[21]patriarchy: "means the manifestation and institutionalization of male dominance over women and children in the family and the extension of male dominance over women in society in general. It implies that men hold power in all the important institutions of society and that women are deprived of access to such power. It does not imply that women are either totally powerless or totally deprived of rights, influence, and resources". (Gerda Lerner: The Creation of Patriarchy , 1986: pp.239. )

²²Hernes 1987: p.9.

²³Hernes 1987: pp.13.

²⁴ "reproduction going public" (offenliggjøring av reproduksjonen): describes the deprivatization of women's (caring) activities and their institutionalization within volunteer organizations, the labor market, and the state. The distinction between productive and reproductive work is based on the sexual division of labor and refers to women's paid and unpaid work, respectively. Reproductive work, however, describes two different processes: women's maternal role in regard to the biological reproduction of the species and the daily "repairing and caring" work on all levels. The transformation from private to public reproduction refers both to women's paid and unpaid work on a daily basis. (Hernes 1982: pp.36, 1987: pp.55.)

²⁵Hernes explains that "it is the point of intersection between the state, organized interests, and technical expertise that makes up this corporate (or corporate pluralist) system" (1987: pp.73.). This system has developed because of the growing co-operation between the central administration, organizations, and businesses in the post-war period. "The historical background of the corporate system lies both in the requirements of the central administration and in the need for national, broad-based co-operation during and after the Second World War". (ibid.) The formal arenas for such collaboration are public boards, committees, councils, and official hearings. There is, in addition to the formal meetings, also informal contact between individuals within these different bodies. Because the corporate system contains organizations that are not always democratic, and because corporatism is characteristic for the Scandinavian state, scholars and people in general have questioned whether this state-form is democratic or not. Women's representation in the corporate organizations is estimated to be only 10%.

²⁶Hernes 1982: pp. 32.

²⁷Hernes 1987: pp. 42.

²⁸Stein Rokkan: Citizens, Elections, Parties (1970): pp.145-247.

²⁹Hernes 1987: pp.42. Hernes refers to the fact that some women received social rights before they got the suffrage. Women's mobilization can therefore be said to be a result of politization of welfare issues.

³⁰See note 20.

³¹Siim 1988: pp.161.

³²Siim 1988: pp.180.

³³Siim 1988: pp.172.

³⁴Siim1990: pp.15. See note 20.

³⁵See note 20.

³⁶Hernes 1987: pp.15.

³⁷Hernes 1987: pp.15.

³⁸Siim shares her ambivalence to the category "women" with many other Scandinavian feminist scholars, mostly historians. Because social power structures such as class for long have been central in for example Norwegian historical writings, universal categories such as "Women" have never gained the same foothold within women's history as within social science feminist scholarship.

³⁹Siim 1990: pp.17.

Siim stresses the differences between different welfare state regimes in Scandinavia. While Hernes talks about the Scandinavian welfare state, Siim consequently uses the term in the plural: the Scandinavian welfare states. The Norwegian welfare state has, from Siim's point of view, more in common with the British welfare system than the Danish and the Swedish welfare states. Women in Denmark and Sweden have become dependent on the state mostly as consumers of welfare, and not as clients. Consumer is used for a person who buys welfare, whereas client is used for a person who receives welfare. Siim is basing her theory of the welfare state as a partnership on the Danish experience.

⁴⁰Siim 1990: pp.19.

⁴¹Siim 1990: pp.19.

The argument that the modern welfare state has a double meaning for women is also expressed in her article from 1988.

⁴²Exception is Yvonne Hirdman: "Genussystemet -reflexioner kring kvinnors sociale underordning" in Kvinnovetenskaplig Tidskrift ( nr.3, 1988): pp. 49-63.

⁴³See for instance Kari Martinsen: a) Freidige og uforsagte diakonisser: et omsorgsyrke vokser fram. (1984), b) Pleie uten omsorg?: norsk sykepleie mellom pasient og profesjon. (1991),

Kari Melby: "Kall og Kamp" Norsk sykepleieforbunds historie (1990),

Ida Blom: a) Barnebegrensning -synd eller sunn fornuft? (1980), b) ""smaa barn som prøveklut for alskens gammeldags husraad..."? Konflikt om ammerutiner i Bergen 1910-1940", in Över Gränser. Festskrift till Birgitta Odén (1987).

These works all focus on women's contribution to the formation of the early welfare state, but the scholarship of Martinsen, Melby, and Blom have never been considered as welfare-state research. The works of these scholars have more often been defined as social history, or the history of social policies, or of professions.

⁴⁴The fist two decades of the twentieth century in American history is conventionally known as the Progressive Era because they constituted a period of vital response to the social and economic changes brought by industrialization in the previous century. Thus the Progressive Era is characterized by an institutional and an administrative development of the American state.

