ABSTRACT
This quotation from Marx may stand as an illustration of the author’s experience during the last decade of chaos resulting from the simultaneous signs of disintegration of the welfare state within Western societies, and the postmodernist deconstruction of theories and concepts within feminist thought. The former development constitutes a serious threat to the public sector which-however inconsistently-has served as a basis for job security and influence for women; the latter implies a dissolution of the analytic tools which have enabled women to understand and criticize-at least in the Nordic countries-part of the ideological basis for male dominance and power, and consequently to achieve some measure of political influence.
