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Social Policy, Feminism and the Decline of Patriarchal Fatherhood
Social Policy, Feminism and the Decline of Patriarchal Fatherhood
Thursday, 14 July 2016: 14:15-15:45
Location: Hörsaal 41 (Main Building)
RC06 Family Research (host committee) Language: English
The historical decline of the “rule of the father” has been labelled as an epochal process of “depatriarchalisation” (Therborn, 2005) and more pithily as the “retreat of the male” (Hobsbawn, 2005). However, the concept of patriarchy itself is a highly controversial one. On the one hand, family sociology and feminist epistemology defined the concept in terms of familial and intergenerational understandings (Orloff, 2003; Folbre, 2009; Rush 2015) while on the other hand, the concept was detached from familial understandings in favour of developing gender-based power theories of “dual systems” and “public patriarchy” (Walby, 1990; Hearn and Pringle, 2006).
This session aims to cover theoretical and empirical perspectives on patriarchy and on the roles of social policy and feminism in shaping the historical decline of patriarchal fatherhood. In particular, it aims to cover the extent to which patriarchal fatherhood and male-breadwinning fatherhood declined across welfare states including the Nordic, central and eastern European, English-speaking and East-Asian models of welfare. The session offers appeal to family research scholars with an interest in social policies aimed at promoting post-patriarchal work-life balance arrangements through the development of non-transferable paid parental leave for fathers and shared parenting arrangements across households for non-resident fathers.
The session is especially interested in studies which offer evidence of how social policy and feminism influenced the emergence of post-patriarchal welfare regimes. However, the session is also interested in papers focused on child welfare, children’s agency, gender differentiation and the growth of religiously inspired neo-patriarchal fatherhood.
Session Organizer: