Collective identities, women's power resources, and themaking of welfare states1

BARBARA HOBSON and MARIKA LINDHOLMStockholm University; Northwestern University

Over the past several years, we have seen a surge of research andpublications on gender and welfare statism,2 as a response to a decadeof feminist criticism to the ` gender blind syndrome'' in the dominanttheories and typologies of welfare-state theorizing.3 From anotherperspective, they can be seen as part of a trend to include other socialactors in the development of welfare states and the construction ofwelfare-policy regime typologies.4 Studies of race, ethnicity, gender,and citizenship status have underscored the need for multidimensionalanalyses of social rights, both to recapture the past complexity inwelfare-state formation and to develop frameworks for multiculturalsocieties.5

Broadening the terrain of welfare-state theorizing around citizenshipassumes that distributive con£icts are linked to struggles for recogni-tion of political and cultural identities, new social movements, and thecontests over meanings of rights and needs in the framing of citizen-ship. This scholarship represents a break with the classic formulationof T. H. Marshall, who posited a relationship between class and citi-zenship in his sequence of civil, political, and social rights.6 Althoughthey di¡er in their di¡erent approaches,Walter Korpi's power-resourcetheory and Gosta Esping-Andersen's policy-regime model are derivedfrom and build upon the Marshallian frame.7 Korpi argues that thepower of workers resides in the ``politics of numbers and votingstrength,'' and the contests between capital and labor are seen in termsof workers' ability to use political resources through political represen-tation to modify market processes. Esping-Andersen, in developing hisideal policy regime types, also approaches the power structure in termsof the power resources of capitalists, who have greater resources in themarket, though workers have potential to exert resources in the politythat a¡ect the levels of decommodi¢cation in welfare states.8

Theory and Society 26: 475^508, 1997.ß 1997Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

This framework circumscribes the boundaries of power resource mod-els and forms of power articulation in welfare states. First, it does notprovide theoretical space for other mobilized collectivities, particularlythose social groups who lack access to or have weak positions withinunions or political parties.9 It assumes a static actor who already hasaccumulated power resources and invested them in political parties.Second, it does not provide much theoretical leverage for analyzingmoments of transition, when citizenship rights are being recast andrecon¢gured.10 This is particularly true of the policy regime paradigm,which assumes linear trajectories in welfare states.11 Historical contin-gency, emerging social movements, and discursive arenas, where newmeanings of rights and obligations are given play, lie outside the policyregime paradigm.

Basic theoretical issues are at stake. The logical question to pose in apower resource framework involving welfare-state formation is howpower resources are activated, deployed, and linked to certain featuresof welfare states. Underlying this formulation is an argument for con-textualization, and more speci¢cally, for the analysis of the relationbetween the construction of collective identities and the power resour-ces social actors accumulate. The very processes of group formationnot only shape outcomes and what policies are enacted, but also havethe potential to transform the content and meanings of citizenship andsocial rights.

These insights concerning process-oriented theorizing are derivedfrom two theoretical lines. One is the social-movement literature thathas brought to light the role of cultural meanings in the process offorming political identities.12 From this perspective the production ofmeanings is important for composing constituencies, retaining loyalty,and articulating claims in welfare states. Another is the recent feministdiscussion of citizenship that links social citizenship to participatoryrights, not in the linear Marshallian framework. Instead, they suggesta dynamic and open-ended process that re£ects the ability of groups torepresent themselves in the arena of politics and to challenge construc-tions of citizenship that shade out areas of life de¢ned as ``private'' orwomen's sphere.13

The essential argument of this article is that the process of identityformation itself is crucial for understanding the ability of collectivitiesto articulate claims and exercise power in welfare states. In light of thegrowing interest in women's agency in welfare-state formation,14 we

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turn our attention to women's collectivities. To capture the narrativespeci¢city of gender-identity formation in its social context, we focuson one case, Swedish women's collective action during the 1930s, acrucial period of welfare-state formation.We present a dynamic modelfor analyzing power resources of women's collectivities. Our approacho¡ers strategies and insights of analyzing societies in transition, whichare relevant to the current highly contested terrain around gender andwelfare states inWestern Europe and the recasting of gender in spheresof family, market, and state within post-communist societies. Ourpurpose in this study is twofold:

One purpose is to bring the social movement perspective into a powerresource framework. How collective identities are formed and the dis-cursive and symbolic terrain of social actors are dimensions lacking inpower resource theorizing on welfare states. In fact, power resourcetheorizing has been relatively untouched by developments in social-movement theory.15 By introducing the role of cultural meanings andcollective identities, scholars have extended the terrain of the resource-mobilization paradigm. This scholarship has deepened our knowledgeabout the dynamics of social movements, their social psychology, andtheir processes of recruitment. However, these perspectives have notbeen applied to studies of how collectivities exercise power in policy-making spheres within di¡erent societal contexts.16 Thus, our analysisis an attempt to build a bridge between two theoretical currents: social-movement and power resource theorizing (Figure 1).

Our second purpose is to o¡er analytical strategies that reveal women'sagency in the construction of citizenship rights. Our research contestsfeminist analyses of welfare states that assume women are inherentlypolitically weak actors in a closed patriarchal system.17 Moreover, weimplicitly argue against a view of women's agency that is embedded inrecent historical studies of the American welfare state, that women'sability to make claims on the state emerged when there were weakinstitutional structures.18

The recent wave of historical studies on women's collectivities and theorigins of welfare states have led to modi¢cations in both power re-source theorizing and policy regime analysis. Feminist research on thewelfare state has made visible the lack of gender dimensions in thedominant studies of welfare statism and policy regimes.19 But they donot lead toward a theoretical framework on women's agency in thedevelopment of citizenship rights, nor an understanding of when and

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how gender politics really did matter in the development of welfarestates.20

Although we focus on women's collectivities and claim making, ourmodel could apply to other patterns of collective identity formationand contests of citizenship rights. It illustrates the interdependencies incomposing constituencies, deployment of power resources, and ex-tending social citizenship.

We apply our model to Swedish women's mobilization during the1930s, a case that ¢ts neither the policy regime theorists nor feministinterpretations of the gendered dimensions in Swedish welfare-stateformation. In the former, women's interests are subsumed under classinterests, or represented in the concept of the family's role in welfareprovisioning.21 The feminist version maintains that women were ob-jects but not subjects of policymaking, that Sweden is a case of femi-nism without feminists.22 Another variant of this position amongSwedish feminists, the patriarchal explanation, argues that malenorms dominate the power structures so that women, even when inte-grated in the Swedish political sphere, have been ghettoized into femalesectors of policymaking.23

Before turning to our case study, we want to clarify some of the termsand assumptions in the model. To describe the process of formingcollective identities, we have coined the term, Composing of Constitu-encies, suggestive of our process-oriented approach. It encompassesboth the process of creating shared meanings and consciousnessamong diverse individuals within a social category ^ in our case,diverse groups of women ^ and the framing of grievances and goals ofa social movement. We consider constituencies broadly as the repre-sentation of social groups in discursive arenas, and politics within andacross parties.

Introducing the composing of constituencies into the conceptual frame-work o¡ers an antidote against a priori categories, such as women or

Figure 1. Collective identity formation and power resources.

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workers. It undercuts the notion that women's power resources aredirectly correlated with women's right to vote, a sine quo non in com-parative analysis of welfare states for analyzing policy formationaround gender issues or family issues.24 Our position re£ects a currentstrand in feminist political theory that assumes that no ¢xed interestsof women can be known outside of politics.25 It rejects both an essen-tialized notion of motherhood or care or a view of relational feminismbased upon women's distinct spheres.26 Before we understand women'spower resources, we have to understand the making of women's collec-tive identities in the same way that William Sewell and E. P. Thompsonapproached the making of the working class.27

Women's power resources are derived from being recognized as aconstituency whose leaders can represent women's interests in thediscursive arena of politics as well as threaten to reward friends andpunish enemies with women's votes. The deployment of power re-sources comprises two ¢elds: (1) the representation of women's claimsin discursive arenas and (2) the building of cross-class and cross-partyalliances that enable women's collectivities to speak for a majorityconstituency ^ women's interests.

To reveal the ways in which women's groups were able to imprint theirvisions into the design of welfare-state building leads toward analysesof power resources that are not always lodged in traditional politicalarenas or institutional ¢elds (unions or political parties, for example).We introduce the concept of discursive resources into our model,which acknowledges that social groups engage in struggles over themeanings and the boundaries of political and social citizenship. Thisincludes the cultural narratives and metaphors that social actorsexploit in their public representations as well as the contesting ideo-logical stances that they take on dominant themes and issues on thepolitical agenda.

Implicit in our analyses is an assumption that institutional contextsare not stable con¢gurations in which gender is encoded, the point ofdeparture in policy regime theorizing. Rather they are dynamic sys-tems in which historical contingency, social actors, and new discursive¢elds destabilize and recon¢gure institutional arrangements. Bene¢t-ing from the recent feminist scholarship on gender and welfare-stateformation, our approach departs somewhat from their analyses ofpolitical opportunity. Take, for example, Theda Skocpol's analysis of ¢tand access: ``the degree of success that any group achieves . . . depend(s)

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on the relative opportunities that existing political institutions o¡er.''28

Within our framework, political opportunities appear as recursive.Wesuggest that political con¢gurations not only in£uence the capacity ofgroups to mobilize and the likelihood of failure or success in shapingsocial policy, but that mobilized groups can create political opportuni-ties through discursive resources and patterns of mobilization.

