The crisis of care in conservative welfare states and the need for a gender-sensitive approach to policy making

Sammanfattning: The so-called capitalist crisis of care has been theorized starting since the 80s. It has been and explored by two literature streams: the ‘feminist’ and the ‘mainstream’. New social and economic challenges in relation to welfare state systems trigger the interest of scholars and policy makers who are looking for sustainable responses to care needs. Welfare states have been repeatedly grouped into clusters, and the most prominent division has been made by Gøsta Esping-Andersen between liberal, social-democratic and conservative countries. This study focuses on care strategies of countries belonging the latter group. Taking a distance from both the long-standing “Scandinavian bias” and the indicators adopted by mainstream theorists, the conservative cluster in this study includes Mediterranean countries. The purpose is to show and describe the wide range of arrangements from a gender perspective, which means by adding equality indicators to the framework. After the description of countries’ arrangements relative to domestic work, childcare and long-term care, the final discussion focuses on ways to re-think old clusters in a gender-sensitive perspective. This study aims at contributing to the creation of a new policymaking approach, which would consider the specificities of countries and work towards a more gender equal care system.