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The result of a process that goes back to the origins of the Eec, there have been three main approaches to equality between men and women over the years: equal opportunities, positive action and gender mainstreaming. Implementing the rules of the political community in the individual National contexts, with their different combinations of social policies, leads to specific «gender regimes». The first part of the article reconstructs and analyses the main stages of community policy for equality between men and women, the second part analyses «gender regimes» in nine European countries.

Most European countries with liberal and social democratic welfare regimes have redesigned their social policy in recent years, adopting a social investment perspective. In doing so, they often target children and young people, and redeploy policy instruments to achieve goals for the future. There is a growing commitment by the European Union to this supply-side understanding of social policy. This article describes two mechanisms at one work in the social policy field within the institutions of the Eu: one of writing women out of the plot and folding gender into other stories.

This article uses various indicators to evaluate gender differentials on the labour market in the Eu-15, partly to see if these differences reflect the usual distinctions in the welfare state models. In particular, micro-data from the Eu-Silc research in 2006 have been used to evaluate gender differentials in relation to employment levels and quotas of the work-force with part-time and temporary contracts, and then in relation to various other dimensions that help explain the different salary levels of men and women.

In this work we offer an interpretation of the difficulties for women in reconciling work and care of family members. Welfare in Italian families has traditionally rested on the care work of women, mothers, daughters and grandmothers. This has notably restricted both their work and fertility choices. However, this model is now in crisis for demographic and sustainability reasons of various kinds.

The essay deals with some family policies in Europe, trying to set them in the debates on the most recent models for welfare states and on the transformation of social risks. In this way it defines the specific features of women’s citizenship and underlines some gaps in the Italian debate on the welfare state.

The essay analyses men’s and women’s choices in the labour market and care work in different national contexts. Starting from the prem-ise that there is an ongoing change in the condition of parenthood and fatherhood, the analysis considers the differences between Euro-pean countries in the compatibility between work and care of children both for men and women, and particularly men’s capabilities and right to care work. The article considers in detail proactive policies that encourage men to increase their care work concentrating on parental leave in Sweden.

The need to receive and give care has long remained hidden in the division of labour between community and family and between men and women. As a result, for a long time both dependence on care and the responsibility for providing it were not recognized as fundamental rights of citizenship. A partial exception was that of maternity leave. There is also a continuing asymmetry in the way in which the care needs of various subjects are recognized and the unpaid or paid work of those who respond to these needs. This marginality risks becoming more problematic at this time.

Today discourse on gender equality has a very different sense and meanings from the past. The following pages bring out their dual and sometimes contradictory, with the equality dimension generally accepted and referred to in the public debate – at international, national and local level – which suggests a possible and welcome echo-effect, even though that cannot be taken for granted. This requires a redesigning of the conceptual and interpretative schemes of gender differences.

The paper argues that welfare is satisfying human needs. It is a multidimensional phenomenon and is constructed through gendered processes. The author distinguished five dimensions of welfare: having, loving, being, doing, deciding. The dimensions are illustrated and discussed connected to the debates on the public-private divide, the distribution between care and wage work, Welfare models and inequality regimes, social and political citizenship.

Labour market reforms in 1996 and 2003 introduced new forms of employment contracts. Various attempts have since been made to categorize these according to their degree of «atypical» or «non-standard» content. In other words, a large proportion of those work-ing on atypical contracts are in fact «quasi employees» or may be termed an economically dependent worker. The availability of Plus a new labour supply data source carried out by Isfol provides specific tools to investigate the reasons for using non-standard employment contracts.

The White Paper on the future of the social model «The good life in an active society», presented as a natural sequel to the Green Paper by the Minister of Labour on 6 May 2009, has been widely criticized for the vagueness of its positions and for the gap between good intentions and actual lines of action. The article claims that the questions raised by the document do not concern only vagueness or abstractness, but that some of the proposals are dangerous and fallacious, and some of the statements made ambiguous.