Género y Estado de bienestar en las políticas españolas

This article explores how Spanish policy debates surrounding domestic and care work in the time period of 1997-2007 are gendered, situating these debates in the process of (re)construction of the welfare state. I analyze the debates surrounding «reconciliation of work and family/personal life», «dependency» and «domestic service» with the purpose of examining dominant visions of gender equality and grasping what issues, elements and/or social groups remain in the margins of the debate. The article shows how the discourses put forward a «dual breadwinner model», emphasizing that nowadays both men and women work and should work «outside of home», and shifting way from the «male breadwinner model». Likewise, gender equality tends to be defined in terms of womens participation in the labour market. At the same time, the official debates generally start from the norm of heterosexual, middleclass working mothers and obscure the ways in which the welfare state continue depending on the «other» carers, mainly unpaid work of grandmothers and precarious work of migrant women.