ABSTRACT
This paper studies the debate about the Scandinavian welfare states from a feminist perspective, focusing on the differences between a feminist perspective and the dominant liberal and critical Marxist understanding of the welfare state. In particular it focuses on the argument that the Scandinavian welfare states are the most advanced in relation to women and discusses both the potentialities and dangers in the Scandinavian welfare states in relation to women. Feminists have pointed out that the concept of gender has been disregarded from a theoretical and methodological point of view in both liberal and Marxist analyses of the welfare state. The fundamental concepts have been either the individual or the class, and the determining forces of the development of the welfare state have been found in the political sphere or in the economy or in the interrelation between the two spheres. The paper points to the need to integrate gender relations in the theoretical model for an analysis of the welfare state and emphasizes the need to explore the relationship between the family and the state (and the family and the economy) in the different welfare states. The paper emphasizes that the qualitative differences in the organization of care work are important for understanding the institutional differences between the welfare states, and especially the Scandinavian welfare states, where motherhood and care work has today become a part of social citizenship. The author argues that even though women have in important ways become empowered in the Scandinavian welfare states as mothers, workers and citizens, they have at the same time become subsumed under a new kind of male domination in the public sphere. A further exploration of this new kind of male domination must transcend the theoretical framework of both Marxism and liberalism and must begin to rethink such central concepts as citizenship, power and interests.
