Long-Term Care and Gender Equality in European Welfare Regimes

Abstract

European societies face pressing challenges of ageing populations which have inspired reform measures to upgrade the systems of long-term care. These reforms have had controversial effects on gender inequality by intervening in intergenerational ties and dependencies within the family, and the division of responsibilities between state, market, family, and community actors in providing care. This article maps the major directions and systemic outcomes of long-term care policy reforms in the European Union member states by using a fuzzy-set ideal type analysis. We examine how care policies and work-family reconciliation policies shape long-term care regimes against the master typology proposed by Nancy Fraser on the gendered linkages of caring and earning. We reveal aggregate gender equality impacts of intermingling care policy dynamics and migrant care work effects. The results are explained in a four-pronged ideal type scheme to which European countries belong. Legacies of the well-known European welfare policy regimes are visible, but the Central and East European countries do also show some surprising pictures and modest results of gender equality advancement are visible in organizing long-term care. The latter experience indicates that transformative gender relations in care can be found not only in the richest and most generous welfare countries in Europe.