The interaction of gender regimes and long-term care provision across Europe: Ambivalent intersections of gender, class and ethnicity

Abstract

The analysis of gender regimes in Western welfare capitalism proposed by Sylvia Walby (2009. Globalization & inequalities: Complexity and contested modernities. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.) has triggered a debate on the fruitfulness of the concept for analyzing social change in the full range of Global North countries. Among others, the distinction between modern neoliberal and social democratic regimes, implying better ground for gender equality in the latter, not least due to public provision of care services, has raised criticism. The article contributes to this debate by analyzing long-term care provision in three European countries, representing different gender and welfare regime types. Results show that the respective patterns, characterized by migrantization of formal and informal care, do not follow the assumed path-dependent regime logics in all respects. They motivate rethinking the gender regime approach with regard to the juxtaposition of social democratic and neoliberal regimes (while omitting conservative and familialistic regime features) and suggest extending the national focus to transnational practices and institutions.