Gender and Social Policy Reforms

The section’s broad focus is gender perspective on welfare policies and reforms, with an interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of social policies, social/political/cultural factors influencing the policies, as well as the political mobilisation and gendered power around specific policy reforms. We are interested in the panel’s proposals focused on 1) broader comparisons of social policies analysed from a gender perspective, and 2) the understanding of policy developments and processes (including, e.g., discourses and cultural/religious underpinnings of policy choices, socio-economic/political/historical backgrounds, ‘anti-gender movements’, crises) focused on comparative or single case studies. Recognising conceptual and methodological pluralism, we encourage panel proposals arising from different conceptual and methodological approaches in analysing social policies and welfare reforms from a gender perspective and covering broad geographical areas. We welcome panels engaging with differences in normative assumptions about gender roles behind social policies developments and allowing for a more nuanced insight into the elements and configurations of various social policies prone to (re)produce gender (in)equalities. Studies focusing on family, child and long-term care are of particular interest here; however, the section is open to other policy areas. We particularly welcome studies that transcend the gender-only approaches, that is, provide a better understanding of complex and multiple inequalities that underline policy designs and developments stressing their genderising but also, for example, heteronorming or classing features. Therefore, we would like to inspire panels contributing to more critical analysis of social policies within the context of growing diversity in employment patterns, work and family choices, lifestyles and lifecycles. For example, panels engaged in studying policies in relation to increasing precariousness in the labour market, ‘new’ migrations, changing position of LGBTQ+ families, ‘families of choice’ and childfree/voluntary childless persons could offer new insights in how a gender perspective can contribute to the contemporary understanding of new challenges and institutional evolution of welfare policies. Moreover, COVID-19 pandemic that came on top of ‘pre-existing’ challenges in front of welfare states developments pointed more than ever at the essential role of care, unpaid work and families, and started to reshape policies. Proposals addressing gendered effects of the pandemic are particularly welcome, especially studies addressing policy changes (or policy stagnations) initiated by the pandemic, and implications these may have for various groups of men and women. Further, in the context of public debates and gendered power and politics, gender has (again) become a much-contested concept. ‘Anti-gender campaigns’ mobilise against the use of ‘gender’ as a cultural construction of women’s roles in the family and society, with the goal of (re)introducing an understanding that biological sex determines access to certain policies and forms of support. Emphasising women’s reproductive capacities, the proponents of the anti-gender movement, often linked to right-wing populist parties and/or neoconservative or religious civil society organisations and networks repeatedly advocate for policies supportive to the traditional gendered division of labour, simultaneously denying the rights of LGBTQ+ population. While existing research has covered the nature and sources of such mobilisations, few studies are analysing the impact of these political and social movements on (social) policy choices and reforms that would support and encourage women’s primary role as a mother and carer. Panels filling in this gap and engaging in the analysis of social policy as linked to ‘anti-gender campaigns’ or the right-wing populism are particularly welcome. To sum up, we are calling for new contributions to feminist scholarship on the gendered nature of welfare policies and invite panels that propose either reconceptualisations of existing analytical frameworks or new/reworked concepts for social policy analysis. We particularly encourage panel proposals engaging in the following topics: - Gender and comparative social policy analysis, especially family, child, and long-term care policies with a focus on intersectional analyses and the methodological complexities of assessing and measuring social policy change; - Policy responses to COVID-19 pandemic and challenges around care in a (post-) pandemic world; - Welfare policies and LGBTQ+ families and reproductive choices, ‘families of choice’ and childfree families; - Gender, new employment patterns, migrations and care policies; - Feminist interpretations of social policy reforms and gendered power relations, including actor-centred analysis and female leadership; - The impact of the European Union on policies at the Member States’ level, implementation of important gender equalizing tools, including EU directives; - The impact of ‘anti-gender campaigns’ and/or the right-wing populism and nativism, as well as a religion on gender-centred analysis of social policy.