Why do younger cohorts in advanced democracies hold more conservative gender attitudes? Rather than understanding these attitudes as a “backlash,” I argue that these represent mixes of traditional and egalitarian attitudes that ultimately reflect the gendered character of family policies. Using an original dataset of family policies, I show that policies which alleviate care burdens and encourage workforce

This article argues that shared problematizations—shared political and public ways of thinking—legitimize policies and their outcomes. To support this argument, it examines the legitimation of gendered welfare reform in the recent U.K. context. Drawing on focus groups with the public, it provides evidence that the public’s problematization of welfare, specifically that reform was necessary to “make

Consensual unions in Latin America are becoming more common than marriages. We analyze the evolution of the laws recognizing consensual unions as well as those proscribing domestic violence, including patrimonial violence, for nineteen countries. While the formal property rights of married women and those in consensual unions are now similar, we show that the latter are in a more precarious position

This article is based on an analysis of the results of a survey conducted among 106 experts in the field of family policy in Kazakhstan in March 2020. The study results provided an expert assessment of family policy effectiveness in Kazakhstan and civil society’s role in it. The results show that experts assess the effectiveness of the civil sector in implementing the national family policy above the

This special issue advances feminist inquiry and theorizing of the politics of knowledge within our current, highly paradoxical societal landscape. It draws together feminist analyses of “expertise” with feminist epistemologies of situated knowledge, Black feminist thought, theory of affect and emotions, sociology of knowledge, and science and technology studies (STS). As such, it enables a timely

AbstractThis article proposes the concept of feminist political epistemology to examine the changing modalities of knowledge production in Germany. The article examines how German gender equality policies have been embedded in and shaped by the shifting modalities of knowledge production and the remaking of the science expertise–politics nexus. The two formative time periods investigated—the 1960s–1970s

AbstractThrough an analysis of the Swedish government development program for gender mainstreaming in state agencies—the JIM (Jämställdhet i myndigheter)program—this article analyzes how gender equality is constructed (gender knowledge) and what role specialized knowledge (gender expertise) has in policy implementation. The article claims that even in best-case scenarios, such as Sweden, where intensive

AbstractThis article examines how gender budgeting (GB) activists in the United Kingdom have sought to practice intersectionality. It draws on Black feminists’ critiques of white feminists’ tendency to deploy intersectionality as a “cooled out buzz word” that relies on modernist, Western feminist epistemology. Results highlight the limitations of modernist positivist epistemologies, which are often

This special section advances theorizing of the systems of gender-based inequalities from a macro-perspective by engaging with a broader world regional scope of historical and comparative analyses to reconsider the varieties of gender regimes.

AbstractApplying Walby’s model of gender regime, with some modifications, to the Middle East and North Africa, I highlight the importance of the family as an institutional domain, replace the ideal types of social-democratic and neoliberal public gender regimes with neopatriarchal and conservative-corporatist, and elucidate feminist organizing and mobilizing as a key driver in the transition from one

AbstractWhat are the varieties of gender regimes? The focus is the theory of varieties of gender regimes—domestic and public regimes; and, within the public, both neoliberal and social democratic varieties—and pathways to alternative forms. Is this model sufficient to encompass the turn to less progressive forms and multiple global regions or are further varieties needed? At stake here is the distinction

AbstractIn this article, we extend Walby’s analysis of gender transformations to theorize gender relations in conservative modernizations. We draw insights from a historical comparison of gender inequalities in Germany and Japan, to draw a distinction between conservative authoritarian and conservative democratic gender regimes, and their transformations. Conservative gender regimes, we argue, constitute

AbstractThis article applies Walby’s systemic theory of gender regime to Spain’s decentralized state, to capture changes in the gender regime. Locating the “hegemon” at different levels of government for each domain (economy, polity, violence, and civil society) and considering interactions between governmental levels provided a clear understanding of changes in the gender regime. The relationship

AbstractGiven the current polarization of gender knowledge in the public discourse, this article investigates the “other side” of gender knowledge production. Building on feminist standpoint literature, I conduct a close reading of the affective-discursive dynamics of knowledge production in two anti-feminist online communities in the United States and India. I find that anti-feminist communities appropriate

AbstractThis article focuses on the epistemic strategies employed by ultraconservative movements to oppose women’s reproductive rights and the ways in which the women’s movement counteracts these efforts. The core argument is that nowadays the opponents of gender equality and sexual democracy are seeking not only political but also epistemic power, producing a new body of gender knowledge. A detailed

AbstractIn 2016, nationwide protests in Chile demanded a major reform to the privatized pension system. However, experts saw protesters’ demands as not a viable policy option. In this study, I demonstrate how a group of free-market economists acquired authority as experts in pension policy by gendering their expertise. As a result, they have been able to deny, suppress, and dismiss knowledge on topics

AbstractThis article focuses on the creative and innovative modes of negotiation that women in severely patriarchal societies often exhibit in their attempts to actively pursue their own goals in the face of risk. Based on group interviews with Bedouin women in southern Israel about their everyday lives, the research explores both the risks and the ways in which the women deal with them. The research

AbstractScholars have recently documented inequalities in parents’ spending on children in the United States. This article situates these trends cross-nationally by using expenditure data from the United States, Australia, Spain, and Norway. The article investigates differences across countries in the links between household income, female labor force participation, and spending on children. The links

AbstractThis article analyzes eligibility for parental-leave benefits in twenty-one European countries. It distinguishes four ideal-type approaches to how leave-related benefits are granted (in-)dependent of parents’ labor market position: universal parenthood model, selective parenthood model, universal adult-worker model, and selective adult-worker model. An eligibility index is created to measure

AbstractWhether and to what extent the means of family members and familial care activities are relevant in the calculation of welfare benefits is often neglected in welfare state analysis. By quantifying qualitative institutional data, we analyze this aspect and how it has changed in regard to minimum-income benefits for persons of pension age and unemployed persons in ten European welfare states