ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses intra-European differences that are most obvious in terms of women's employment. It examines work within the home, how it is divided between women and men and, crucially, the extent to which this work is outsourced to other institutions. If gender equality were achieved, a logical corollary would be greater inequality between women unless counter-balanced by state caring policies. This makes state support for childcare a distinctive feature of the European social model (ESM). The chapter shows how, especially in the UK, women have been able to enter previously male domains such as even private sector management, while in politics women have been more successful in Scandinavia. The obverse of women's success is men's growing failure: their early exit from the labour force, their entry into low paid jobs previously reserved for women, the increasing educational under-achievement of working class boys.
