What are the political pathways to the dual earner/dual caregiver model? Are most countries likely to attain only a partial transformation of policies and societies, rather than a full embrace of this model? This article examines the development of work-family policies in Western Europe to probe the politics and consequences of these programs. In many countries, the political context frustrates efforts to enact a unified, comprehensive vision like the dual earner/dual caregiver model. Rather than achieving gender-egalitarian arrangements for work and care, countries may stall halfway there. Advocates should be careful in what they ask for and be aware of the challenge of keeping gender-egalitarian goals at the center of a policy-making process over which they will not have full control.
Gøsta Esping-Andersen, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990).
2.
Mary Ruggie, The State and Working Women: A Comparative Study of Britain and Sweden (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press , 1984).
3.
Kari Melby, Anu Pylkkanen , Bente Rosenbeck, and Christina Carlsson Wetterberg, eds., The Nordic Model of Marriage and the Welfare State (Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers, 2000).
4.
Edmund Dahlström, ed., The Changing Roles of Men and Women (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971).
5.
Rianne Mahon , "Child Care in Canada and Sweden: Policy and Politics," Social Politics4, no. 3 (1997): 382-418; and Christina Bergqvist, Jaana Kuusipalo, and Auður Styrkarsdóttir , "The Debate on Childcare Policies," in Nordic Democracies: Gender and Politics in the Nordic Countries , ed. Ann-Dorte Christensen, Christina Bergqvist, Anette Borchorst, Nina C. Raaum, and Auður Styrkársdóttir (Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1999), 137-57.
6.
Arnlaug Leira, Working Parents and the Welfare State: Family Change and Policy Reform in Scandinavia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
7.
Ruggie, State and Working Women.
8.
Kimberly J. Morgan, Working Mothers and the Welfare State: Religion and the Politics of Work-Family Policies in Western Europe and the United States (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006).
9.
Ibid.
10.
A Swedish scholar, Rita Liljeström, provided one of the earliest academic formulations of this model. See Arnlaug Leira, "Parenthood Change and Policy Reform in Scandinavia, 1970s-2000," in Politicising Parenthood in Scandinavia: Gender Relations in Welfare States, ed. A. L. Ellingsæter and A. Leira (Bristol, UK: Policy Press , 2006), 29.
11.
Helena Bergman and Barbara Hobson, "Compulsory Fatherhood: The Coding of Fatherhood in the Swedish Welfare State," in Making Men into Fathers: Men, Masculinities and the Social Politics of Fatherhood, ed. B. Hobson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 92-124.
12.
Anette Borchorst , "The Public-Private Split Rearticulated: Abolishment of the Danish Parental Leave," in Ellingsæter and Leira, Politicising Parenthood, 101-20.
13.
Morgan, Working Mothers .
14.
Kimberly J. Morgan and Kathrin Zippel, "Paid to Care: The Origins and Effects of Care Leave Policies in Western Europe," Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society10, no. 1 (2003): 49-85.
15.
Arnlaug Leira , "Caring as Social Right: Cash for Child Care and Daddy Leave," Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society5, no. 3 (1998): 362-78.
16.
Leira, "Parenthood Change ."
17.
Ibid., 23.
18.
National Agency for Education, Descriptive Data on Childcare, Schools, and Adult Education in Sweden 2006 (Stockholm: National Agency for Education, 2007), 19.
19.
Sara Brachet, Politiques familiales et assurance parentale en Suède, vol. 21 ( Paris: CAF Dossier d'Etudes, 2001 ).
20.
Ibid.
21.
Anne Lise Ellingsæter, "The Norwegian Childcare Regime and Its Paradoxes," in Ellingsæter and Leira, Politicising Parenthood, 126.
22.
Johanna Lammi-Taskula, "Nordic Men on Parental Leave: Can the Welfare State Change Gender Relations?," in Ellingsæter and Leira, Politicising Parenthood, 87-88.
23.
Leira, "Parenthood Change ," 45.
24.
Cited in Lammi-Taskula, "Nordic Men on Parental Leave," 93.
25.
Brachet, Politiques familiales; Lammi-Taskula , "Nordic Men on Parental Leave."
26.
Inez Kapborg , "Swedish Nurses' Experiences of Being Forced into Part-Time Employment," Nursing and Health Sciences2 (2000): 173-77.
27.
Gudny Bjork Eydal and Stefan Olafsson, "Social and Family Policy: The Case of Iceland," Third Report for the project Welfare Policy and Employment in the Context of Family Change, 2003, http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/spru/research/nordic/icelandpoli.pdf.
28.
