Kerstin Sorensen, assistant professor in the Department of Political Science, presented a paper at a symposium on gender and politics at Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden, June 16. The paper, titled “Labor Scarcity, Housewives, and Women Workers: Economic Policy in the Making of the Welfare State,” examines the causal mechanism of gender-egalitarian policy development in Scandinavia, in particular the interaction of economic factors with gender ideologies. The findings indicate that there are multiple social democratic paths to the development of social policy, thus challenging the assumption of a common Scandinavian model.
A different version of the paper was presented at the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics 17th Annual Meeting held at Central European University and Corvinus University of Budapest, Budapest, Hungary, June 30-July 2. The theme of the conference was “What Counts? Calculation, Representation, Association.” Sorensen’s presentation was part of a symposium titled “Work-Life Balance and the State.”