Finally, we do not wish to claim that Sweden is the world, a chargeleveled at policy regime theorists who have set up Social Democracy asthe paradigm of institutional welfare-state development.29 Rather weuse it as a case to illustrate conditions ^ opportunity structures andmobilizing processes ^ that enable women as collective actors to trans-late their particular idioms, in this context, those of mother, worker,and citizen, into speci¢c policies. We also view our case as a clearexample of how women's collectivities, through the process of compos-ing constituencies, create a new consciousness among women that theyare pivotal political actors, which in turn leads policymakers to per-ceive them as a constituency and take seriously their concerns.

Our analysis is divided into four parts, each of which is a conjunc-ture in the path from political-identity formation, to power resourcedeployment, and to policy outcomes that extend citizenship rights:(1) Composing constituency; (2) Discursive resources; (3) Organiza-tional alliances; (4) Political opportunities and cognitive framing (seeFigure 2).

Composing constituency

Political mobilization has been highly problematical for women acti-vists for several reasons. First, the standard paths and organizationalchannels have directly or indirectly excluded women. Even whenunions and political parties, the traditional organizational forms ofmobilization and power resource investments did not deny womenmembership (as was true in much of the British and American craft-labor union movement), they marginalized women's role in theseorganizations.30 Second, women's groups have characterized theirsocial activism as apolitical (outside party politics), based upon theirmoral stance rather than their loyalty to parties or unions, what PaulaBaker has described as domesticated politics.31 Lastly, women's mobi-lization has been inhibited by the physical as well as social isolationbetween women: the very lack of contacts and networks among women

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who work in the home, and their diverse experiences and backgroundso¡er formidable odds against forming organizations or social move-ments that represent ``women's interests.'' Composing a constituencyoften implies ¢nding issues and programs that do not reactivate earliercleavages in feminist movements.32 In the case of feminist movementsin the period before and after su¡rage, collective-identity formationentailed de¢ning women's public roles and their modes of participa-tion as political actors.

Historical background

Prior to the 1930s, Swedish women did not have the grass-roots organi-zations nor the in£uence on public policy that Anglo-American femi-nists had achieved. The coalition of Swedish women's groups unitedaround su¡rage did not result in the kind of extensive local and na-tional networks of feminist participation existing in America or Brit-ain. Nor did Swedish political parties appear to perceive women as acollectivity with a political identity or as potential voting block, whichwas more the case in the United States in the twilight before and aftersu¡rage.

Like so many European feminist movements during the ¢rst decadesof the twentieth century, Swedish women's groups were divided by

Figure 2. Interdepencies in composing constituencies, political opportunities, and socialcitizenship rights. This model is based upon Hobson's studies of gender and citizenship(1995, 1996).

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class, political loyalties, and ideological disagreements around protec-tion and rights.33 Su¡rage was a fulcrum that drew disparate groupstogether around a single issue campaign, and these di¡erences werereactivated and intensi¢ed after the enactment of su¡rage. AmongSwedish women's organizations, the fractures around ideological posi-tions cut deeper because of long-standing class antagonisms. Bour-geois women feared talk of revolution and class con£ict, while work-ing-class women distrusted middle-class organizations. For instance,when the Swedish National Association of Housewives (Husmoders-fo« rbundet) was founded in 1919, members of the Social DemocraticWomen's Union asked, ` Does this mean they have become the voicefor all women? We have to watch their activities very carefully.''34

Numerous articles in the Social Democratic women's paper, Morgon-bris (Morning Breeze), re£ect socialist women's animosity towardbourgeois pretensions. One such article rallied working-class women'ssupport by critizing the vapidity of other women's organizations:` Dear friends, let us not become so animated, cultural, intellectual orelevated that our mouths only drip with beautiful but empty phrasesinstead of simple and natural expressions of a true-hearted commit-ment to a common purpose and solidarity.''35

However, by the mid-1930s, numerous opportunities for cooperationhad reduced class tensions among women's groups. Middle-classwomen, in an e¡ort to demonstrate their allegiance to egalitarianismand democracy, recruited working-class women to their organiza-tions.36 In 1939, a feminist wrote inMorgonbris, ``I have experienced ashift in the women's movement from a strictly bourgeois phenomenon,led by middle-class women with great opposition from working-classwomen, to a movement that has become everyone's concern.''37 The1930s was a turning point; Swedish women's groups proliferated andmoved from political marginality to in£uence.

Cognitive framing

Finding a shared set of values and meanings that would bind togethergroups with divergent class backgrounds and political-party a¤liationswas the real challenge for Swedish feminist leaders who faced a frac-tured women's movement. If one rejects the idea of primordial identi-ties and assumes that individuals have multiple identities and loyalties,then the question of how the individual belief system is conjoined tothe larger goals of collectivity is a key component in a process of

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composing constituencies. Social groups do not merely de¢ne them-selves in opposition to other groups (black versus white, women versusmen; Irish Catholics versus Irish Protestants), but also they frame theirvisions of citizenship and narratives of a just society.38 We refer to thispre¢gurative stage of collective identity formation as cognitive framing.In analyzing how groups build constituency, one might think aboutcognitive frames as the DNA of movements in which cultural codingand information is reproduced in the various organizational settingsof movements: the public meetings, journal articles, and discussiongroups. The cognitive frame of a movement is also the basis for form-ing group loyalties. For women's collectivities, this has meant forging apolitical identity that overcomes earlier antagonisms around class andethnicity/race, family status (single, divorced, married women, with orwithout children), and rural and urban women.

Analyzing cognitive frames of feminist movements enables us to avoiddichotomizing them into oppositional cultures of di¡erence and equal-ity.39 This dichotomy does not allow for the contextual variations in theformation of feminist identities. Nor does it permit an analysis of theprocess by which feminist movements forged a common vision andcreated shared meanings. There are many cognitive frames in thehistory of women's movements. For example, in the nineteenth cen-tury, the notion of the equality of souls was a frame embodied inreligious women's movements that viewed women's oppression as aconstruction of man-made laws and conventions.40 As was true ofmany movements in the 1960s and 1970s, second-wave feminism mobi-lized around the paradigmatic cognitive frame, the frame of injustice.41

Scholars of feminist movements in the ¢rst decades of the twentieth-century have adopted the term ``maternalist'' to express women's acti-vism that sprung from a recognition of women's interests as mothers.Maternalism is used in many di¡erent senses, as an ideology, a wom-en's movement, and as a type of welfare state.42 These di¡erent for-mulations share at least two common assumptions: (1) women's iden-tity revolved around care for children and the vast majority of womenbelieved that this was their contribution to society and it was valued;and (2) that because of their unique capacity for care, women wereresponsible for all families in their roles as social mothers.43

During the ¢rst decades of the twentieth century, motherhood wasan idiom that de¢ned the unity of women's experience and laidthe basis for feminist organization and policymaking roles. There are

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many subtexts. Whether motherhood was constituted as a service, asocial function, or imbued with social rights (women should have asocial wage); these representations re£ected di¡erent patterns of fram-ing motherhood and composing women's constituencies during thisperiod of welfare-state formation.44

Furthermore, to characterize feminist activism as maternalist in thisperiod of constructing and de¢ning the boundaries of citizenshiprights is to ignore the varied landscapes in which feminists articulatedtheir versions of women's multiple identities ^ as mothers, citizens,and workers. Citizenship and participatory democracy became theprincipal cognitive frame for feminist movements in Sweden and otherScandinavian countries.45

At the base of the participatory citizenship frame is a belief thatwomen have been denied participatory rights in democratic societies.Thus feminist organizations argued that women could not ful¢ll theirroles as citizens because they lacked a political voice or representationin political, legal, and economic institutions. Although questionsaround motherhood were incorporated into a cognitive frame of citi-zenship, the basis for women's activism was not bound by a mater-nalist world view: that women had unique political identities basedupon their motherly roles, but rather by a perception that womenwere a constituency with varied social roles. To illustrate how a citizen-ship frame, which appears abstract and inert, can have a mobilizingforce, we cite the ¢ghting words of a Social Democratic woman activein women's organizations during the 1930s. She insisted that womenhad worked hard for the party in the name of Social Democracy andnow demanded democracy within the party as well: ` We believe it isboth unjust and poor tactics to treat women as political zeros.''46

As feminist scholars have pointed out, the gendered construction ofcitizenship, with its origins in the eighteenth-century enlightenmenttradition, ascribed women to a ` private'' sphere of domestic relationsoutside politics and civil society.47 Sexual di¡erence was translated intopolitical di¡erence. Throughout the nineteenth century, there werewomen's movements who legitimated their claims for participatoryrights in political and economic spheres within the frame of citizenshipand democracy.48 The Swedish case reveals how participatory citizen-ship as a cognitive frame lay the basis for composing a women's con-stituency in the twentieth century after the realization of su¡rage.

