What is the relationship between women and the welfare state? A central issue in feminist discourse from the 1970s on, this question has provoked considerable scholarly disagreement and widely differing opinions. Examining in particular the welfare state organization of social reproduction, the relationship between women and the welfare state has been pictured in terms of both a ‘patriarchy’ (e.g. Eisenstein 1979) and a ‘partnership’ (e.g. Siim 1984). In the international literature the assignment of caring to women is often assumed to contribute importantly to the structurally inferior situation of women in modern welfare states, and is interpreted as an expression of patriarchal domination (Eisenstein 1979; Frazer 1987). Scandinavian research, on the other hand, commonly offers a more positive interpretation. Hernes (1982; 1984) points to the possibility of alliances being formed between women and the welfare state. Siim (1984) even argues that around issues of human reproduction a partnership was established between women and the welfare states in Denmark and Sweden in which the state acknowledged the dual obligations of mothers to wage-work and childcare.

The relationship, however, is more complex than what is conveyed in the conceptualization as either ‘patriarchy’ or ‘partnership’, as I shall show by examining how the welfare state relates to working mothers. Different welfare states have adopted distinctly different approaches in this regard (see e.g. Kamerman and Kahn 1981). Even within Western Europe there is no uniform set of motherhood policies (Leira 1987a; Moss 1988). Recent research shows the relationship as ambivalent, shaped by mutual dependence as well as contradictions (Ruggie 1984; Haavind 1987; Sassoon 1987).