Maternity and Gender Policies

Women and the Rise of the European Welfare States, 18802-1950s

Gisela Bock, Patricia Thane

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781135081676
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

This collection sets out to analyze the influence of women's movements on the emergence of Europe's welfare state from the 1880s to the 1950s, and the limits of that influence. It compares the women's movements - and social policies concerning women - in the dictatorships of Italy, Germany and Spain with the democracies in Britain, France and Scandinavia. It throws new lights on feminism, especially in the inter-war period.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of tables and figures
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Voluntary motherhood 1900–1930: theories and politics of a Norwegian feminist in an international perspective
• 2 Family welfare, which policy? Norway’s road to child allowances
• 3 The invisible child? The struggle for a Social Democratic family policy in Sweden, 1900–1960s
• 4 Models of equality for women: the case of state support for children in twentieth-century Britain
• 5 Visions of gender in the making of the British welfare state: the case of women in the British Labour Party and social policy, 1906–1945
• 6 French feminism and maternity: theories and policies, 1890–1918
• 7 Body politics : women, work and the politics of motherhood in France, 1920–1950
• 8 Pronatalism and motherhood in Franco’s Spain
• 9 Motherhood as a political strategy: the role of the Italian women’s movement in the creation of the Cassa Nazionale di Maternità
• 10 Redefining maternity and paternity: gender, pronatalism and social policies in fascist Italy
• 11 Housework and motherhood: debates and policies in the women’s movement in Imperial Germany and the Weimar Republic
• 12 Antinatalism, maternity and paternity in National Socialist racism
• Index