Left parties' preference on social policies for women in the western countries, 1900-1960

Comparative welfare research commonly assumes that leftist parties have been always supportive of social policies for women, given their endorsement of social and gender equality. Scholars have provided empirical findings indicating that leftist parties contributed to the expansion of social policies for women since the post-industrial era. Another group of scholars has observed that the women’s movement formed alliances with leftist parties to push for the enactment of social policies for women in the early twentieth century. However, case-based studies have provided evidence that trade unions and leftist parties were openly opposed to women’s labor participation and imposed restrictions on women’s labor to avoid wage competition in the early and mid-twentieth centuries. Before the rise of the second wave of feminism when the employment of women had not normalized, the gendered division of paid and unpaid labor was embedded in the political discourses of leftist parties. Although gender cleavage is arguably ‘the ultimate crosscutting cleavage’ (Teele 2018)—even women have had different stances on diverse policy agendas depending on their socio-economic status or religious beliefs—the historical stance of leftist parties on women workers has been left unquestioned. This article aims to develop a theoretical framework and systematically examine the leftist parties’ political support for social policy for women in 20 Western countries from 1900 until 1960, using an original historical dataset of family allowance and paid maternity leave. I argue that leftist parties supported social policies for women only under certain conditions. Specifically, the political support of leftist parties would be more visible for social policies for women as dependent vis-à-vis social policies for women workers. Leftist parties would support social policies for women more actively once women are entitled to voting rights or shortly before female suffrage. Lastly, leftist parties are likely to support social policies for women when job competition was low. The empirical result of this paper will expand our understanding of partisan politics as well as the work-family policies, in which gender and historical perspectives have been rare contributions.