Social Policies in Favour of Women: Some Explanations at the Turning of the 90s

✍ Scribed by Noémie Martin

• Publisher: Swiss Political Science Association
• Year: 2002
• Tongue: German
• Weight: 247 KB
• Volume: 8
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1420-3529
• DOI: 10.1002/j.1662-6370.2002.tb00340.x

✦ Synopsis

The present contribution puts forward an analysis of Swiss social policies in a gender perspective. While Swiss policies in favour of women were relatively weak until the 1990s, at the end of this decade several reforms were considered that aimed to improve the position of women within the Welfare State system. The goal of this article is to account for the change that occurred during the 1990s. Firstly, the comparative feminist approaches on gender and the Welfare State are shortly presented. These provide a theoretical framework that is then used to study the transformations of Swiss policies in favour of women and suggest an explanation of the change that occurred at the end of the 1990s. Results show that several factors played a role for the transformation of the Swiss Welfare State with respect to women. The explanation should thus be sought in the interaction between these factors.