Twenty years of social policy research on gender

This chapter aims to understand and discuss the development of social policy research on gender from 2000-2020. Understanding social policy research as a multidisciplinary academic field, the chapter focuses on the question of how gender inequality has been defined, as a social and economic problem or otherwise, how it is framed, what causes it, what policy responses are implemented, and what outcomes it generates. The overview of research is based on an analysis of English-language journal articles from the past 20 years in the Journal of European Social Policy (JESP), Critical Social Policy (CSP), and Social Politics (SP). Four primary categories of social policy research on gender are identified: work and income; care/reproduction; regimes/gender policy; and sexual rights/identity/intersectionality. The chapter also evaluates if and how gender is present in social policy research that does not, per definition, take the outcome of gender equality for granted.