Introduction to Special Issue of Social Politics: “Gender, Class, and Capitalism”

“Restructuring” has emerged as one of the key concepts of contemporary social science, as scholars attempt to make sense of profound transformations in political economies, welfare states, families, and communities. Many of these shifts are associated with changing gender relations, which figure as both cause and consequence. Women workers have emerged as key actors in this changing and ever more global political economy: Productivity gains, sustain- able pension systems, and the quality and size of the future labor forces depend on women’s decisions about employment, childbearing, and childrearing—to say nothing of their potential as an electoral bloc. Much recent attention focuses in particular on “work– family reconciliation.” Most governments in the developed world are committed to enhancing or sustaining women’s employment, and feminist analysts have focused on gender regimes that differ in the public support given to women’s employment as key to understand- ing variations in gender equality. This focus in the feminist literature has resulted in a tendency to ascribe differences in gender equality to differences in social policy frameworks, which is to say, politics. But it has become clear that there is no straightforward link between women’s employment, the social policies that support it, and gender equality.

Link: Introduction to Special Issues Social Politics: “Gender, Class, and Capitalism”