⁴⁵The historian Paula Baker was one of the first to stress women's political activism and influence in the making of the welfare state, see "The Domestication of Politics: Women and American Political Society, 1780-1920", in Women, The State, and Welfare ed. Linda Gordon (1990): pp, 55-91. For the use of patriarchal theories see Carol Pateman: "The Patriarchal Welfare State", in Democracy and the Welfare State, ed. Amy Gutman (1988): pp.231-260.

⁴⁶Sklar 1993: pp.45, note 6, pp.80.

⁴⁷Gordon 1994: pp.55.

⁴⁸This general presentation, including the Tables on page 29-32, is based on: Stein Kuhnle: Velferdsstatens utvikling (1983): pp. 35-53, Michael Hill: Understanding Social Policy

(1993): pp. 12-43, Pat Thane: The Foundations of the Welfare State (1982): pp.101-125,

Edward Berkowitz & Kim Mc Quaid: Creating the Welfare State: The Political Economy of Twentieth-Century Reform (1988): pp.35-53, Robert Erikson et al.: The Scandinavian Model (1987): pp.44, Robyn Muncy: Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform, 1890-1935

(1991): pp. 38-65, 93-123, Theda Skocpol & Gretchen Ritter: "Gender and the Origins of Modern Social Policies in Britain and the United States", in Studies in American Political Development (No.5, Spring 1991): pp.38, Anne Cova: "French feminism and maternity: theories and policies", in Maternity & Gender Policies, ed. Gisela Bock & Pat Thane (1991): pp. 119-137, Anne-Sofie Ohlander: "The invisible child? The struggle for a Social Democratic family policy in Sweden, 1900-1960s", in Maternity & Gender Policies , ed. Gisela Bock & Pat Thane (1992): pp. 60-72,

Gisela Bock: "Introduction", in Maternity & Gender Policies, ed. Gisela Bock & Pat Thane

(1991): pp. 1-20, Anne-Lise Seip: Sosialhjelpstaten blir til. Norsk sosialpolitikk 1740-1920 (1984).

⁴⁹Even though Roosevelt's New Deal in 1935 required a growing federal responsibility in ensuring health care for all Americans, health insurance proposals were left out of Roosevelt's legislation. Therefore the United States were left with only one relatively universal social program: Social Security's contributory insurance program for retired wage earners and their dependants. Separate from Social Security, the USA also developed several means-tested welfare programs for unemployed people, poor single mothers and children, such as Aid to Families with Dependent Children, Food Stamps, Head Start etc.

⁵⁰Scholars such as Edward Berkowitz and Kim Mc Quaid have pointed out that the federal government in the United States played a minimal role in promoting social welfare for its citizens before 1935. Thus health and welfare remained for long the concern of the individuals, the employers or of charity. (Berkowitz & Mc Quaid: Creating the Welfare State: The Political Economy of Twentieth-Century Reform , 1988.)

⁵¹Bock/Thane (eds.) 1991: pp.4.

⁵²Mothers' Pension was the forerunner of today's Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC).

⁵³Linda Kerber & Jane Sharron De Hart: Women's America (1991): pp.541.

⁵⁴Muncy 1991: pp. 38.

⁵⁵ a) Theda Skocpol & Gretchen Ritter: "Gender and the Origins of Modern Welfare Policies", in Studies in American Political Development ( No.5, Spring 1991): pp. 36-93,

b) Theda Skocpol: Protecting Soldiers and Mothers (1992).

⁵⁶Skocpol and Ritter 1991: pp.36.

⁵⁷Skocpol 1992: pp.34.

⁵⁸Skocpol and Ritter 1991: pp.36.

⁵⁹National Congress of Mothers: a federation of white women's organizations, founded in 1897. The federation joined with Parents-Teachers Associations in 1908, and took the name National Congress of Parents and Teachers Associations (PTA). Despite its more neutral name, the PTA remained principally a female organization, established in every state, and consisted of twenty two thousand local units by 1931. Its local units worked to establish playgrounds, libraries, health clinics, while its national leadership lobbied at federal level on issues from welfare reforms to international peace.

General Federations of Women's Clubs (GFWC): Women's clubs across the United States joined in a General Federation in 1890. Many of the women's clubs founded in the second half of the nineteenth century shifted their focus from literary and charitable pursuits to increasingly political activities in the beginning of the twentieth century.

National Consumers' League (NCL): was formed in 1899, under the direction of Florence Kelly, and sought to influence industrial working conditions by educating consumers to purchase only those goods produced under human conditions. Under Kelly's leadership, the League increasingly advocated legislation to control women's working conditions and took the lead in coalitions opposed to child labor. It was a strong connection between the Consumers' League and the settlement movement. (For the "settlement movement" see note 112, page 52.)