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The main protagonist of a maternalist tradition in Swedish feminismwas Ellen Key who claimed that a woman's power derived from hermaternal role and female consciousness. However, this essentialiststance lost ground in the 1930s.49 Beginning in the 1920s and through-out the 1930s, Swedish feminists constructed a political identity aroundconcepts of citizenship and democratic participation in government.They asserted that everything in society concerns women and whatwomen think concerns everyone.50

Their conception of citizenship and participation was both the meansand ends for women's empowerment. Feminists seeking to mobilizewomen faced a situation in which a signi¢cant proportion of womendid not even exercise their right to vote. Thus, the main task was tomake women aware of their citizenship rights and duries. An impor-tant strategy in this mobilization was to create an informed womancitizen who understood the policy debates and could in£uence thepolicy arena. Women's journals provided extensive coverage of politi-cal debates, and parliamentary proceedings were published verbatim inseveral women's journals to keep readers informed.

In 1936, twenty-¢ve women's organizations signed a public letter, ` ACall to SwedishWomen,'' asking women to work for increased politicalrepresentation on the part of women. This letter was signed by wom-en's organizations ranging from The Organization of Female PostalWorkers to the Organization of Swedish Christian Young Women.51 Itwas published in both women's trade-union journals and bourgeoiswomen's journals and urged women to contribute to the advancementof women by joining a party ^ any political party ^ and activelycampaigning for female politicians. The letter lay the basis for theSwedish Women's Citizen's Union whose goals were to: ` Make Swe-den's women worthy citizens of society; Push for equality between menand women, socially and economically; Protect the new rights thatwomen have won; Strengthen solidarity among women.''52

The 1930s was a period in which women's movements were on thedefensive.53 The citizenship frame empowered Swedish women's groupsto respond unilaterally to the threat to women's right to work thatloomed on the horizon in many industrialized countries during thedepression era. In Sweden, the right to work represented a core prin-ciple of Social Democracy. To deny women that right represented athreat to their claims for recognition as citizens; this sense of grievancewas a catalyst in mobilizing feminist activism.

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In Sweden, the political debate over married women's right to workarose in a context of high rates of unemployment. The number ofunemployed rose more than ¢ve-fold between 1931 and 1932, and thenreached its maximum in 1933 when over 186,000 Swedes were regis-tered as unemployed.54 The reaction against married women's employ-ment was so strong that every party from left to right demandedrestrictions, and at least nine motions were presented in the SwedishParliament proposing limitations on married women's employment.Some politicians hoped to legislate restrictions that limited only onespouse to public-sector employment, and claimed that working marriedwomen not only robbed men of jobs, but also created unfair competitionby accepting low wages.55 The conservative opposition also incorpo-rated national nativity goals into their argument, blaming women'swork outside the home for Sweden's negative population growth.

Some Swedish women had a practical stake in maintaining the right toemployment (in the 1930s, 10 percent of employed women were mar-ried), yet many more realized the symbolic signi¢cance of defending abasic citizenship right. Swedish women's organizations during thisperiod not only prevented the assault on married women's right towork but, in fact, achieved legislation that increased women's rights asworkers in a depression decade when women throughout Europe andNorth America were losing that right. A law was passed in 1938 pro-hibiting the ¢ring of women who were married or pregnant, or weresingle mothers. The whole spectrum of women's organizations, includ-ing the National Housewives Association, defended women's right towork on the basis that it was a citizenship right, though their prefer-ence was for mothers to be at home, their spokespersons even cameout against a proposal to o¡er married women early retirement withsome severance pay.56

Clearly, grievance or threat can be a catalyst in mobilizing groups aswell as the perception of opportunity ^ this is the essence of Tilly'sclassic formulation.57 However, we would argue that speci¢c griev-ances or threats unless they are linked to the framing in social move-ments will neither activate supporters nor build solidarity and loyaltyto a movement. Furthermore, cognitive frames that are not inclusiveenough to reach the various layers of a movement can fracture theprocess of composing a constituency and thus weaken social move-ments. Ideological splits may have grave consequences for feministactivism since their coalitions are more fragile than groups who embedtheir resources in stable institutional forms. Finally, cognitive framing

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within women's movements is important both for selecting and achiev-ing goals.

To demonstrate this last point, suppose we consider French feministactivism around child and mother's allowances during the 1930s. TheFrench case can be seen as the epitome of maternalist movements,since feminists of every stripe, from republican feminists to confes-sional or social Catholic women's groups placed themselves withinthat framework.58 In the 1930s Catholic feminists dominated mater-nalist politics, and their program of endowing motherhood was sup-ported by other non-confessional feminists. But it soon became clearas the campaign wore on that their view of women's interest was notcompatible with republican feminists. For the former, the family was aharmonious sphere and mother's allowances would enable them toful¢ll their mission. For the latter, mother's interests were not equi-valent to women's interests, nor did they view the family as a bulwarkagainst social disintegration, as did Catholic feminists. An open splitbetween feminist groups emerged and republican feminists criticizedthe mission of Catholic feminists to return women to the home in aperiod when married women's rights to work were threatened. Theyalso had harsh words for confessional women's alliance with prona-talist organizations who viewed women's roles in the narrowest ofterms, as producers of babies. Yet these republican feminists hadframed their notions of women's interests in strictly maternal terms,and indeed limited both their ability to present other goals or introducea counter-discourse to the illiberal vision of women's roles manifestedinVichy France and later in the post-war period.59 One could make thecase that the creation of two separate ministries for equality and familypolicy in Mitterand's France can be traced back to reactions againstthe maternalist framing of women's interests.60

Another illustrative case of how cognitive framing a¡ects policy out-comes can be seen in the failure of the American feminist campaignagainst restrictions on married women's work enacted during theDepression Era. In the 1930s national and local laws were passedbarring married women from working in public-sector jobs.61 Women'sgroups were uni¢ed in their opposition, but earlier ideological disagree-ments impeded the process of mobilization and e¤cacy of the cam-paign. Throughout the 1920s American feminists operating within amaternalist frame sought to improve women's position through speciallegislation for mothers: widows pensions, maternal health, protectionfor mothers at workplaces, restrictions on hours and types of work.62

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In the depression era, it was hard to recast women's interests in termsof the right to work.

Not to be underestimated are the cleavages created by competingcognitive frames in the American feminist movements. When theAmericanWomen's Party introduced the Equal Rights Amendment inthe 1920s as the main strategy for altering inequality between men andwomen, the American women's movement became divided into fac-tions of mainly middle-class feminists. On the one side were those whobelieved that the ERA threatened the programs targeted for mothersand speci¢cally for working-class mothers, such as protective laborlegislation. On the other side were those who saw these genderdi¡erentiated laws and programs as barriers to women's equal partic-ipation in labor-market work.63 Although the majority of Americanfeminists opposed the marriage bar laws passed in the 1930s, the visiblecleavage among women's groups diminished their power resources toin£uence policy.64

It is not di¤cult to imagine why Swedish feminists placed women'sinterests within an embracing theme of citizenship. A cognitive framethat revolved around women's role as mother and caregiver would nothave appealed to the Swedish Social Democratic women who wantedto a¤rm the roles of women as workers, mothers, and citizens. Themajority of Social Democratic women in the 1930s not only recognizedthat many women had to work for economic survival, but they viewedwork as a basic citizenship right in a political con¢guration wherecitizen and worker were bound together.

Part of the success of Swedish women's activism in the 1930s was theirability to locate a cognitive frame that was inclusive enough to attractand retain the loyalty of a range of women's organizations, includingthe housewives association, professional businesswomen's associa-tions, and working-class women's assocations. In representing marriedwomen's right to work, feminists located this grievance within theideological ground of citizenship rights.

Women's movements that appear divisive and fractured forfeit a cru-cial resource, their discursive power, the ability of leaders and spokes-persons to claim that they speak for a women's constituency. Thus,as shown in Figure 2, cognitive framing is linked to the discursiveresources available to collectivities and to their organizational poten-tial. Finally framing in one historical period can leave its imprint onthe future articulation of claims and grievances.

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Discursive resources

Lacking durable institutional bases or reservoirs for power resources,women's activism has been highly dependent on discursive resourcesfor actualizing policy goals.65 By discursive resources, we mean not justpolitical discourse, but a broad discursive terrain that includes culturalnarratives and metaphors that social actors exploit in their publicrepresentations as well as the contesting ideological stances that theytake on themes and issues on the political agenda. Implicit in our useof the concept of discursive resources is a recognition that organizationsoften act strategically in positioning themselves within the universe ofpolitical discourse.

In their discussion of collective action frames, social movement theo-rists have argued that the struggle over meanings and interpretations isinscribed in a structure of power relations.66 Granted, the ``universe ofpolitical discourse'' sometimes narrows the range of actors that areaccorded status as legitimate participants.67 Nevertheless, the mobili-zation of constituencies can create discursive space. Social actors whosuccessfully exploit discursive resources have the potential to rede¢nethe source of entitlements and the meanings of social citizenship.

In the following section, we focus on two types of discursive resources:(1) the cultural narrative, in Swedish society personi¢ed in the meta-phor of the Folkhem (the People's Home); and (2) the ideologicalpackage, a highly charged policy agenda around population declinethat dominated Swedish politics in the 1930s.

Cultural narratives

What we call cultural narratives is very similar to what social-move-ment theorists Snow and Benford refer to as ` master frames.'' Potentframes are said to have ` narrative ¢delity'' ^ that is ` the frame strikes aresponsive chord in that it rings true with extant beliefs, myths, folk-tales, and the like.''68 They are ` syntactically £exible and lexicallyuniversalistic'' thereby allowing numerous aggrieved groups to tapinto them.69 Such narratives resonate with larger belief systems in asociety.

