ABSTRACT
Italy presents an interesting case to help make sense of the debates concerning the nature, scope, and intensity of welfare-state restructuring in advanced industrialized societies. The attempt to understand the restructuring of the Italian welfare state is as fraught with paradoxes and tensions as was its evolution. On the one hand, it has all the marks of welfare-state retrenchment, with an emphasis on fiscal capacity rather than social rights and collective responsibility for important areas of life. On the other hand, many of the changes have been carried out using the discourse of “modernization,” “flexibility,” “equity,” and “efficiency.” This has been particularly the case with respect to policies that affect families and women’s labor-market participation. Governments in the latter part of the 1990s presented their plans to radically change the Italian economy, and ultimately society, within a framework that spoke little of retrenchment. This created an opportunity for a significant change in the structures and processes that affect gender relations. However, as we will see shortly, “modernization” may not necessarily mean a move to expanded citizenship rights.
