Gender Agency at the Intersection of State, Market and Family: Changes in Fertility and Maternal Labor Supply in Eight Countries

Current debates on the welfare state entail two intertwined questions. First, does a nation have sufficient active labor force participation to maintain the benefits for non-participants? Second, do social provisions exacerbate or attenuate class, ethnic and other distinctions within society? As predominantly structural or institutional debates, these discussions tend to exclude the impact social provisions have on facilitating individual agency among members of social groups. Yet the institutions of state, market and family interact to shape a gender order which specifies the types of social... Mehr ...