National Women's Trade Union League (NWTUL): created by settlement house workers (William English Walling and Mary Kenny O'Sullivan) and trade unionists to urge women into unions and to inform the public about their needs. NWTUL was set out to create an organization for all working women, modelled on the British Women's Trade Union League. Before World War One, the organization proved an effective organizer of female workers and a strong advocate of protective legislation for women in industry. (Nancy Cott: The Grounding of Modern Feminism, 1987, and Robyn Muncy: Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform 1890-1935, 1991.)

⁶⁰Kathryn Kish Sklar: "The Historical Foundations of Women's Power in the Creation of the American Welfare State, 1830-1930", in Mothers of a New World , ed. Seth Koven & Sonya Michel (1993): pp.45, note 6, pp.80.

⁶¹Skocpol 1992: pp.56.

⁶²The Workmen's Compensation Laws (or Workers' Compensation): The laws required an employer to assume the responsibility for any work-related injury that accured on his plant. Due to the increase of demage claims from workers in industry and railroad, both employers and employees had great interest in the passing of workers' compensation laws in 40 states between 1911-1920. Even though the law was meant to cover all wage earners in manual work, many states excluded causal, farm, or domestic workers. (Edward Berkowitz & Kim McQuaid: Creating the Welfare State: The Political Economy of the Twentieth-Century Reform, 1988.) It is interesting to notice that the two scholars Edward Berkowitz and Kim McQuaid consider the workers' compensation laws as "the foundation of the social welfare system created during the Progressive Era" (1988: pp.43). This "mainstream" view is in sharp contrast to the story presented by Skocpol.

⁶³See note 49.

⁶⁴Skocpol refers to Harold Wilensky: The Welfare State and Equality: Structural and Ideological Roots of Public Expenditures (1975), and Peter Flora & Jens Alber: "Modernization, Democratization and the Development of Welfare States in Western Europe", in The Development of Welfare States in Europe and America, eds. Peter Flora and Arnold Heidenheimer (1981): pp.37-89, and David Collier and Richard Messick: "Prerequisites versus Diffusion: Testing Alternative Explanations of Social Security Adaptation", in American Political Science Review 69

(1975): pp.1299-1315.

⁶⁵Skocpol and Ritter 1991: pp.47.

⁶⁶Skocpol 1992: pp.39.

⁶⁷Skocpol 1992: pp.30.

⁶⁸Linda Gordon: a) Woman's Body, Woman's Right. A Social History of Birth Control in America , (1977), b) "Single mothers and Child Neglect", in American Quarterly 37 (No.2 1985), c) "Family Violence, Feminism, and Social Control", in Feminist Studies 12 (1986), d) Heroes of Their Own Lives: The Politics and History of Family Violence, Boston, 1880-1960 (1988), e) " The Frustration of Family Violence Social Work: A Historical Critique", in Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare 4 (December 1988), f) "The New Feminist Scholarship on the Welfare State", in Women, the State and Welfare, ed. Linda Gordon (1991).

⁶⁹Linda Gordon: "Gender, State and Society: A Debate with Theda Skocpol",

Theda Skocpol: "Soldiers, Workers, and Mothers: Gendered Identities in early US Social Policy ",

Linda Gordon: "Response to Theda Skocpol", in Contention, (Vol. 2 No. 3 Spring 1993): pp.139-189.

Linda Gordon also refers to Theda Skocpol in her latest book Pitied But Not Entitled. Single Mothers and the History of Welfare, 1890-1935 (1994).

⁷⁰Skocpol 1992: pp.33.

⁷¹Gordon 1993: pp.145.

⁷²Gordon 1993: pp144.

⁷³Gordon 1993: pp.144.

⁷⁴Gordon 1993: pp.144.

⁷⁵Gordon 1993: pp.144.

⁷⁶Gordon 1993: pp.145/146.

⁷⁷Gordon 1993: pp.148.

⁷⁸Linda Gordon: "Social Insurance and Public Assistance: The Influence of Gender in Welfare Thought in the United States, 1890-1935", in American Historical Review 37 (February 1992): pp.19-53.

⁷⁹Gordon 1992: pp.19.

⁸⁰Most scholars of welfare have noted that the United States has a stratified welfare system which has been traditionally divided into two categories: -social insurance and -public assistance, characterized as respectively superior and inferior. When many do not emphasize its superior and inferior "tracks", this way of identifying has become a mark of many feminist scholars. See Barbara J. Nelson: "The Origins of the Two-Channel Welfare State: Workmen's Compensation and Mothers' Pension", in Women, the State and Welfare, ed. Linda Gordon (1990).

⁸¹Gordon 1993: pp.186.

⁸²Gordon 1994: pp.290.

⁸³Gordon 1992: pp.21.

⁸⁴Gordon 1993: pp.150.

