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Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) is a method for the systematic analysis of cases. A holistic view of cases and an approach to causality emphasizing complexity are some of its core features. Over the last decades, QCA has found application in many fields of the social sciences. In spite of this, its use in feminist research has been slower, and only recently QCA has been applied to topics related to social care, the political representation of women, and reproductive politics. In spite of the comparative turn in feminist studies, researchers still privilege qualitative methods, in particular case studies, and are often skeptical of quantitative techniques (Spierings 2012). These studies show that the meaning and measurement of many gender concepts differ across countries and that the factors leading to feminist success and failure are context specific. However, case study analyses struggle to systematically account for the ways in which these forces operate in different locations.

Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) is a method for the systematic analysis of cases. A holistic view of cases and an approach to causality emphasizing complexity are some of its core features. Over the last decades, QCA has found application in many fields of the social sciences. In spite of this, its use in feminist research has been slower, and only recently QCA has been applied to topics related to social care, the political representation of women, and reproductive politics. In spite of the comparative turn in feminist studies, researchers still privilege qualitative methods, in particular case studies, and are often skeptical of quantitative techniques (Spierings 2012). These studies show that the meaning and measurement of many gender concepts differ across countries and that the factors leading to feminist success and failure are context specific. However, case study analyses struggle to systematically account for the ways in which these forces operate in different locations.

Scholars have often oscillated between celebrating the transformative potential of solidarity and recognising the ambivalent nature of cooperation for disadvantaged and marginalised groups. How can we make sense of these differences? This article addresses this question by unpacking intersectional solidarity along two dimensions: the ways issues are framed; and the extent to which organisations adopt a transformative praxis to redress disparities in resources and representation. By focusing on the interplay between discursive and material dimensions of power, we identify four types of intersectional solidarity, with different transformative potential. The usefulness of this typology is illustrated by means of secondary analysis of coalition work developed around reproductive justice and domestic workers' rights. It shows that only an ideal form of transformative solidarity reflects feminist normative theorising of an alliance across differences.

ABSTRACTThis article puts public policy research in dialogue with gender and politics studies to enhance our understanding of the implementation of care policies. Care policies present interesting problems of implementation because of the multiplicity of aims, values, inequalities, actors and levels of governance involved. Nonetheless, previous research shows two important gaps: 1) the neglect of discursive factors in studies of implementation; and 2) the lack of attention to implementation processes in the analysis of care policies. This article suggests a general framework to address these issues which considers discourse as a transversal factor connecting actors and institutions engaged in policy implementation. The articles in this special issue demonstrate that including discourses in the analysis of care policy implementation makes visible the influence of gender+ norms and the dynamic and contentious processes surrounding them in a variety of institutional arenas, levels, and national contexts.

The article revisits comparative research on gender relations and the welfare state through the lens of the tensions between paid work and care. It discusses how these tensions shaped the intellectual enterprise of gendering welfare state analysis and women's political activity in the welfare state, as well as the emergence of normative perspectives to overcome divisions between care and paid work. It concludes by identifying three challenges for future research posed by intersectionality, immigration and the gender implications of long-term welfare state change. Nonetheless, the greatest cross-cutting challenge remains the need to balance care and paid work in feminist analysis of welfare states.

The article revisits comparative research on gender relations and the welfare state through the lens of the tensions between paid work and care. It discusses how these tensions shaped the intellectual enterprise of gendering welfare state analysis and women's political activity in the welfare state, as well as the emergence of normative perspectives to overcome divisions between care and paid work. It concludes by identifying three challenges for future research posed by intersectionality, immigration and the gender implications of long-term welfare state change. Nonetheless, the greatest cross-cutting challenge remains the need to balance care and paid work in feminist analysis of welfare states.

