced by public social care services. There are different and even contradictory conceptualisations of the Scandinavian welfare state in women’s studies of social policy. Since the beginning of the 1960s women’s participation in waged employment in Scandinavian countries, has been at a high level. The children of students have a weighting in the allocation of day-care places in Scandinavian countries. The expansion of home help services for the elderly in Scandinavian countries happened during the 1960s and 1970s. In all Scandinavian countries the public sector is a strong and important employer. The particular feature in Scandinavian countries is that there has been political will and general confidence in acknowledging the work of untrained women.