The Swedish Folkhem (People's Home) was a narrative that reverber-ated in Swedish society and has accrued symbolic value over the years.

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First used in public Swedish debate by the right-wing politicianRudolph Kjellen, the Folkhem metaphor was co-opted by SocialDemocrats as part of a strategy to rebuild and extend their politicalbase of support.70 In 1928, Social Democrats su¡ered a serious defeat,referred to by conservatives as the ` Cossack Election.'' This defeatconvinced the party to abandon strict socialist rhetoric.

The Folkhem was a metaphor that embraced both past and presentimages, and harkened back to the romantic idea of the traditionalByalag, a community collective found in pre-industrial Swedish societywhere village custom held that men and women of the community wereduty-bound to help one another, regardless of material background.71

The Folkhem also personi¢ed a caring state that would reproduce asense of community, a world that was disappearing with the decline ofagriculture. It would o¡er protection against all that was foreign andchanging in Swedish society at a time of rapid industrialization.72 PerAlbin Hansson's oft-repeated homily resonates with these images:` The basis of the good home is community and solidarity. In the goodhome there are no privileged or deprived members, no pets and nostep-children. In the good home there is equality, solicitude, coopera-tion and helpfulness.''73

During the 1930s, Social Democrats advocated an expansive programof social reform under the banner of a Folkhem. The ideals embodiedin the Folkhem appealed to a broader base of support among allvoters, but most notably among women voters. Many, who had beenpreviously alienated by or shut out of political skirmishes focusing onclass struggle, found the political universe or Social Democracy moreinclusive.

For feminists, the Folkhem provided discursive space that allowedthem to articulate their demands for more participatory rights andpolicymaking in£uence. Certainly, the idea of the People's Home is ajanus-faced metaphor, which could be used to circumscribe women'sin£uence within the domestic sphere.74 On the other side, that thecentral metaphor for Social Democracy was a home evidently pro-vided discursive resources for women to make claims in the politicalarena around issues involving care, childrearing, and unpaid domesticwork. In this instance, the cultural frame of the Folkhem was enablingand had transformative potential, in that it removed the symbolicbarriers between public and private realms of citizenship. The domainof home and family and women's concerns, de¢ned as outside public

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or political institutions in liberal notions of citizenship, emerged as thefoundation and rationale for political legitimacy in the Swedish welfarestate.

For Swedish feminists in the 1930s, the Folkhem was a discursiveresource that gave them a certain legitimacy, but also allowed them torepresent their claims for more participatory citizenship. This senti-ment is re£ected in the assertive tone in feminist journals of the day:` We women do not wish to be invited into the Folkhem once it is¢nished and ready.We will only be satis¢ed if we are welcome to helplay the groundwork and built it.''75 In the minds of feminist activists,participatory citizenship was inextricably linked to women's socialcitizenship.

Ideological packages

Gamson and Modigliani maintain that at any particular moment in agiven society, one political theme will emerge and contesting groupswill encase it in di¡erent ideological packages.76 The population crisisthat dominated Swedish public debates for nearly a decade is theexemplar of this kind of discursive resource. In 1934, Alva and GunnarMyrdal's Kris i Befolkningsfra® gan warned that Swedes were not repro-ducing themselves and population growth could be achieved throughsocial reforms and the redistribution of resources.77 Both the popular-ity and incredible political in£uence of their book has to be understoodin terms of its ¢t into other ideological packages. Per Albin Hanssonwas among the ¢rst to embrace the Myrdal's agenda, perhaps becauseas Gunnar Myrdal claimed, ` The detailed welfare program that we putforward lay so completely in line with Per Albin's dream of the goodpeople's home.''78

Many Social Democrats, including the Myrdals, exploited the fear ofpopulation decline to institute social reforms.79 Among women'sgroups there was suspicion of a policy agenda based on populationand pronatalism. ElinWagner, a disciple of Ellen Key, referred to it asa ` manly dialogue.''80 However, the majority of women activists cameto realize its potential to push through reforms that they had beenadvocating for years. Issues that had been previously relegated towomen's organizations and congresses, such as parental leave bene¢ts,child care, better housing, and married women's right to work, becamea part of mainstream political discourse.Women's journals enthusias-

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tically reported that their agenda had suddenly become the focus ofnational politics: ` Suddenly the Right and Center parties are callingfor, with unanimity, reforms that we women have been demanding foryears.''81

Alva Myrdal herself was aware that concerns over high unemploymentand low birthrates encircled a dangerous political constellation. YetMyrdal asserted that women were the victors in the ideological battlesover population:

The remarkable thing is that in this crucial moment the population argu-ment was wrenched out of the hands of the antifeminists and instead used asa new formidable weapon for emancipation ideals. The old debate on mar-ried woman's right to work was turned into a ¢ght for the working women'sright to marry and have children. The change in public opinion was tremen-dous.82

She and her husband could take credit for guiding the populationquestion into a discourse of social reforms, by framing the issue interms of quality versus quantity of population, a seductive ideologicalpackage.

Feminists in other western welfare states, such as France and Ger-many, sought to repackage the population question to ¢t their ownagenda,83 but they faced formidable opposition and counter dis-courses. Swedish feminists reclaimed the population issue and turnedit to their advantage. They situated themselves in a discursive land-scape that enabled them to fuse population issues with citizenshiprights (the right of working women to mother). Moreover, they inter-wove images of the lost agrarian society where work, leisure, andfamily were more integrated with the modern-day politics of the Folk-hem; the challenge was to solve the dilemma of how women couldcombine paid work with having a family.84 The policy that emanatedfrom the population debates never realized the full implications of thisdilemma, however it laid the foundation for a set of policy initiativesthat emerged in the 1970s, referred to as women friendly,85 which gaveworking parents the most generous parental leave bene¢ts in the world.

For groups not represented by political parties and who lack institu-tional bases, discursive power is the means of opening up politicalspace by recasting vocabularies of citizenship and reshaping ideologi-cal packages. Discursive resources are subject to constraints. Feministleaders have to heal factions within their movement, convince the

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silent majority of women that they are the real spokespersons for them,as well as win the hearts and minds of the general public.

Discursive resources also have mobilizing potential and the organiza-tional strategies of Swedish women's groups discussed in the followingsection re£ect this. As Figure 2 illustrates, cognitive framing (in ourcase that of participatory citizenship) enhanced feminist discursiveresources and their constituency building ^ through organizations andalliances.

Organizational alliances

In practice, feminist movements often have pursued organizationalstructures that transcend class and party lines ^ either in autonomousorganizations or in coalitions that cut across party politics. Su¡rage isthe classic example of the former. And examples abound of coalitionsof women's groups that extended the boundaries of welfare-state policy-making into areas of maternal health and child and family bene¢ts.Women's movements have tended to inhabit a region between thosefree spaces of autonomous networks and permanent mobilizing struc-tures. Although they rarely have invested their power resources intopolitical parties or unions, they have sustained long-standing organi-zations, some have been linked to political parties, and others haveremained independent.

An array of strategies have been employed by collectivities seeking toin£uence the development of social and political rights in welfarestates. Although mass demonstrations were the modus operandi ofwomen's movements in the campaigns for su¡rage (as well as thesecond wave of feminist activism in the 1960s and 1970s), mobilizingcosts of such activities are high and few movements can sustain them.Post-su¡rage women's groups in Europe, North America, and Aus-tralia entered a period of organization building and engagement inlegislative politics.

Women's groups can deploy their political resources a number of ways.They may decide to embed the interests of their constituency in apolitical party or build coalitions across parties around speci¢c issues.They may even decide to form separate women's parties. But the onlysuccessful example of a women's party that actually attained represen-tation in a national government can be found in Iceland today. Starting

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a third party had been tried during the 1927 election in Stockholm andit proved disastrous.86

Throughout the 1930s, feminist groups charted a dual strategy: (1)using their in£uence as party members, and (2) forming cross-partyalliances in which they represented women's issues and interests inpublic debate and policymaking channels. As a form of power-resourcedeployment, this dual strategy had several advantages for Swedishfeminists. The latter enabled them to represent and act on behalf of a` women's constituency.'' The former allowed them to be power brokersin their parties, to use networks and informal ties behind the scenes,an astute form of resource deployment since feminists had reasonto believe that the party in power was sympathetic to their demands.Ulla Lindstro« m, for instance, could claim that she and other womenin the Social Democratic Party were able to push feminist concerns:` Our people were in government and thus it was natural that wefrequently promoted these issues in channels we held outside theorganization.''87

The dramatic growth of women's organizations in the 1930s is animportant factor in assessing women's power resources. Sweden'sSocial Democratic Women's Union increased their membership four-fold over the decade, with more than 26,000 members. In 1937 theFredrika Bremer Society, a feminist organization, had thirty-sevenorganizations with over 6,000 members and the Swedish Women'sBusiness Organization boasted 4,000 members at the end of the1930s.88 This is remarkable if one considers that these ¢gures showedthat almost twice the number of women were now organized comparedto those in the su¡rage campaign.89

Beyond the actual numbers within organizations, there was network-ing and cross-talk among feminists in di¡erent organizations whorepresented women with varied social backgrounds, political orienta-tions, and speci¢c reform agendas. These groups did not representthemselves as a formal women's coalition or in the modern-day senseof a women's caucus. However, they did have a core set of issues thatthey mutually supported and lobbied for that re£ected a broad consti-tuency: vacations for housewives, sex-education, and legalization ofcontraceptive technologies and information.90 They were in£uential ingaining support for improved housing, increased support for solomothers, the right to work for all women, and greater political repre-sentation for women. Among the issues espoused by women's groups

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in this period, women's increased political representation had thebroadest appeal.