Lilja Mósesdóttir , "Reconciliation of Work and Private Life in Iceland," report written for the European Commission, Gender and Employment Network, Group of Scientific Experts on Gender, Social Inclusion and Employment , 2005, http://www.bifrost.is/Files/Skra_0012275.pdf .
29.
Kees van Kersbergen , Social Capitalism: A Study of Christian Democracy and the Welfare State (London: Routledge, 1995).
30.
Jet Bussemaker , "Rationales of Care in Contemporary Welfare States: The Case of Childcare in the Netherlands," Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society5, no. 1 (1998): 70-96; Ilona Ostner, "Back to the Fifties: Gender and Welfare in Unified Germany," Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society1, no. 1 (1994): 32-59; and Chiara Saraceno, "The Ambivalent Familism of the Italian Welfare State," Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society1, no. 1 (1994): 60-82.
31.
Rianne Mahon , "Babies and Bosses: Gendering the OECD's Social Policy Discourse," in The OECD and Transnational Governance , ed. Rianne Mahon and Stephen McBride (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, forthcoming); and Kimberly J. Morgan, "Towards the Europeanization of Work-Family Policies? The Impact of the EU on Policies for Working Parents," in Gender Issues and Women's Movements in the Enlarged European Union, ed. S. Roth (New York: Berghahn Books , forthcoming).
32.
Adelbert Evers , Jane Lewis, and Birgit Riedel, "Developing Child-Care Provision in England and Germany: Problems of Governance," Journal of European Social Policy15, no. 3 (2005): 199; and Adelheid Hege, "Pères, femmes, enfants, migrants: changement de paradigme et résistances ," Chronique internationale de l'IRES101 (July 2006): 11-21.
33.
Jane Lewis , "Family Change and Family Policies in the UK ," Journal for the Study of British Cultures9, no. 2 (2003): 209-22. The government's 2001 Employment Bill created a right for fathers to take two weeks' paternity leave, a right to twenty-six weeks' paid adoption leave, and twenty-six more weeks of unpaid leave, and extended the maternity leave to twenty-six weeks of paid leave and twenty-six more unpaid weeks.
34.
The age of entry into the preschool is two and a half in both Belgium and France.
35.
Closing preschools and elementary schools for one afternoon per week was instituted to allow time for parents to arrange for religious education. Although few parents arrange for such education anymore, the continuation of this is an excellent example of dependence on now-obsolete structures.
36.
In Belgium, this is complicated by the devolution of responsibility to the French-and Flemish-speaking areas. In French-speaking Belgium, a Ministry of Childhood oversees all early childhood care and education, but there is still an administrative separation between education and care. In the Flemish areas, the Ministry of Education oversees the preschool system, and the Ministry for Welfare, Family, and Equal Opportunities has responsibility for child care. Oecd, Starting Strong II: Early Childhood Care and Education (Paris: OECD, 2006), 283 and 289.
37.
Some municipalities add on after-school care services for children attending these preschools as a cheaper way to provide day care: The facilities are paid for by the national education ministry, but the local government pays the costs of the care staff who work after official school hours. For some working parents, this rounds out the full work-day, while others will hire a baby-sitter to pick up their child(ren) after preschool is over.
38.
Oecd, Starting Strong, 46-47.
39.
Hege, " Pères, femmes, enfants, migrants"; and Evers et al., "Developing ChildCare Provision ," 197-98.
40.
Jane Jenson and Mariette Sineau , "France: Reconciling Republican Equality with `Freedom of Choice," in Who Cares? Women's Work, Childcare, and Welfare State Redesign, ed. Jane Jenson and Mariette Sineau ( Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), 88-117.
41.
Morgan and Zippel, "Paid to Care."
42.
Colette Fagan , Working-Time Preferences and Work-Life Balance in the EU: Some Policy Considerations for Enhancing the Quality of Life (Dublin: European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, 2003).
43.
Eligibility was increased, as was the value of the benefit. Parents also gained the right to take it part-time. Carole Bonnet and Morgane Labbé, "L'activité professionnelle des femmes après la naissance de leurs deux premiers enfants: l'impact de l'allocation parentale d'éducation," Etudes et Résultats37 ( 1999).
44.
Trudie Knijn , "Care Work: Innovations in the Netherlands," in Care Work: The Quest for Security, ed. Mary Daly (Geneva, Switzerland: ILO, 2001), 159-74.
45.
Wil Portegijs , Brigitte Hermans, and Vinodh Lalta, Emancipatiemonitor 2006 (The Hague: Sociaal en Cultureel Planbureau, 2006), 77.
46.
Ibid., 106. The figures are for people over the age of twenty-five with children.
