Gender and the Welfare State explores the configuration ofcare, work and welfare in eight countries: France, Germany,Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, the UK and the USA.Bringing together the most recent empirical data available, itexamines the impact of the welfare state on women?s andmen?s roles and power relations, and on their access toresources. Casting a critical eye over feminist and comparative literatureon the welfare state, Daly and Rake elaborate a new theoreticalframework for understanding how gender relations are shaped bynational welfare states. They argue that the welfare state reachesdeep into people?s lives and that its effect is to be seen inthe relative resources and power relations of women and men. Thebook traces the relationship between national welfare stateconfigurations and care needs and care provision, the divisionbetween paid and unpaid work, the conditions of women?s andmen?s participation in the labour market and genderdifferentials in access to the resources of money and time. Written in an accessible style, Gender and the WelfareState brings together wide-ranging information from the majorEuropean Union countries as well as from the USA, providing thereader with essential reference material. It will be welcomed byall those interested in gender, social policies and the comparativestudy of welfare states.