When Swedish feminists began to devise a set of core issues, they hadto take into account diverse backgrounds and di¡erent political orien-tations of established women's groups. In this instance, we might con-duct a thought experiment and imagine what would have happened if apolicy on mother's pensions, such as the one sponsored by feminists inthe United States, had been proposed by a group of feminists in Swe-den. It is important to keep in mind that the mothers' pensions scheme,sponsored by feminists in the United States, applied in most states onlyto worthy widows; in some cases divorced and abandoned wives wereable to receive bene¢ts. It excluded the never-married mother. Such apolicy would have destroyed the alliance among Swedish feministgroups since Social Democratic women could never have supported apolicy that left out unwed mothers, whom they viewed as a group thathad been unjustly treated and stigmatized.91 Not to be forgotten in thiscontext is that the ¢rst income maintenance legislation passed in the1930s gave the same entitlement and social rights to divorced, aban-doned, and never-married women with children as it did to widows.

Although it is hazardous to o¡er alternative scenarios in welfare-stateformation, Linda Gordon provides us with some illuminating in-sights.92 She argues that the lack of inclusiveness in the Americanwomen's movement clearly delimited the framework for welfare-statepolicies. According to Gordon, African-American women involved insocial-reform e¡orts espoused a more universalistic rationale for en-titlements, and recognition of the highly disadvantaged position ofblack women in the family, labor market, and social entitlements (theirvirtual exclusion from many social entitlements). But white middle-class women formed a core of advisers and participants in the buildingof welfare-state institutions. Black women were conspicuously absent.

When considering women's collectivities, we have to construct di¡erentcriteria about the deployment of power resources from those shapedby the dominant paradigm of class mobilization.While it may be truethat women's power resources are enhanced by articulating claims as aconstituency, this is a far cry from the highly institutionalized formulafor the politics of numbers, embedding power resources into a politicalparty. Swedish women did not represent themselves as a coalition orvoting block. The ability of women's organizations to become visibleactors in public debate may not even be dependent upon how many

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women were card-carrying members of particular organizations. Ratheras our case illustrates, the power resources of women's collectivities layin composing constituencies: through cognitive framing that is inclu-sive, through their deployment of discursive resources, and throughorganizational building and networking. Thus women who appear asa constituency have the potential to mobilize against parties who donot support their agenda and policy initiatives. This was particularlyimportant during a period when political parties did not have hugemajorities and the long tenure of the Social Democratic party was notassured.

Political opportunities and extending citizenship boundaries

SidneyTarrow astutely concludes that there is a non-linear relationshipbetween social-movement organizations and state responsiveness.93

Numerous historical studies of feminist movements o¡er evidence forthis; mobilization can be paralyzed by the lack of allies in the legisla-tive arena or defeated by competing discursive resources of opposi-tional groups. Also well documented are cases of highly mobilizedfeminist movements who capture the discursive arena, but lack thepolicy channels to insure implementation of their program ^ lawswithout teeth, or implementation of laws through agencies that alterthe meaning and intent of policies that sprung from movements withtransformative goals. Here political opportunity comes into play ^particular historical conjunctures, such as those outlined above,changing political agendas and £uid political ¢elds and allies.

What was the political context in which women's politics emerged? It isimportant to keep in mind that the lengthy political dominance of theSwedish Social Democratic party often belies the fact that the routetoward Social Democratic ascendancy was not always direct, and thatparty leaders continually redrafted the blueprints of the Social Demo-cratic model. At a meeting called to discuss the future course of thesocialist government, Social Democrats displayed a surprising loss ofcon¢dence and a policy vacuum, after a highly successful two-and-a-half years in o¤ce. The lack of a concrete agenda prompted severalcommittee members to suggest dissolving the government and return-ing to the party's roots.94 Second, the well-known Saltsjo« baden Agree-ment that created a corporatist power structure with business, unions,and government was not signed until 1938. Historical analyses of theimpact of this agreement on other social movements conclude that

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the centralized wage-bargaining system, which institutionalized andstrengthened solidarity in both business and labor, gave little latitudeto group and special interests.95

However, to suggest that a £uid political ¢eld in itself produced greateraccess to policy channels is a highly deterministic formulation. Todemonstate this point about the composing of constituencies andpolitical opportunities, we turn to one of the central policymakingforums in the 1930s, the Royal Committee on Population appointedin 1935, in which national debates concerning welfare reform wereorchestrated. The Population Committee debated issues such as pre-natal care, maternity bene¢ts, child care, health insurance, familytaxation, housing, and married women's right to work.96 These wereissues that women's organizations had been discussing in their owncircles. Now suddenly they became the focus of national politics. Thus,one feminist could write in 1938, ` If one reads the protocol from the¢rst meetings of the Women's Trade Union or Social DemocraticWomen's Club in 1907, it's almost like reading today's PopulationCommittee Report.''97

Although government commissions are not unique to Sweden, theyplay a special role in Swedish policymaking. Existing for over 150years, the parliamentary commission of experts is the site of a vitalstage of policymaking that has become a prerequisite for formulatingnew proposals made to Parliament.

The legitimacy and public visibility that feminists acquire in a parlia-mentary commission cannot be underestimated. Two feminists wereselected to lead a two-year commission (1936^1938) on married wom-en's right to work, a subcommittee within the Royal Population Com-mission. The chair, Kerstin Hesselgren and Secretary, Alva Myrdal,were central ¢gures in the feminist movement of the 1930s. The com-mittee produced a 500-page report with masses of statistics that drovehome the extent of gender inequality in the labor market.98 But moreto the point, the report disarmed all the arguments from the rightabout the threat to home and family that married women workersposed. That two feminists were on this commission was not a coinci-dence. The very fact that such a commission was inaugurated re£ectsthe power resources of feminist groups.

One could say that Hesselgren and Myrdal were the prototypes of theso-called ` femocrats,'' a phrase coined in our own day, applied to

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women with feminist orientations who have chosen to enter public lifeand work within the system to promote women's interests.99 Theiractivities in policymaking reveal both the strength and weaknessesof the boring-from-within strategy. On the one hand, women in keybureaucratic positions provide links between feminist movements andgovernment bureaucracy. They have access to information (early draftsof legislation) and informal networks. On the other hand, they arecompelled to adapt to rules of the game in bureaucratic organizations.They face pressures to compromise and reach consensus in committeework.

Whether femocrats are able to promote feminist goals within a policyconstellation is dependent upon the power resources accumulated inwomen's movements: more concretely, the political capital that hasaccrued from composing a constituency that represents women's inter-ests across a wide spectrum of class and party alliances. At the con-clusion of the commission work, Myrdal wrote: ` This is a year ofsocial political duties. We have a government under our rule. We havea Parliament elected on a worthy social program. We have women'sincreased political awareness and also family politics in the fore-front.''100

Swedish women's organizations were successful in pushing throughpolicies that became the core of women's social citizenship in theSwedish welfare state: maternity leaves and job security; protection ofmarried women's right to work; income maintenance policy for solomothers; and universal maternal health-care. A mother's bene¢tbased on needs was also enacted, but it included the vast majority ofmothers.101

During this nascent period of welfare-state formation, Swedish womenwere recognized as a constituency, and feminist spokespersons weremaking claims on behalf of women.Women's collectivities extended theboundaries of citizenship into domains that reached into women's livesand strengthened their social rights as workers and as solo mothers. Inessence how groups convert power resources into policies is a narrativeabout the politics of recognition.

One has only to compare the 1930s in Sweden to the previous decade tograsp the importance of composing constituencies and the politics ofrecognition. Throughout the 1920s, class issues and heightened classtensions dominated the political arena. Within the Social Democratic

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Party, women's issues were not considered real politics.102 Neverthe-less, during this period, Swedish Social Democrats ascribed to a mass-membership formula that recognized the numerical importance ofwomen. In 1921, Prime Minister Hjalmar Branting maintained, ``theway in which women use their vote will be decisive in determining thedevelopment and direction of this country.'' And again in 1926 hea¤rmed, ``it is clearly in the party's interest to convince women tobecome members of our party.''103 That the Social Democrats wantedindividual women to vote for them and join the party did not mean thatwomen's issues were part of their political platform.104 Nor did theattention to women's potential votes imply a recognition of women as aconstituency with gender speci¢c issues or the power to make claimson the basis of women's interest.

