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Welfare State Change as a Polanyian Double Movement. How social policy change affects women across different social classes. (POLWOM)

Project holders : 

Research team : 

  • Edoardo Magalini (OECD) 

Project description :

The POLWOM project contributes to the literature investigating and interpreting the connection between welfare state change, gender and class comparatively. Theoretically, it analyses how policy changes concern women across different social classes, employing a framework grounded in Polanyi’s double movement perspective. Empirically, it proposes a mixed-methods approach, with a quantitative comparative analysis of welfare state change (analysing labour market protection, family policy and income maintenance) in 21 high-income countries and a qualitative comparative historical analysis of three cases. The quantitative analysis employs different factorial techniques to condense the information from dozens of indicators, construct policy generosity country-scores, and describe the characteristics of each country in a comparative setting. We enrich our research with a comparative historical analysis based on process tracing – which will also allow us to sharpen the quantitative analysis and illuminate its blind spots – capturing the characteristics of reforms in Sweden, France and Italy and their concern for women across different social classes over the last 40 years.

Publications :

DELES, R., FERRAGINA, E., ROSSIGNOL-BRUNET, M.ET ZOLA, A. 2025. L’égalité de genre favorise-t-elle un rapport positif à la parentalité ? Régimes de genre et politiques familiales en Europe. Revue française de science politique, 75(1), 119-145. https://doi.org/10.3917/rfsp.751.0119 

FERRAGINA E., 2025. The ‘two lives’ of Esping-Andersen and the revival of a research programme: Gender equality, employment and redistribution in contemporary social policy. Social Policy Administration, Vol. 59:1. https://doi.org/10.1111/spol.13029 

FERRAGINA E. 2025. Accessing early childcare: A study of administrative barriers in France. Social Policy and Society. http://doi.org/10.1017/S1474746425100857 

Poster of the project - July 2024