ABSTRACT
Women’s position in society has changed fundamentally during the last twenty to twenty-five years, especially in those countries where welfare states have been most expansive. This chapter analyses the contradictory aspects of this process in Denmark. The Danish and Swedish welfare states belong to the most advanced in the world, and are often perceived as a model for other countries, particularly when it comes to the situation of women. The integration of women into paid work on a large scale has become a common feature of the western world. The cutbacks in the welfare state and the growing unemployment which has accompanied the economic crisis have also made the limitations to strategies of sexual equality more visible. Women’s integration in the public sphere has been a long and complicated process related to the social and economic development of capitalism. Denmark was occupied by the Germans, but Danish men were not sent away as soldiers to any great extent.