However, by the end of the 1930s, there was a noticeable shift in theperception of women as mobilized constituency. The most powerful inthe Social Democratic Party acknowledged women were to be courtedas political supporters. In 1936, Prime Minister Per Albin Hanssonre£ected this in his speech on the Social Democratic political platformfor the upcoming year: ` I suspect women will notice with great satis-faction the way in which women's issues have received attention.Essentially all our issues are your issues.''105 Looking back with along-distance lens on feminist activism, Elin Mossberg, who was amember of the Social Democratic Women's Union during the 1930s,characterizes this period as unique, ` an amazing time to shape opin-ion. I would tell male politicians to go home and read more, and after awhile I would hear them using the same argument I had made.''106

Our analysis reveals the ways in which political opportunities in£uenceand are in£uenced by the process of collective-identity formation. Weare not suggesting that policy contexts or state capacities do not mat-ter. To the contrary. Our case underscores how feminist collectivitiestook advantage of discursive resources and acted strategically inthe political arena. But at the same time, we argue for a dynamicconcept of political opportunities in which collective-identity forma-tion emerges as a crucial component in the composing of constituen-cies, the power-resources social groups deploy, and the conversion ofpolitical opportunities into social policy.

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Conclusion

By bringing social-movement perspectives into a power-resourceframework, we have sought to develop strategies for analyzing howwomen's collectivities articulate claims and exercise power in welfarestates. The model we present incorporates the cognitive framing ofsocial movements and the production of meanings as sources formobilizing constituencies and deploying power resources in welfarestates. Through our historical study of Swedish women's collectivities,we have analyzed how women as social actors were able to use discur-sive resources and encode their programs into hegemonic culturalforms and ideologies, in e¡ect to manipulate and extend the meaningsof existing vocabularies, such as the metaphor of the People's Homeand the Worker Citizen into the mother-worker-citizen in SocialDemocracy. To view the Swedish welfare state through this lens in earlystages of policy formation is to gain some theoretical purchase onits distinctive features, referred to as women-friendly policies, thatemerged in later decades around parent-citizen rights.We have shownthat even in Sweden, noted as the paradigmatic example of powerresources and left party strength in welfare-state formation, to consid-er the repertoire of actors yields a more nuanced analysis of the mak-ing of welfare states.

In proposing a model of power resources for women's collectivities, weo¡er some analytical strategies for incorporating new social actors inthe casting and recasting of citizenship rights. The keys that we havefound ^ the links between the cognitive framing of movements and thepower resources of women's collectivities ^ have implications for com-parative research on welfare states, past and present. Given the currentperiod of welfare-state retrenchment and restructuring, and the riseof new democracies and societies in transition in East and CentralEurope, there is need to develop dynamic models that make visiblenew social movements and struggles for recognition.

This model also provides some theoretical leverage for analysis ofconstraints and opportunities for women's mobilization in the formerSoviet bloc countries. Unstable parties and permeable political boun-daries constitute opportunity structures for mobilized groups in manyof these countries, but for feminists the mobilization costs are ex-tremely high. The task of mobilizing women politically implies morethan ¢nding a grievance ^ and there are many, such as loss of socialservices, health care, and repressive laws against abortion and contra-

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ception.107 The challenge begins with how to elaborate a cognitiveframe that can forge a shared identity among women who have notconsidered themselves as a group with common interests in the past.Moreover, little discursive space exists for a new feminism to emerge incurrent civil society if one observes the cultural framing of gender thatcircumscribes political discourse in many Eastern European countries.It is a cultural narrative that reasserts an essentialized sexualizedwoman, who seeks to reclaim her natural domesticity denied to herunder the former regime.108 To compose a women's constituency, a newfeminism would have to emerge and invent a cultural frame that is nottainted by associations with the old regime of worker citizen. Norwould a new feminism be derived from Western feminist movementsthat has constructed women's oppression around individual maledominance over women as wives and partners (private patriarchy).

More research and comparative cases are needed to develop theoriesof collective-identity formation, power resources, and political oppor-tunities in moments of societal transition. These are moments whencitizenship rights are being redrawn and the vocabularies of entitle-ments re-negotiated.

Finally, to develop theory on recognition struggles and the framing ofpolitical identities, one must begin to track the ways in which patternsof political-identity formation shape the strategies and opportunities ofcollectivities over time. Here, the Swedish case o¡ers some evidence ofwhat Charles Tilly calls a path dependence in the formation of politicalidentities, repertoires for social action, and forms of power articula-tion and claim making.109 Instead of mass movements demonstratingfor feminist goals as autonomous groups, Swedish feminist activismhas tended to place itself within parliamentary bodies, institutionalstructures as well as government bureaucracies. The main discursiveidiom in Swedish women's movements continues to be participatorycitizenship.

Notes

1. This article has bene¢ted from discussions on both sides of the Atlantic. We aregrateful to Shmuel Eisenstadt, Evelyn Huber, Walter Korpi, Diane Sainsbury,John Stephens, Charles Tilly, and Bjorn Wittrock for their comments. We alsowant to thank Michael Hanagan for his superb editoral work.

2. Numerous publications in which gender appears as a dimension in the analysis ofsocial citizenship include Ruth Lister's ``Tracing the contours of women's citizen-

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ship,''Policy and Politics 2/1 (1993): 2^16; Jane Lewis and Ilona Ostner's ` Genderand the Evolution of Social Policies,'' ZES-Arbeitspaper 4 (Bremen: Centre forSocial Policy Research, 1994); and Diane Sainsbury's edited volume, GenderingWelfare States (London: Sage, 1994).

3. One could argue that by incorporating the family in the analysis of policy regimes^ along with market and state ^ Go« sta Esping-Andersen's The Three Worlds ofWelfare Capitalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990) opened up newavenues for a gendered dialogue, in which a range of feminist research challengedthe notion of the family as category or unit. See Ann Shola Orlo¡, ` Gender andthe Social Rights of Citizenship: The Comparative Analysis of Gender Relationsand Welfare States,'' American Sociological Review 5 (1993): 303^328; BarbaraHobson, ``Solo Mothers, Policy Regimes, and the Logics of Gender,'' in GenderingWelfare States, ed. Diane Sainsbury (London: Sage, 1994), 170^187; and BarbaraHobson, ``Frauenbewegung fuer Staatsbuergerechete. Das Beispiel Schweden,''Feministische Studien 14/2 (1996): 18^34.

4. This was the main thrust of the AJS symposium on Perspectives on the WelfareState, American Journal of Sociology 99/3 (1993). See: Edwin Amenta, ` The Stateof the Art in Welfare State Research on Social Spending E¡orts in CapitalistDemocracies since 1960,'' American Journal of Sociology 99/3 (1993): 750^763;Alexander Hicks and Joya Mishra, ` Policital Resources and the Growth ofWelfare in A¥uent Capitalist Democracies since 1960,'' American Journal ofSociology 99/3 (1993): 668^710; and Evelyn Huber, Charles Ragin, and John D.Stephens, ` Social Democracy, Constitutional Structure, and the Welfare State,''American Journal of Sociology 99/3 (1993): 711^749.

5. Bryan Turner, ` Outline of a Theory of Citizenship,'' in Dimensions of RadicalDemocracy: Pluralism, Citizenship, and Community, editor, Chantal Mou¡e (Lon-don: Verso, 1992); FionaWilliams, ` Race/Ethnicity, Class, and Gender inWelfareStates: A Framework for Comparative Analysis,'' Social Politics: InternationalStudies of Gender, State, and Society 2/2 (1995): 127^159.

6. T. H. Marshall, Citizenship and Social Class and Other Essays (Cambridge: Cam-bridge University Press, 1950).

7. Walter Korpi, ` Power Politics and State Autonomy in the Development of SocialCitizenship,''American Sociological Review 54 (1989): 309^328; Esping-Anderson,Three Worlds. See also: Walter Korpi, ` Contested Citizenship: Social Rights,Class, and Gender,'' paper presented at the Conference on ``Comparative Researchon Welfare Reforms,'' Research Committee 19 of the International SociologicalAssociation (Canberra, Australia, August 1996).

8. Esping-Andersen,ThreeWorlds, 105^107.9. Korpi, ` Contested Citizenship,'' introduces gender as a category in the analysis of

the development of social citizenship. However, women's agency is not built intothe framework: women appear in the model as organizations for collective actionwith rights, but without power resources.

10. See Hobson, ` Frauenbewegung,'' and Paul Pierson's Dismantling the WelfareState: Reagan, Thatcher and the Politics of Retrenchment (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1994), which makes a similar argument.

11. Esping-Andersen,ThreeWorlds, does not ignore historical forces in the making ofwelfare states, but his is a frozen narrative in which regime types emerge fromthree conditions: the pattern of working-class political formation; political-coali-tion building in the transition from a rural economy to a middle-class society; andpast reforms that contribute to institutionalization of class preferences and politi-cal behavior.

502

12. Bert Klandermans, ` The Social Construction of Protest and MultiorganizationalFields,'' in Frontiers in Social Movement Theory, editor, A. D. Morris and C. M.Mueller (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 77^103; David A. Snow andRobert D. Benford, ``Master Frames and Cycles of Protest,'' in Frontiers in SocialMovement Theory, editor, A. D. Morris and C. M. Mueller (New Haven: YaleUniversity Press, 1992), 133^155; SidneyTarrow, Power in Movement: SocialMove-ments, Collective Action, and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1994).

13. See Anne Philips, Engendering Democracy (Cambridge: Basic Blackwell, 1991);Kathleen B. Jones, ` Identity, Action, and Locale,'' Social Politics: InternationalStudies in Gender, State, and Society 1/3 (1994): 256^271; Birte Siim, ` Engender-ing Democracy: Social Citizenship and Political Participation forWomen in Scan-dinavia,'' Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State, and Society 1/3(1994): 286^305; and Hobson, ` Frauenbewegung.''

