The resolution’s expansion of welfare capitalism into every sphere of life does not address the root causes of oppression of women and minority groups – purely economic solutions are doomed to fail and recreate violence and exclusion

The growth of the welfare economy from a woman's perspective The modern welfare state in Denmark has a long history, but the development of a comprehensive welfare economy dates back to the beginning of the 1960s. The gradual development of the welfare state in this century has been closely connected to the growing influence of the Social Democratic Party. The Social Democratic Party has been in government since the end of the 1920s, as in Sweden, although always in a minority position and dependent on alliances with other political parties. Since the 1930s a Social Democratic model of a welfare society has become the dominant political form of state intervention. In the 1960s state intervention was extended to new areas of society - both in relation to the economy and in relation to human reproduction. The Social Democratic Party combined support for the capitalist accumulation process with a substantial social reform programme for the working class in order to alleviate some of the social inequalities created by capitalism. From the 1960s the Danish and Swedish welfare states began to distinguish themselves from other welfare states like the British, influenced more by liberal ideas, and the Danish and Swedish welfare states became a model for the most advanced welfare states in the west.° One important characteristic was the dramatic expansion of the social, health, and educational sectors with their corresponding expenditures and the creation of a welfare economy as an important part of the total economy. Another important characteristic which distinguished the Scandinavian welfare states from other welfare states was their distinct corporatist profile. 10 This corporatism was built on an institutionalized collaboration between the dominant classes. Huge and extremely hierarchical, male-dominated organizations representing different class and professional interests obtained increasing power and influence. Working conditions were negotiated by these organizations, and conflicts between employers' and workers' organizations were settled by a formalized system of rules with state representatives functioning as neutral arbitrators. This expansion of the welfare economy and of the sphere government intervention has had very different consequences for men and women. On the one hand the expansion of the welfare economy in relation to human reproduction has been an important precondition for married women's integration into the formal labour market and for their growing social and economic independence in relation to men. The state has, through its policies, ideology, and different forms of legislation, helped women to become integrated as employees. The state has also helped women accomplish important reforms like free abortions and the removal of explicit sex-discriminating rules. On the other hand the state has basically supported the hierarchical gender division of work and has continued to limit women's power and influence in the public sphere through the structure and policies of the corporatist system. In this way the development of the Danish welfare state has been a very contradictory process for women. We argue that the Danish welfare state has not been neutral to women, rather it has contributed actively both to facilitate women's integration into the formal labour market and to institutionalize and legitimize women's double roles as mothers and workers. We therefore disagree with the conclusion that women's position is determined primarily by economic forces, especially the need for women's labour power. Instead we find that the state is an important mediator between the needs of the economy and the interests of different political actors. This does not necessarily mean that state policies have had the explicit and conscious purpose of reproducing the hierarchical gender division of work and male domination, which has not been the case in Denmark, where the institutionalization of women's double roles as mothers and workers has had the unintended effect of strengthening male domination in the public sphere. The limitations of state policies in obtaining sexual equality have become more visible during the economic crisis with mass unemployment. In Denmark there have been no explicit attempts to push women out of the labour market, but cutbacks in public expenditure are clearly working in the direction of marginalizing women in relation to the labour market. In the following we shall explore the contradictions in public policies towards women in more detail and outline our conclusions about a strengthening of what has been called social patriarchy. One crucial factor in the analyses of women's relation to the welfare state has become the question of women's political power. The breakdown of the breadwinner-homemaker family has increased women's independence from their husbands and has at the same time made women more dependent on the state as employees, clients and consumers of public services.11 We argue, however, that there are important differences in the degrees of dependence in the different welfare states connected to differences between their status as employees, consumers and clients. We find that women in the Danish and Swedish welfare states are subiect to a different form of dependency than women in welfare states such as those of Britain or the United States. The large state sector means that women have primarily become dependent on the state as employees and consumers of social services and only to a smaller extent as clients. The opposite is the case in Britain and the US where women to a larger extent are still dependent either on their husbands or on the state as clients. In the following we shall look into women's different roles as employees, consumers and clients in more detail.