ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some of the institutional and organizational aspects of this state form are analysed from a feminist perspective. It addresses itself to issues of Scandinavian women’s political and economic power and only indirectly to their social welfare. The family is a changing institution both as a unit of production and in terms of lasting ties among individuals. The labour market ties of women, especially of young mothers, combined with a network of cash and service transfers, have served to undermine the economic importance of the family for women by weakening men’s provider status. Economic developments, especially inflation and increasing housing costs and aspirations, have also made the one-provider family less feasible economically. The extension of the suffrage to all men, and the rise of socialist parties and trade unions, established and institutionalized political divisions and lines of conflict which still persist.