14. Theda Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers (Cambridge: Harvard UniversityPress, 1992); Linda Gordon, Pitied But Not Entitled: Single Mothers and theHistory of Welfare (NewYork: Free Press, 1994); Siim, ` Engendering Democracy.''

15. This is surprising given that the resource-mobilization paradigm has been trans-¢gured by a new awareness of the cultural framing of movements, their ideologicalpackages, and the discursive landscapes for collective action. See Aldon Morrisand Carol Mueller's edited volume, Frontiers in Social Movement Theory (NewHaven: Yale University Press, 1992).

16. Mayer Zald, ``Looking Backward to Look Forward: Re£ections on the Past andFuture of the Resource Mobilization Research Program,'' in Frontiers in SocialMovement Theory, editors, A. D. Morris and C. M. Mueller (New Haven: YaleUniversity Press, 1992), 326^348.

17. Some examples of studies that have made this type of argument are: GillianPascall's Social Policy: A Feminist Analysis (London: Tavistock, 1986), and YvonneHirdman's Att la« gga livet till ra« tta. studier I svensk folkhems politik (Stockholm:Norstedts Fo« rlag, 1989).

18. Kathryn Kish Sklar, ` The Historical Foundations of Women's Power in the Crea-tion of the American Welfare State, 1830^1930,'' in Mothers of a New World:Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States, editors, Seth Koven andSonya Michel (New York: Routledge, Kegan and Paul, 1993): 43^93; Skocpol,Protecting Soldiers and Mothers. In labeling the American welfare state as mater-nalist and other European welfare states as paternalist, Skocpol does not leavemuch theoretical space for a theory of women's power resources in Europeanwelfare states.

19. Ann Shola Orlo¡, ` Gender in Early U.S. Social Policy,''Journal of Policy History 3(1991): 249^281; Anette Borchost, ` Welfare Regimes,Women's Interests, and theEC,'' in GenderingWelfare States, editor, Diane Sainsbury (London: Sage, 1994):26^44.

20. Phillips, Engendering Democracy; Sainsbury,GenderingWelfare States.21. Esping-Andersen,TheThreeWorlds of Welfare.22. Mary Ruggie, The State and Working Women (Princeton: Princeton University

Press, 1984); Joyce Gelb, Feminism and Politics: A Comparative Perspective (Ber-keley: University of California Press, 1989).

23. Hirdman, Att la« gga livet till ra« tta. However, recent feminist research in Swedenmodi¢es and challenges this position. See Maud Eduards, ``Toward a Third Way:Women's Politics and Welfare Policies in Sweden,'' Social Research 58/3 (Fall 1991):

503

677^705; Christina Bergqvist, Ma« ns makt och kvinnors interessesen, Ph.D. disserta-tion (Department of Government, Uppsala University, 1994); and Anna G. Jonas-dotter,WhyWomen are Oppressed (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995).

24. Alan Siaro¡, ` Work,Welfare, and Gender Inequality: A New Typology,'' in Gen-dering Welfare States, editor, Diane Sainsbury (London: Sage, 1994), 82^100;Irene Wennemo, ` Sharing the Costs of Children: Studies on the Development ofFamily Support in the OECD Countries'' 25 (Stockholm: Swedish Institute forSocial Research Dissertation Series, 1994). This is not to suggest that feministgroups have not sought to mobilize women's votes as a power resource, but thatthe mobilizing costs are high.

25. Phillips, Engendering Democracy.26. Carol Gilligan, In a Di¡erent Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Develop-

ment (Harvard University Press, 1982); Karen O¡en, ` De¢ning Feminism: AComparative and Historical Approach,''Signs 14 (1988).

27. William Sewell, Jr.,Work and Revolution in France: The Language of Labor fromthe Old Regime to 1848 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press,1980); E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York:Vintage Books, 1963).

28. Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers.29. See Peter Flora and Jens Alber, ` Modernization, Democritization and the Devel-

opment of Welfare States in Western Europe,'' in The Development of WelfareStates in Europe and America, editors, P. Flora and A. Heidenheimer (N.J.: Trans-action Books, 1981): 37^80; Theda Skocpol and Edwin Amenta, ` States and SocialPolicies,''Annual Review of Sociology 12 (1986): 131^157.

30. Gunnar Qvist, Konsten at Blifva en God Flicka (Stockholm: Liberfo« rlag, 1978);Alice Cook, Val Lorwin, and Arlene Daniels, The Most Di¤cult Revolution:Women and Trade Unions (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992).

31. Paula Baker, ` The Domestication of Politics: Women and American PoliticalSociety, 1780^1920,'' in Women, the State and Welfare, editor, Linda Gordon(Madison: Univeristy of Wisconsin Press, 1990), 55^91.

32. Myra Marx Feree in a discussion of feminist identities in East and West Germany,` Patriarchies and Feminisms: The Two Women's Movements of Post-Uni¢cationGermany,'' Social Politics: International Studies of Gender, State, and Society 2/3(1995): 10^24, makes the astute observation that collective identity is neithersimply a re£ection of the past or independent of it, but a shared history activelyconstructed and interpreted.

33. See Marika Lindholm, ` Swedish Feminism, 1835^1945: A Conservative Revolu-tion,''Journal of Historical Sociology 4/2 (1991): 121^142.

34. Brita Aî kerman, Vi Kan, Vi Behovs! ^ Kvinnorna ga® r samman i egna fo« reningar(Stockholm: Forë laget Akademilitteratur, 1983), 135.

35. Dista Va« stberg, ` Manlig Konservatism och Kvinnlig Sterilitet,'' Morgonbris(March 1931): 9.

36. Aî kerman,Vi Kan,Vi Behovs, 195.37. Morgonbris, ` Kvinnoro« relsen'' (December 1939): 5.38. Here we acknowledge our debt to social-movement theorists: Snow and Benford,

` Master Frames,'' Alberto Melucci, `A Strange Kind of Newness: What's New inNew Social Movements,'' in New Social Movements: From Ideology to Identity,editors, Enrique Larana, Hank Johnston, and Joseph Gus¢eld (Philadelphia:Temple University Press, 1995), 101^132.

39. For a more developed argument against these dichotomies, see Carol Bacchi,

504

Same Di¡erence: Feminism and Sexual Di¡erence (Sidney: Allen & Unwin, 1990);and Wendy Sarvasy, ` Postsu¡rage Feminism, Citizenship, and the Quest for aFeminst Welfare State,''Signs 17 (1992): 329^362.

40. Barbara Hobson,UneasyVirtue:The Politics of Prostitution and American ReformTradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).

41. William A. Gamson, Talking Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press,1992).

42. Gordon,Pitied, and Sonya Michel,Children's Interests/Mothers Rights:The Shap-ing of America's Child Care Policy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997)describe maternalism as an ideology; Molly Ladd-Taylor, Mother-Work: Women,Child Welfare and the State, 1890^1930 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994)analyzes ` maternalist'' women's movements; and Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers andMothers, uses ` maternalist'' to depict a type of welfare state.

43. Gordon, Pitied; Ladd-Taylor,Mother-Work; and Michel,Children's Interests.44. These cognitive frames could be applied to various feminist movements: mother-

hood as service formed the basis of the Australian maternalism in Marilyn Lake's` Personality, Individuality, Nationality: Feminist Conceptions of Citizenship,1902^1940,'' Australian Feminist Studies 19 (1994): 25^38; French confessionalfeminists a¤rmed motherhood as social function in Susan Pedersen's Family,Dependence, and the Origins of the Welfare State; Britain and France, 1914^1945(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993); and ¢nally, one could view theBritish feminist campaign for the endowment of motherhood as re£ecting theirbelief that women's economic dependence on men left them vulnerable to ahusband's abuse of power. See Jane Lewis's ` Models of Equality for Women: TheCase of State Support for Children in Twentieth-Century Britain,'' in MaternityGender Policies: Women and the Rise of the European Welfare States, 1880's^1950's, editors, Gisela Bock and Pat Thane (London: Routledge, 1991), 73^92;and Jane Lewis's edited volume Women and Social Policies in Europe: Work,Family and State (Aldershoot, England: Edward Elgar, 1993).

45. Norway is the exception since maternalist issues formed the basis of feministactivism there: See Arnlaug Leira,Welfare States and Working Mothers (Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

46. DistaVa« stberg, ` Islossning,''Morgonbris (May 1938): 5.47. Diana Pateman, ``The Patriarchal Welfare State,'' in Democracy and the State,

editor, A. Gutman (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988), 231^278.48. Laura Frader, ` Social Citizens without Citizenship: Working Class Women and

Social Policy in Inter-war France,''Social Politics: International Studies of Gender,State, and Society 3/2^3 (1997): 111^135.

49. Ellen Key can be seen as the ultimate maternalist: she was highly critical of allfeminist movements that sought in£uence in the male domains of politics and thelabor market: see Ellen Key,TheWoman Movement, trans. Mamah Bouton Borth-wick (NewYork: Putnam, 1912).