⁸⁵The anti-essentialism trend is thoroughly described and criticized in an article by Jane Roland Martin:"Methodological Essentialism, False Difference, and Other Dangerous traps", in Signs (Spring 1994): pp.630-657. Essential thinking about women has often given the highest priority to the material, biological woman. Thus I define essentialism as the idea that there exists a female essence, which is biological. But I will claim that essentialism also can be constructed on a social and cultural level. Feminist theorists have more often, as a criticism of biological essentialism and biological determinism, given women's social position as subordinated highest priority. Thus the female essence becomes their social position as subordinate in a male dominated society. This can be understood as a form of social essentialism. While social essentialism might be constructed in order to weaken biological essentialism, it can also work the opposite way and reinforce the biological essence.

⁸⁶Gordon 1993: pp.145.

⁸⁷See page 19-20.

⁸⁸This question was specified in an article from The New Republic. January 4 & 11 (1993): pp. 34, written by Alan Wolfe. The quote is taken from Linda Gordon's article: "Social Insurance and Public assistance: The Influence of Gender in Welfare Thought in the United States, 1890-1935" (1992).

⁸⁹Gordon 1994: pp.8. For other definitions of feminism see Linda Gordon: "What's New in Women's History", in Feminist Studies/Critical Studies, ed. Theresa de Lauretis (1986): pp.29, and Nancy Cott: Grounding of Modern Feminism (1987): pp.4-5.

⁹⁰Gordon 1993: pp.147-148.

⁹¹Gordon 1993: pp.146.

⁹²Gordon 1993: pp.145.

⁹³Gordon 1994: pp.55.

⁹⁴Gordon 1993: pp.146.

⁹⁵Linda Gordon: "Black and White Visions of Welfare: Women's Welfare Activism, 1890-1945", in Journal of American History. 78 (September 1991): pp.584.

⁹⁶Gordon 1994: pp.126.

⁹⁷Gwendolyn Mink: "The Lady and the Tramp: Gender, Race, and the Origins of the American Welfare State", in Women, the State, and Welfare, ed. Linda Gordon (1991):pp.92-122.

I think Mink here uses "racism" incorrectly. It seems more likely that what she calls racism, should be interpreted as ethnic conflicts. Mink overstates in this way the racist element of maternalism, and thus Skocpol's criticism seems reasonable. Mink has a forthcoming book called The Wages of Motherhood: Maternalist Social Policy and Women's Inequality in the Welfare State that probably will give a more extensive understanding of her interpretation of the racial aspect of maternalism.

⁹⁸Mink 1991: pp.98.

⁹⁹Skocpol 1992: pp. 567, note 78.

¹⁰⁰Mink 1990: pp.114, note 1.

¹⁰¹Seth Koven & Sonya Michel: "Introduction: Mother World", in Mothers of a New World eds. Seth Koven & Sonya Michel (1993): pp.34, note 19, pp.39, note 69. ¹⁰² Seth Koven & Sonya Michel: a) "Womanly Duties: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States in France, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States, 1880-1920",

in American Historical Review. 95 (October 1990): pp.1076-1108, b) eds. Mothers of a New World. Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States (1993).

Sonya Michel & Robyn Rosen: "The Paradox of Maternalism: Elizabeth Lowell Putnam and the American Welfare State", in Gender and History (Vol.4 No.3, Autumn 1992): pp.365-386. Sonya Michel: "The Limits of Maternalism: Policies towards American Wage-Earning Mothers during the Progressive Era", in Mothers of a New World (1993): pp.277-320.

Seth Koven: "Borderlands: Women, Voluntary Action, and Child Welfare in Britain, 1840 to 1914", in Mothers of a New World (1993): pp. 94-135.

¹⁰³Michel & Rosen 1992: pp.364.

¹⁰⁴Koven & Michel 1990: pp. 1079, or Koven & Michel (eds.) 1994: pp.4.

¹⁰⁵Koven & Michel 1994: pp.5.

¹⁰⁶Koven & Michel 1990: pp.1091-1092.

¹⁰⁷Koven & Michel 1993: pp.2.

¹⁰⁸Koven 1993: pp.94-95.

¹⁰⁹Linda Kerber was the first to conceptualize this apparent paradox in Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (1980) by the term "Republican Motherhood". The ideology of republican motherhood and the canons of domesticity legitimizied women's civic activity, especially moral refom, throughout most of the nineteenth century.

¹¹⁰In Mothers of a New World pp. 94-135,

critique of the private/public distinction: pp.96.

¹¹¹Sonya Michel and Ruth Rosen says: "the more radical maternalist were first to be discovered by social, labor, and women's historians", (1992): pp.383. The historians they refer to are:

Kathryn Kish Sklar: "Hull House in the 1890's", Signs 10 (Summer 1985), Robyn Muncy: Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform: 1890-1935 (1991), Elisabeth Payne: Reform, Labor, and Feminism: Margaret Dreier Robins and the Women's Trade Union League (1988).

