Social-democratic imaginaries of transformations in conservative gender regimes

Abstract

Social-democratic gender regimes are imagined in social politics and feminist scholarship in reference to Swedish social democracy. The mainstreaming of gender equality through all policy domains, but especially state provided social care sets Sweden apart as a model for gender equality policy in Europe and the world. Through an examination of the transformation of the German gender regime, this article questions whether state provided social care is the only or even the best possible way to shift unpaid care labor from women in the domestic sphere to public provision. In Germany and other conservative gender regimes, state financed and densely regulated welfare markets are carving a pathway to change which neither depends on state provision or competitive markets. The article utilizes institutional methodologies for studying change to analyze German welfare market policy impacts on the conservative gendered division of labor, to explore the alternative feminist imaginaries that may lead to more disruptive change, and how these changes might constitute a different variety of social-democratic gender regime. Through an original empirical analysis of recent policies to shift early child care, elder care, and domestic labor to paid work, the analysis shows that the German conservative gender regime is in transformation, though by layering new forms of paid care labor on to the unpaid (and underpaid) labor of women in the home. The same policies however, open the door for ‘real utopian’ alternatives, and a different logic of social democratic gender regime in Germany, rooted less in state provision as in Sweden, and more in local and mutualistic arrangements of caring and cooperation.