Theorizing Complex Inequalities: Gender Regimes, Regulations, and Change

New feminist political economic studies combine comparative theories of the welfare state, varieties of capitalism and gender bargains/regimes to investigate complex inequalities and the variability of gender and class relations across countries and world regions. However, intersectional patterns do not fit neatly into existing typologies. Transnational mobilities further complicate theorizations of gender and class. This paper’s discussion of changing reproductive bargains builds on and links meso-institutional to macro approaches to yield a better understanding of gender transformations in relationship to capitalism. Reproductive bargains are being renegotiated in the face of fiscal crises and neo-liberal assaults on social provisioning. As a result, needs are being met by some combination of market-based care work and the paid and unpaid reproductive labor of women in private households. Marketization of care and a shift away from public services foster unprotected and less protected home-based, low-paid commodified care often performed by migrant labor in domestic service. Only by forensically identifying modalities of regulation across policy domains and by interrogating the tensions between and gaps within regulations can we account for the full array of labor market advantages and disadvantages experienced by different groups of men and women. The disjuncture between labor regulations, immigration laws and citizenship policies generate complex patterns of inequalities within and across countries. These modalities of regulation reflect the national configurations and intersections of the gendered welfare state with gendered employment regimes producing gender gaps.