50. Lena Eskillsson,Dro« mmen om Kamratsamha« llet (Stockholm: Carlsson Bokforlag,1991).

51. Arbetets Kvinnor, ` Kvinnofra® ger'' 2 (1936): 21^22.52. ` Svenska Kvinnors Medborgarsforbund'' (£yer), Hanna Rydh Archive,Women's

Historical Collection, Gothenburg University, Box A12, I20 (1931): 23.53. Barbara Hobson, ` Feminist Strategies and Gendered Discourses inWelfare States:

Married Women's Right to Work in the U.S. and Sweden During the 1930's,'' inMothers of a New World. Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States,

505

ed. Seth Koven and Sonya Michel (New York: Routledge, Kegan and Paul, 1993),396^429.

54. Herbert Tingsten, The Swedish Social Democrats: Their Ideological Development,trans. Greta Frankel and Patricia Howard-Rosen (New Jersey: Bedminster Press,1973), 285.

55. Hobson, ` Feminist Strategies,'' 5.56. SOU (1938): 2.57. Charles Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution (Reading, Mass: Addison-Wesley,

1978), 55.58. Pedersen, Family. The French case has been used as a paradigm of a feminist voice

of di¡erence, referred to by O¡en, ` De¢ning Feminism,'' as ` relational feminism.''59. Pedersen, Family.60. Jane Jenson and Mariete Sineau, ``Family Policy and Women's Citizenship in

Mitterand's France,'' Social Politics: International Studies of Gender, State, andSociety 2/3 (1995): 244^269.

61. The national law, called the Economy Act, forbid employing two persons fromthe same household in the civil service. Numerous communities enacted laws thatled to wholesale ¢ring of married teachers. For a more detailed discussion, seeHobson, ` Feminist Strategies.''

62. Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers; Molly Ladd-Taylor, ` My Work CameOut of Agony and Grief: Mothers and the Making of the Sheppard-Towner Act,''in Mothers of a NewWorld: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States,ed. Seth Koven and Sonya Michel (N.Y.: Routledge, 1993): 321^342.

63. Cynthia Harris, On Account of Sex: The Politics of Women's Issues (Berkeley:University of California Press, 1988).

64. Hobson, ` Feminist Strategies.''65. Nancy Fraser, Unruly Practices, Power Discourse and Gender in Contemporary

Social Theory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989).66. Sidney Tarrow, ` Mentalities, Political Cultures, and Collective Action Frames,'' in

Frontiers in Social Movement Theory, editors, A. D. Morris and C. M. Mueller(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992): 174^202; Tarrow, Power in Movement.

67. Jane Jenson, ` Gender and Reproduction: Or Babies and the State,'' Studies inPolitical Economy 20 (1986): 9^45.

68. Snow and Benford, ` Master Frames,'' 141.69. Ibid., 140.70. Lindholm, ` Swedish Feminism.''71. Wilhelm Moberg, A History of the Swedish People from Pre-History to Renais-

sance, trans. P. Britten Austen (NewYork: Pantheon Books, 1972), 197.72. Orvar Lo« fgren and Jonas Frykman,Culture Builders: AHistorical Anthropology of

Middle-Class Life, trans. Alan Crozier (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press,1987).

73. Quoted in Tingsten,The Swedish Social Democrats, 265.74. This was the case in the 1940s and 1950s where women's political in£uence was

limited to commissions on surveys of household consumption and scienti¢c man-agement of the home. See Ann-Katrin Hatje, Befolkningsfra® gan och va« lfa« rden(Stockholm: Allma« nna Fo« rlaget, 1974); Hirdman, Att la« gga livet till ra« tta; andAnn-So¢e Ohlander, ` The Invisible Child: The Struggle Over Social DemocraticFamily Policy,'' in Creating Social Democracy: ACentury of the Social DemocraticParty in Sweden, ed. Klaus Misgeld, Karl Molin, and Klas Aî mark (UniversityPark, Pa.: Pennsylvania State Press, 1992), 213^236.

506

75. Quoted in Gunnel Karlsson, Manssamha« llet till behag? (Stockholm: Tidens Fo« r-lag, 1990), 36; see also Hertha, ` Kvinnans ra« tta plats ar i folkhemmet!'' (April1938): 98.

76. William A. Gamson and Andre Modigliani, ``The Changing Culture of A¤rma-tive Action,''Research in Political Sociology, editor, Richard D. Braungart (Green-wich, Conn.: JAI Press, 1987), 137^177.

77. Alva Myrdal and Gunnar Myrdal,Kris i Befolkningsfra® gan (Stockholm, 1934).78. Quoted in Tim Tilton,The Political Theory of Swedish Social Democracy (Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1991), 147.79. Allan Carlsson,The Swedish Experiment in Family Politics (London: Transaction

Publishers, 1990). Alva Myrdal admitted in the introduction to the English editionofNation and Family (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1941): xviii, that sheused the population issue as a way to dramatize the need for family policy.

80. Margaretha Lindholm, ElinWa« gner och Alva Myrdal (Uddevalla, Sweden, Anam-ma fo« rlag, 1992).

81. Hertha, ` Befolkningskrisen'' (February 1935): 38.82. Myrdal,Nation and Family, 403.83. Theresa Kulawik, `Autonomous Mothers: West German Feminism Reconsid-

ered,''German Politics and Society 24^25 (Winter 1992); Pedersen, Family.84. Myrdal,Nation and Family, 120.85. Helga Hernes coined the term ` women friendly'' in her book,Welfare State and

Woman Power: Essays in State Feminism (Oslo: Norwegian University Press, 1987).86. Jarl Torbacke, ` Kvinnolistan 1927^1928 ^ ett kvinnopolitiskt ¢asko,'' Historisk

Tidskrift 2 (1969): 151.87. Arbetarhistoria (Arbetarro« relsens Arkiv, 1987): 61.88. Margaretha Lindholm, Talet Om Det Kvinnliga (Gothenberg, Sweden: University

of Gothenberg, 1990), 88, 99, 108.89. Beata Losman, ` Kvinnoorgansering och kvinnororelser i Sverige,'' in Handbok I

Svensk Kvinnohistoria, editor, Gunhild Kyle (Stockholm: Carlssons, 1987), 199.90. Abortion for social reasons was included in the original demands by Social

Democratic Women, but dropped after the Myrdals' book appeared dramatizingthe population crisis. It was political suicide to support abortion legislation. SeeOhlander, ` The Invisible Child.''

91. Kulawik, ` Autonomous Mothers.''92. Gordon, Pitied.93. Tarrow, ` Mentalities, Political Cultures, and Collective Action Frames.''94. Carlsson,The Swedish Experiment in Family Politics, 110.95. Klas Aî mark, ` Social Democracy and the Trade Union Movement: Solidarity and

the Politics of Self-Interest,'' in Creating Social Democracy, editors, Klaus Mis-geld, Karl Molin, and Klas Aî mark (University Park, Penn.: Pennsylvania StateUniversity Press, 1992). See also Phillip Schmitter, ` Still the Century of Corpora-tism?'' Review of Politics 36 (January 1984): 85^131; and Gelb, Feminism andPolitics. More relevant to women's collectivities, Joan Acker in, ` Tva® Diskurserom Reformer och Kvinnor i den FramtidaVa« lfa« rdsstaten,''Kvinnors och Ma« ns Livoch Arbete (Stockholm: SNS Fo« rlag, 1992): 283, argues that the Saltsjo« badenAccord was the beginning of a long tradition of male discursive power.

96. Analyses of Swedish welfare-state formation, such as Esping-Andersen,TheThreeWorlds of Welfare, have concentrated on the passage of unemployment insuranceand pensions, and have ignored the gender-speci¢c policymaking spheres attachedto the population committee that dominated in the 1930s.

507

97. Gunborg Alexandersson, ` Vad Ville Kvinnoro« relsens Fo« rka« mpar?'' Morgonbris(June 1838): 20.

98. SOU (1938): 2.99. Betina Cass, ` Citizenship,Work and Welfare: The Dilemma for Australian Wom-

en,'' Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State, and Society 1/1 (1994):106^124; Hester Eisenstein, ` The Australian Femocrat Experiment: A FeministCase for Bureaucracy,'' in Feminist Organizations: Harvest of the New Women'sMovement, editors, Myra Marx Feree and Patricia Y. Martin (Philadelphia:Temple University Press, 1995), 69^83.

100. Alva Myrdal, ` Familjefra® gorna i riksdagspolitiken,''Morgonbris (February 1937): 1.101. Ohlander, ` The Invisible Child.''102. Karlsson,Manssamha« llet till behag? 323.103. Disa Va« stberg, ``Kvinnorna i den Socialdemokratiska Ro« relsen,'' Tiden (1939):

141^142.104. Torbacke, ` Kvinnolistan 1927^1928.''105. Arbetets Kvinnor, 1936: 4.106. Arbetarhistoria, 1987: 60.107. Jaqueline Heinen, ` Unemployment and Women's Attitudes Toward Poland,'' So-

cial Politics: International Studies of Gender, State, and Society 2/3 (1995): 91^110.108. Jirina Smejkalova-Strickland, ` Do Czech Women Need Feminism? Perspectives

on Feminist Theories and Practices in Czechoslovakia,''Women's Studies Interna-tional Forum 17/2^3 (1994): 277^283; Susan Gal, ` Feminism in Civil Society:Some Re£ections on Eastern Europe,'' in Transitions: Global Feminism, editors,Joan Scott and Cora Kaplan (London: Routledge, 1996).

109. Charles Tilly, ` To Explain Political Processes,''American Journal of Sociology 100(1995): 1594^1610.

508