¹¹²The settlement movement: In many major cities at the end of the nineteenth century, female and male college graduates founded settlement houses in sprawling immigrant quarters, becoming resident social researchers and sympathetic neighbors and supporters at the same time. College graduates invented in this way careers for themselves by founding social settlement houses and social work practices. The settlement idea was taken from London, where the first settlement house in the world, Toynbee Hall, was founded in 1884. Toynbee Hall invited university men to live in the midst of a working-class neighborhood for the purpose of bridging the gap between London's educated and laboring classes, to promote understanding between those groups and especially to provide education and culture to working people. The first settlement houses in the United States were opened after some graduate students visited Toynebee Hall. Rivington Street in New York (1887) and the Hull House in Chicago (1889) were important centres in the emerging American settlement movement. (Nancy Cott: The Grounding of Modern Feminism, 1987.)

¹¹³Michel & Rosen 1992: pp.365.

¹¹⁴Michel & Rosen 1992: pp.382.

¹¹⁵Michel & Rosen 1992: pp.365, "the importance of differences within the maternalist movement itself.", "Historians have tended to foreground the radical maternalists."

¹¹⁶See note 105.

¹¹⁷Koven & Michel 1994: pp.25.

¹¹⁸Koven & Michel 1993: pp.25.

¹¹⁹Skocpol 1992: pp. 37.

¹²⁰Skocpol 1992: pp.37.

¹²¹Molly Ladd-Taylor: a) "Grannies and Spinsters: Midwife Training under the Sheppard-Towner Act", in Journal of Social History 22 (1988), b) "Hull House Goes to Washington: Women and the Children's Bureau", in Gender, Class, Race and the Reform in the Progressive Era , ed. Noralee Frankel & Nancy S. Dye (1991), c) "My Work Came out of Agony and Grief: Mothers and the Making of the Sheppard-Towner Act", in Mothers of a New World , ed. Seth Koven & Sonya Michel (1993), d) Mother-Work, Women, Child Welfare, and the State, 1890-1930 (1994).

¹²²This quote is taken from Journal of Women's History (Vol.5, No. 2, Fall 1993): pp.110, where Molly Ladd-Taylor favors a more precise definition of maternalism. Ladd-Taylor's paper is one of six papers on the topic "Maternalism as a Paradigm" that were prepared for the 1992 Social Science History Association meeting in Chicago, and reprinted in Journal of Women's History (Vol.5 No.2 1993) under the headline International Trends. Ladd-Taylor's remark is restated in Mother-Work 1994: pp.3.

¹²³Ladd-Taylor 1994: pp.3.

¹²⁴The Hull House/Children's Bureau network: The Hull House was a social settlement in Chicago opened by educated middle-class men and women in 1889. The residents of the Hull House were engaged in social welfare work in the working-class areas of Chicago, and participated in the creation and administration of the Children's Bureau. The settlement movement lobbied for and administrated such key welfare reforms as protective labor legislations, maternal and health care, and mother's pensions. (Nancy Cott: The Grounding of Modern Feminism, 1987) See also note 112.

¹²⁵Ladd-Taylor 1993: pp.111.

¹²⁶The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA): In November 1923 the National Women's Party agreed that "Men and women shall have equal rights thorough the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction". This amendment led to an intense debate within the feminist movement on whether it was possible to affirm equal rights and sex-based labor legislations, such as the laws regulating women's working hours, wages, and conditions of work. The disagreement explains partly why American feminists failed to pass the ERA through Congress in 1923. (Nancy Cott: The Grounding of Modern Feminism, 1987: pp. 119-127.)

¹²⁷Ladd-Taylor 1993: pp.112. The National Women's Party: was founded in 1917 as a national woman suffrage group.

¹²⁸Ann Taylor Allen: a) "Spiritual Motherhood: German Feminists and the Kindergarten Movement, 1848-1911", in History and Education Quarterly. 22 (1982), b) "Mothers of the New Generation: Adele Scheiber, Helene Stocker, and the Evolution of a German Idea of Motherhood, 1900-1914", in Signs 10 (1985), c) "Gardens of Children, Gardens of God: Kindergartens and Day Care Centres in Nineteenth-Century Germany", in Journal of Social History. 19 (Spring 1986),

d) Feminism and Motherhood in Germany, 1800-1914 . (1991), e) "Maternalism in German Feminist Movements", in Journal of Women's History (Vo.5 No.2, 1993).

¹²⁹Allen 1993: pp.99.

