ABSTRACT
The Nordic countries differ from many other countries by virtue of the development of a welfare state. In Scandinavia, the state takes on many tasks-particularly in education, the fields of social policy and health (e.g., childcare and care of the elderly), which other countries tackle in other ways. The state is feminized in the sense that women constitute the majority of all public employees. In Denmark, nearly two thirds of public personnel are women. The percentage of working women in Scandinavia is very high. In Denmark, the figure was 75 per cent in 1995 and for working mothers of young children (women between 20 and 30 years of age) the figure is 79 per cent.2 In other words, the Scandinavian welfare state is populated by female employees and attends to issues, described as welfare work, which, traditionally, women have performed in the home and in the local community.
