Twenty years of social policy research on gender

Abstract

In this overview chapter I will discuss social policy research on gender during the timespan 2000-2020. Understanding social policy research as a multidisciplinary academic field, the focus will be 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. Acknowledging that gender is a heterogeneous category, the chapter will also look at intersectionality. Finally, I will go beyond Clasen and Siegel’s outcome criterion –defined here as gender equality – to see if and how gender is present in social policy research that does not, per definition, take that outcome for granted.