¹³⁰Offen, Karen: "Defining feminism: A Comparative Historical Approach", in Signs (Vol. 15, No.1, 1988):pp.135. Karen Offen argues that feminism is represented by two historically distinct and seemingly conflicting modes of argument. She identifies these two modes as "relational" and "individualist", saying that they refer to a "analytical divergent ways of thinking about women and men and their respective places in human social organizations". (1988): pp.134. Offen has, however, been thorougly criticized for her division betwen relational and individualist feminism. See Nancy Cott and Ellen Dubois: "Comments on Karen Offen's Aricle "Defining Feminism: A Comparative Historical Approach"", in Signs (Vol. 15, No.1, 1988): pp.195-197, 203-205,

Kari Melby: "Women's Ideology: Difference, Equality or a New Femininity, Women Teachers and Nurses in Norway 1912-1940", in Moving On. New Perspectives on the Women's Movement , eds. Tayo Andreasen et al. (1991): pp.138-154.

¹³¹Allen 1993: pp.99.

¹³²Allen 1991: pp.1-2.

¹³³Allen 1991: pp.3.

¹³⁴Allen 1991: pp.12.

¹³⁵Richard J. Evans: "The Concept of Feminism: Notes for Practising Historians", in German Women in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: A Social and Literary History. eds. Ruth-Ellen Joers and Mary Jo Maynes (1986).

¹³⁶Allen 1993: pp.102.

¹³⁷Alternative styles of politics such as voluntary activism, continued to play an important role in women's politics also after women got the right to vote and to enter political parties.

¹³⁸It is important to point out that even though American women won the suffrage in 1920, they carried on using "the powers of difference" in their struggle for women's rights. Actually, women tried to improve their political influence and power by using both the language of gender difference and gender sameness. The dualistic use of difference and similarity, is a characteristic feature of the twentieth century women's movement in the Western World.

¹³⁹See note 106.

¹⁴⁰Scott 1988: pp.29. The anthropologist Gayle Rubin was the first to use the term "gender". In the article "The Traffic in Women: Notes on the "Political Economy" of Sex" from 1975, Rubin emphasized the biological given sex and the culturally created gender through her theory of the "sex-gender system", in Toward and Anthropology of Women, ed. Rayna R. Reiter (1975): pp.157-210. It is important to add that gender also bring in a relational notion into our analytical vocabulary, because a focus on gender implies a focus on men as well as on women. However, the relational aspect of gender has not always been emphasized by researchers, which means that they use gender as an euphemism for women, in order to obtain a more "neutral" point of departure.

¹⁴¹Simone de Beauvoir: The Second Sex, was first published in 1949. Her famous statement "One is not born a woman; one becomes one", expresses that Beauvoir uncompromisingly refused any notion of a female nature or essence. Toril Moi says that "Beauvoir's main thesis in this epochal work [The Second Sex] is simple: throughout history, women have been reduced to objects for men: "woman" has been constructed as man's Other, denied the right to her own subjectivity and to responsibility for her own actions". (Toril Moi: Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory (1985): pp.92.)

¹⁴²For essentialism see note 85.

By constructionism I mean the idea that the studied phenomenon is seen as a social, cultural, or historical construction, and not as a carrier of an inner unchangeable essence.

¹⁴³Both Gordon and Allen seem inspired by Joan Scott and her critique of the universal social category "Women". Scott claims that the "difference" that historians have documented in so much of women's history has been constructed through a process of exclusion and did not arise from some essential quality inherent in the female sex. The use of cross-cultural categories has also been criticized by postmodern theorists, such as Jean F. Lyotard, but he goes much further than Scott. Scott still wants to operate with categories such as social class and gender, whereas Lyotard says that it is difficult to operate with cross-cultural categories because what holds society together is not a common consciousness or an institutional substructure, but a weave of criss-crossing threads of discursive practices. Social identities are, in other words, complex and heterogeneous. Some feminist scholars see postmodern theories as a threat to feminism, because they abandon any unified notion of women. Others think that there are many points of overlap between a postmodern stance and the position long held by feminists. Both feminist and postmodern theorists have generally argued against the supposed neutrality and objectivity of the academy, asserting that claims put forth as universally applicable have been valid for men of particular culture, class, and race. Moreover, they also seek to develop conceptions of social criticism that do not rely on traditional political underpinnings, but float free of any universalistic theoretical ground. For more on the connection between feminism and postmodernism see Nancy Fraser & Linda J. Nicholson: "Social Criticism without Philosophy: An Encounter between Feminism and Postmodernism", in Feminism/Postmodernism (1990): pp.19-38, and Joan W. Scott: "Deconstructing Equality -versus- Difference: or the uses of poststructuralist theory for feminism", in Feminist Studies , (Vol. 14, No. 1, Spring 1988): pp.33-50, Ida Blom: "Fra det moderne til det postmoderne subjekt" in Nytt Norsk Tidsskrift ( nr.2 1995): pp. 137-145, Eirinn Larsen: a) "Joan Wallach Scott: Feminist & Historian", unpublished final project in Advanced Feminist Theory, Women's Studies course no. 104, University of California at Berkeley (UCB), (spring 1995), b) "Postmodernism & Feminism", unpublished presentation and paper in Women's Studies course no.104, UCB, (spring 1995).

