GI415 Half Unit
Gender and Welfare Regimes: Developments and Change
This information is for the 2025/26 session.
Course Convenor
Prof Wendy Sigle
Availability
This course is available on the MSc in European and International Politics and Policy, MSc in European and International Politics and Policy (LSE and Bocconi), MSc in European and International Politics and Policy (LSE and Sciences Po), MSc in Gender, MSc in Gender (Research), MSc in Gender (Rights and Human Rights), MSc in Gender (Sexuality), MSc in Gender, Development and Globalisation, MSc in Gender, Media and Culture, MSc in Gender, Peace and Security, MSc in Gender, Policy and Inequalities, MSc in Inequalities and Social Science and MSc in Social Research Methods. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit. This course uses controlled access as part of the course selection process.
Students should apply by 10am UK time on Friday 26 September 2025. Offers will be made after 10am on this date and will continue until all places are filled.
Priority is given to those for whom the course is semi-core (if applicable), then home department students and then to those who have the course listed in their programme regulations who apply in the first 24-hours (by 10:00am, Friday 26 September 2025), space permitting. Please note the timing of your request within the first 24-hours will not impact chances of being accepted onto the course. Requests received after this timeframe, or outside option requests, will be allocated randomly if space remains.
Please do not email the Course Convenor with personal expressions of interest as these are not required and do not influence who is offered a place. Contact gender@lse.ac.uk with any queries.
Course content
The course critically explores the ways in which gender is incorporated into welfare state scholarship and social policy practice. The material covers the theory and methodology of comparative studies and feminist and decolonial critiques of mainstream approaches. The critical lens illuminates how accounts of economic development and class politics are partial without considering gendered and racialised spheres of welfare generation and the role of exploitation, expropriation and exclusion within nation-states and transnationally. The analytical focus shifts between scales to include individual advanced welfare states, welfare regimes, and the role of supranational organisations such as the EU, ILO or OECD. The substantive politics, policies and patterns of inequality, and policy areas studied converge on the work-welfare-care nexus. Indicatively, we study the organisation of caring services, migration, family policy, provisions for groups with special care needs (e.g. lone parents, persons with disabilities), employment, the practices and roles of men (especially regarding fatherhood), demographic change. In looking at these areas students are encouraged to compare and contrast different welfare systems and consider the particularism of national policy approaches and the influence of supra- and transnational processes in shaping patterns of (in)equality.
Teaching
15 hours of seminars and 15 hours of lectures in the Winter Term.
This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Winter Term.
Indicative reading
- D. Béland and R. Mahon (2016) Advanced introduction to Social Policy
- C. Bergqvist, E. Bjarnegård and P. Zetterberg (2016) When class trumps sex: The social democratic intra-party struggle over extending parental leave quotas in Sweden.
- G.K. Bhambra and J. Holmwood (2018) Colonialism, postcolonialism and the liberal welfare state.
- J. Hearn and B. Hobson (2020) Gender, state, and citizenships: Challenges and dilemmas in feminist theorizing
- S. Jaquot (2015) Transformations in EU gender equality: from emergence to dismantling
- M. Leine, H.H. Mikkelsen and A. Sen (2019). ‘Danish women put up with less’: Gender equality and the politics of denial in Denmark.
- S. Paterson (2010), What's the problem with gender-based analysis? Gender mainstreaming policy and practice in Canada.
- D. Paternotte and R. Kuhar (2018). Disentangling and locating the “global right”: Anti-gender campaigns in Europe.
- A. Van der Vleuten and M.Verloo (2012). Ranking and benchmarking: The political logic of new regulatory instruments in the fields of gender equality and anti-corruption.
- E. Westra (2024). Multiple barriers to the Dutch welfare state. Black Feminists’ intersectional claims to social citizenship in the 1980s.
Assessment
Exam (100%), duration: 180 Minutes in the Spring exam period
Key facts
Department: Gender Studies
Course Study Period: Winter Term
Unit value: Half unit
FHEQ Level: Level 7
CEFR Level: Null
Total students 2024/25: 30
Average class size 2024/25: 30
Controlled access 2024/25: YesCourse selection videos
Some departments have produced short videos to introduce their courses. Please refer to the course selection videos index page for further information.
Personal development skills
- Self-management
- Team working
- Problem solving
- Communication