Is the Economic Crisis Challenging the Prevailing Gender Regime? A Comparison of Denmark, Germany, Slovakia, and the United Kingdom.

This paper addresses the question of whether the current economic and financial crisis is challenging the prevailing gender-equality model in four European countries: Denmark, Germany, Slovakia, and the United Kingdom. After situating the countries in relation to the underlying gender regime and analysing the corresponding position of women and men in paid and unpaid work, the paper contains an in-depth discussion of the short- and medium-term policy responses to the crisis. Our analysis shows that independent of the prevailing gender regime, scant public attention has been directed to gender-sensitive policy responses. These shortcomings are compounded by the observation that the downturn seems to be delaying progress on equality policies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]