¹⁴⁴Theda Skocpol is perhaps best known for her prize-winning book States and Social Revolution (1979) and Bringing the State Back In (1985). She has also co-authored numerous articles comparing policy developments in the United States with Britain in particular.

¹⁴⁵The Danish historian Bente Rosenbeck has emphasized this problem in her book Kroppens politik. Om køn, kultur og vitenskab (1992): pp.95-100.

¹⁴⁶Leiv Mjeldheim: Politiske prosessar og institusjonar (1987): pp.11.

¹⁴⁷Mjeldheim says besides that the distribution of benefits and values has to be done through identified persons or institutions, and that the decision has to give room for discernment.

¹⁴⁸For an overview of some central voluntary organizations and institutions in the United States, highlighted by the American feminist scholars, see note 59, page 35, note 112, page 52 and note 124, page 56. See also Table 2, page 30-31.

¹⁴⁹Tone Margrethe Birkenes introduced the terms "horizontal" and "vertical" political activity in connection with an analytical model that she worked out and used in her master-thesis "...ET STILLE TOG...", Kvinners frivillige organiserte samfunnsaktivitet i Kristiansand, 1901-1907 (hovedfagsoppgave i historie, Universitetet i Bergen, våren 1995). The model was formed in order to explain the ways in which women's political activity were marked by a various set of strategies. Birkenes' main point is that politically active women often used double-edged strategies in order to affect the behaviour of others; one vertical line of activity that went directly to the political public of parliament, government, or local authorities, and another horizontal line of activity that went directly to needy groups in society. While women following the vertical line of activity only indirectly contributed to the distribution of benefits and values in society, those following the horizontal line of activity contributed directly to the distribution of welfare by running hospital and food-stations, handing out clothes to poor children, nursing old and sick people etc. Activity that sought to help people directly can be described as indirectly political because the activity in itself did not result in reform of society. The vertical activity, on the other hand, went beyond individuals and could lead to reforms and change of laws. Birkenes emphasizes, however, that the two lines of avtivity interacted in a way that makes it difficult to put any sharp distinction between the two. The women lobbing for reforms in the city-council of Kristiansand, were also often engaged in more practical charity-work, says Birkenes.

¹⁵⁰See page 51-52.

¹⁵¹See page 56.

¹⁵²For "polity-centered approach" see page 38.

¹⁵³See page 11-12.

¹⁵⁴See page 8-9.

¹⁵⁵See also page 26-28.

¹⁵⁶Gisela Bock: "Introduction", in Maternity and Gender Policies, eds. Gisela Bock & Pat Thane (1992): pp.4-5. The British historian Jane Lewis underscores that child and maternal services were developed earlier than most other health services in England. See Jane Lewis: The Politics of Motherhood. Child and Maternal Welfare, 1900-1939 (1980): pp.13.

¹⁵⁷Lewis 1980: pp.20.

¹⁵⁸Pat Thane: "Women in the British Labour Party and the Construction of State Welfare, 1906-1939", in Mother of a New World eds. Seth Koven & Sonya Michel (1993): pp.361.

¹⁵⁹Lewis 1980: pp. 15.

¹⁶⁰See page 53-54. Koven and Michel emphasize that a strong women's social-action movement did not necessarily result in more benefits for women and children. This appears to be a paradox for Koven and Michel. Skocpol does not support the "strong state/weak state" paradigm created by Koven and Michel.

¹⁶¹Thane 1993: pp.357-358.

¹⁶²Thane 1993: pp.358.

¹⁶³Thane 1994: pp.358-359.

¹⁶⁴Thane 1994: pp.360.

¹⁶⁵There are, however, a major difference between the two binary couples (weak states/strong states, maternalism/paternalism) since Skocpol distinguishes between the United States and Europe, whereas Koven and Michel make generalizations about Britian and the US versus France and Germany. Nevertheless, they all seem to place the American experience above the European.

¹⁶⁶See note 49.

¹⁶⁷See for instance Theda Skocpol: Social Policy in the United States: Future Possibilities in Historical Perspective (1995).

¹⁶⁸See page 55.

