Public policies and social investment: what consequences for women’s social citizenship?

Abstract

Beginning in the mid-1990s, the social investment perspective for social policy spread across the OECD world and into Latin America. Whereas the social policy paradigms of post-1945 citizenship regimes left space for claims-making by women’s movements in the name of equality, the social investment perspective reduces this space, and this despite the “gender awareness” that is integral to the perspective. This article assesses the extent to which and the ways in which the social investment perspective, despite being characterized by “gender awareness”, represents a threat to feminists project for equality in social citizenship.