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Determinants of a Silent (R)evolution: Understanding the Expansion of Family Policy in Rich OECD Countries
- Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society
- Oxford University Press
- Volume 22, Number 1, Spring 2015
- pp. 1-37
- Article
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This paper contributes to the comparative social policy literature in two ways. First, we use multiple correspondence analysis in order to assess the different directions and the degree of (employment-oriented) family policy change over the past three decades in 18 rich Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. Second, we perform a series of correlations to identify the core drivers of these developments. Our main findings—based on five international datasets—are: (i) we have been witnesses of a significant expansion of family policies over the past three decades in almost all countries analysed, although the degree of change (distinguished by first-, second- and third-order change) differs across the OECD area; and (ii) whilst in the 1980s and 1990s social democracy and organised women were key drivers of family policy expansion, during the 2000s public opinion, that increasingly seems to support a “modernised” family lifestyle in which mothers are employed, seems to have played an essential role in explaining policy change.