¹⁶⁹Because female difference, or otherness, continues to justify the inequality of the sexes, arguments based on gender difference has often been viewed as anti-feminist. Gisela Boch explaines the emphasis on gender equality as follows: "Women's studies have largely relied on the concept of "sexual" or "gender equality" as an analytical tool, and physiological "difference" has been played down as insignificant because it has so often been used to justify discriminatory treatment of women." (Gisela Bock: "Challenging Dichotomies: Perspectives on Women's history", in Writing Women's History. International Perspectives. eds. Karen Offen et al. (1991): pp.10.

¹⁷⁰Molly Ladd-Taylor identifies women within the National Women's Party as feminists, while the leaders of the National Congress of Mothers, and the members of the Hull House/Children's Bureau network are defined as maternalists. See page 55-56.

¹⁷¹Florence Kelly was by her virtue as a social reformer "maternalist". Along with her position as a leader of the national Consumers' League, she was also an active member of the National Women's Party and participated in their struggle for woman suffrage. Kelly's activity within both organizations indicates that the membership of the "maternalists" and the "feminists" organizations sometimes overlapped. See Nancy Cott: The Grounding of Modern Feminism (1987) and "What's in a Name? The Limits of "Social Feminism"; or Expanding the Vocabualry of Women's History", in The Journal of American History (Vol.76, No.3, December, 1989): pp. 315.

¹⁷²See page 57-58.

¹⁷³See page 45.

¹⁷⁴The "equality-versus-difference" debate has first of all taken off in the United States. Karen Offen claims that the equal-rights tradition has been more dominant in the United States and Britain than on the Continent, and that this tradition of feminism is the model on which much discussion of feminism by historians has been based. Europeans, on the other hand, have historically been less interested in the equality line, promoted by the Anglo-Americans. Offen says that "Europeans focused as much or more on celebration of womanliness; they celebrated sexual difference rather than similarity within a framework of male/female complementarity; and, instead of seeking unqualified admission to male-dominated society, they mounted a wide ranging critique of the society and its institutions." (Offen 1988: pp.124) This interest in "sexual difference" has moreover marked the European feminist theory circles. The French literary scholars Hélèn Cixous and Luce Irgaray have for example developed a distinctive conception of sexual difference, as a condition not of gender equality but of women's liberty. See Gisela Bock & Susan James (eds.): Beyond Equality and Difference. Citizenship, feminist politics, and female subjectivity (1992).

¹⁷⁵Gisela Bock and Susan James have also located two other perspectives or stands within the "equality -versus- difference" debate. They say that instead of neither rejecting nor praising the dichotomy equality/difference, some scholars have tried to advocate a rethinking of the idea of difference centered around the female experience. By moving away from the traditional emphasis on maternity, some scholars (Irgaray, Cixous) want to locate the female difference between thinking and the female body. Others again, intend to move beyond both equality and difference. Jane Flax for example, tries to sketch a feminist politics focused on justice, understood as the end of women's subordination. (Gisela Bock & Susan James eds. 1992: pp.1-31.)

¹⁷⁶Scott 1988 (Feminist Studies ): pp.38.

¹⁷⁷Scott 1988 (Gender and the Politics of History ): pp.172.

¹⁷⁸Scott does not object that one also runs the risk of making absolutist categorizations of difference, which always end up creating or enforcing normative rules, by emphasizing difference. According to Scott, feminist historians have in fact contributed to this reinforcement because they have founded their historical writing on the marking off of some groups of people (women, gays, lesbians, etc.) as "other", as distinguishable from a taken-for-granted norm. Even though they have made women visible through their writings on women's experience of difference, feminist historians have also naturalized women's difference because their writings are often based on assumptions of what women are. Rather than reinforcing difference through creating histories of difference (women's history), feminist historians should, from Scott's point of view, analyze how difference is historically produced, and how experience operates in this production. In turning the attention to the history of the categories of representation and anlalysis (such as class, race, gender, biology, identity, subjectivity, experience etc.) and how they achieved their foundation status, historians can manage to articulate their relationship to the past they are writing about. Instead of reproducing the knowledge said to arrive through experience, historians should analyze the production of that knowledge. Because, argues Scott, "Such an analysis would constitute a genuinely nonfoundational history, one which its explanatory power and its interest in change but does not stand on or reproduce naturalized categories". (Joan Scott: "The Evidence of Experience", in The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, eds. Henry Abelove, Michéle Aina Barale, David M. Halperin (1993): pp. 412.) The intention to constitute a non-foundational history beyond the fixed points is, from my point of view, a ambiguous program. Whether history can exist without foundations (for example primary categories) and what it might look like if it did, is still an open question which not even Joan Scott has managed to answer. For further reading on the issue "non-foundational history" see Teresa Brennan: History After Lacan (1993).

¹⁷⁹Bock & James (eds.) 1991: pp.4.

¹⁸⁰Nancy Cott: "What's in a Name? The Limits of "Social Feminism"; or Expanding the Vocabulary of Women's History", in Journal of American History (1988): pp.81.