Class Meets Gender in Comparative Social Policy

Beyond the conviction that inequality is to a large extent politically constructed—whether by practices and processes inside organizations (Acker, see pp. 192-214) or by political parties in the making of public policy (Korpi, see pp. 127-191)—the articles on which I have been asked to comment share little common ground. Whereas Acker's unit of analysis is the organization, Korpi's interest is in comparing the macroproperties of whole societies. And while Acker's strategic goal is to suggest ways of thinking about complex individual cases, Korpi seeks to formulate generalizations based on empirical regularities across cases. Very occasionally the two authors briefly connect, as when Acker both invokes and extends vintage Korpi in commenting that due to the relative weakness of the labor movement in the United States, inequality in the realm of class is more legitimate than in relation to race and gender. More typically, Acker offers concepts and illustrations designed to express how class and gender are complexly related aspects of the same ongoing practical activities. Korpi stops far short of such a radically integrative project. His goal is to modify both the dependent and independent variables of comparative welfare state research in order to incorporate gender alongside our existing understanding of class. Being much closer to Korpi's research program than Acker's, I am going to devote the rest of this essay to some observations on how he treats the project of bringing gender into comparative welfare state research. These observations will pay particular attention to how