Epsing-Anderson's Three Typologies Of The Welfare State Regimes

Feminist scholars and scholars of gender and the welfare states have criticized the shortcomings of Esping-Anderson’s three typologies of the welfare state regimes. Nonetheless, several empirical studies show that Epsing-Anderson’s welfare state regimes do have some explanatory power in theorizing and investigating differences and similarities of gender policies especially with regards to female employment and labor force participation. Across all three typologies of the welfare state regimes, the (welfare) state significantly contribute to ameliorate the gap in wage and labor force participation between the sexes by employing women in the public sectors. Overall, liberal, conservative, and social democratic welfare state regimes exhibit distinctive patterns of public policy regarding gender and female labor force participation.
In their investigation of the “public sector premiums” and female employment, Gornick and Jacobs conclude that the size of public sector is important in female employment as well as policy packages. Because income distribution is more compressed in the public sector, public sector earning is more favorable for lower-income workers as well as women. Furthermore, it provides opportunities for women to hold professional, managerial, and technical positions …show more content…
They argue that female labor force participation in public sector leads to unionization of female workers, which contributes to political mobilization of women and in turn, increase women’s support for the welfare state and the political left. In other words, the positive effect on the expansion of public social services is an interaction between women’s labor force participation and social democratic rule. Huber and Stephens’ findings suggest that higher female labor force participation in the social democratic welfare regime stems from the regime’s