This paper uses fuzzy-set ideal type analysis to assess the conformity of European leave regulations to four theoretical ideal typical divisions of labour: male breadwinner, caregiver parity, universal breadwinner and universal caregiver. In contrast to the majority of previous studies, the focus of this analysis is on the extent to which leave regulations promote gender equality in the family and the transformation of traditional gender roles. The results of this analysis demonstrate that European countries cluster into five models that only partly coincide with countries' geographical proximity. Second, none of the countries considered constitutes a universal caregiver model, while the male breadwinner ideal continues to provide the normative reference point for parental leave regulations in a large number of European states. Finally, we witness a growing emphasis at the national and EU levels concerning the universal breadwinner ideal, which leaves gender inequality in unpaid work unproblematized.

Latin America witnessed a resurgence of protests during the 1990s and early 2000s. Citizens took to the streets to protest against the liberalization of public services and rising levels of inequalities and poverty. This situation partly changed in the decade of the 2000s when the region experienced a period of sustained social policy expansion intended to extend protections to formerly excluded groups. Did popular mobilization have an influence on the turn toward universalism in Latin American social policy? This paper explores this question by looking at the relationship between protest, the strength of the Left and the adoption of expansive reforms in healthcare, conditional cash transfers and noncontributory pensions. The findings bring support to the idea that protest is a relevant aspect of the politics of social policy reform, although its effects are both sensitive to other characteristics of the political environment and the particular policy dimension considered. ; América Latina presenció un resurgimiento de las protestas durante los 1990s y principios de la décadasiguiente. Las personas salieron a las calles para oponerse a la liberalización de los servicios públicos y a niveles crecientes de desigualdad y pobreza. Esta situación parcialmente cambió en la década de 2000, cuando la región experimentó un período de expansión de las políticas sociales que extendió protecciones a grupos antes excluidos. ¿Qué rol tuvo la movilización popular en el giro al universalismo en las políticas sociales latinoamericanas? Este artículo explora este tema observando la relación entre la protesta, la fuerza electoral de la izquierda, y la adopción de reformas expansivas en salud, transferencias condicionadas, y pensiones no contributivas. El análisis ofrece evidencia de que la protesta es un aspecto relevante de las reformas de las políticas sociales, aunque sus efectos son sensibles a otras características del contexto político, y a la dimensión específica de la política considerada.

AbstractThe ability to produce desired outcomes represents an important basis of the legitimacy of social policies. Nonetheless, policy outcomes have not systematically figured in the analysis of childcare regimes despite growing political interest in issues such as female employment, gender wage gap, and men's involvement in childcare. In this article, we use fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis to investigate the relationship between the configuration of policy instruments, attitudes toward childcare and outcomes in 21 European countries. Our results show that there is only one mix of policy instruments consistently linked with positive gender equality outcomes and this route has the quality of the universal caregiver model. It also demonstrates that both a combination of policy instruments and favorable attitudinal factors are necessary to produce desirable outcomes in the gender division of paid work and unpaid childcare.

The contributors investigate how the large scale structures of capitalism and the local social relations of workplaces and organizations shape each other. They argue for a new integration of political economy and the sociology of work and organizations

Previous studies suggest the relative importance of the impact of childcare policies on mental health in parents. There have also been studies showing that welfare states have differing policy packages, consisting of a mixture of familizing and individualizing policy measures. This study builds on and extends this knowledge by carrying out a European comparison of the association between mental well health and family policies. We use Lohmann and Zagel's familizing and individualizing policy indices to describe family policies. Our main interest is differences in mental health depending on the country, household, and individual-level characteristics. Therefore, we apply a multilevel model to 26 countries included in the 2013 wave of the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions survey (N = 141,648). The analysis found that, in general, parents of children under 13 have better mental health than other adults. We found individualizing policy measures to be positively related to mental health in parents, while familizing policies had a negative relationship. No evidence was found for the combined presence of individualizing and familizing policies making a difference to mental health in parents. These results suggest that welfare states could help parents by promoting individualizing policies to make parenthood a less stressful experience.