Gender und Sozialpolitik:

Leibetseder, Bettina (2014): Gender und Sozialpolitik: Ein Transformationsansatz. Österreichische Zeitschrift für Soziologie, 39, 1: 23-41.

 Before the third feminist wave, gender theories demanded either an adoption of ‘male’ lifestyles or enhance the status of ‘female’ lifestyles in society to overcome gender inequality. Present, ‘Gender Rebellion Feminisms’, however, debate the binary thinking of gender and challenge the gendered order on this issue. This shift has hardly influenced the debate in social policy, which is still bound to the ‘sameness’ or ‘difference’ theory. This article proposes a transformative approach that conceives equality as a complex concept beyond sameness and difference and calls for a degendering of social policy. By doing so, it is argued, the binary division of gender can be abandoned and feminist critique on social policy can reconnect with contemporary discourses in gender theories. This paradigmatic re-orientation overcomes the binary view on sameness and difference, re-addresses gendered social policy and entails a degendered distribution of care work and gainful employment.