This panel addresses debates about the theorization of gender at the meso-institutional and macro-systemic levels in order to engage in historical comparative analyses of varieties of gender regimes in Europe. Historical-institutional approaches have yielded new insights into the transformation of gender regimes. Today however, the sustainability of gender transformations in Europe are challenged by the financial and economic crisis, demographic change, and transnational mobilities (within and into the European Union). The papers address the sustainability of gender transformations in relation to state policies, institutional arrangements and gender systems that are consequential for explaining rising and complex inequalities in Europe and beyond. A key issue concerns the interaction of gender and class inequalities.

The papers propose indicators of gender inequalities in the context of financialization and transnationalization, investigate the impact of the crisis on gender inequalities, and bring to light the interaction of European with non-European gender regimes especially in relation to the increasing dependence of households on migrants as unpaid care and domestic labor. The papers also engage with a set of policy shifts re-shaping gender equalities in specific institutional domains, including employment, welfare, taxation, households, violence, and political representation, not all of which take the same direction in relation to gender equality. Are varieties of gender regimes congruent with varieties of capitalism? Does the crisis restructure regimes or just some institutions?