Crompton, Rosemary

This paper assesses some of the implications of one of the major social changes to have taken place in the West during the second half of the twentieth century — that is, the increased employment of women, together with normative changes in gender relations and in women's expectations. These changes have been linked to an increase in individualism, which itself is associated with the transcendence of ‘first modernity’. Thus it is suggested that new approaches to social analysis are required (Beck).

In market capitalism, the tension between the demands of employment and the requirement for caring has, historically, largely been met by the domestication of women via the “male breadwinner” model of employment and family. However, the rising level of women's employment has destabilized this arrangement. In this article we evaluate a range of prescriptive responses to this situation: rightist, center-leftist, and feminist. To varying degrees, “family-friendly” state welfare policies have attempted to grapple with the resolution of the employment/caring conundrum.