Remaking Social Citizenship in Multicultural Europe: Women’s Movements’ Agency in Child-Care Politics and Policies

Abstract

During the latter half of the twentieth century, women’s movements across Europe succeeded in placing child care on the political agenda. They have challenged the unequal distribution of care between women and men and between the private and public spheres, as well as the general lack of recognition of care in society (e.g. Bergqvist, Kuusipalo and Styrkarsdóttir, 1999; Bertone, 2003; Bleijenbergh and Roggeband, 2007). As a consequence, in many European countries child care has gradually come to be seen no longer as exclusively the responsibility of the family but as a public issue and a social right of parents and children: that is, as an issue of social citizenship (see for example Lister et al., 2007).