Special dossier editor’s introduction Gender, care, and work in Turkey: from familialism to neo-paternalism

The concerted efforts in recent years to change the division of care responsibilities currently shouldered by women and the quest to establish a new balance among providers of care — the family, the market, and the state — have topped the social policy agenda in many contexts. These attempts are based on the well-established fact that women ’ s caring responsibilities profoundly affect their labor market participation. Feminist researchers have modeled the welfare states as to their response to meet the care needs of families. Lewis ’ s (1992) male breadwinner model in which women bear the sole responsibility for domestic tasks and child care, and remain outside labor markets presents the most widespread model of care in the world. However, it was later modified to include variations of the one-and-a-half breadwinner and dual earner household models. In Sainsbury ’ s (1994) model, welfare states are typologies, whether they support women as wives, mothers, or workers. Orloff (1993) sets the criteria to evaluate the gender welfare regime according to whether it enables a woman to move out and set up her own home. In addition, Jensen (1997) suggests a focus on care, rather than on work/welfare, and makes distinctions between three sets of questions: Who cares? Who pays? How much is provided? These various mod-els all have a focus on the relationship between the structure of the welfare state and women ’ s paid work, and explain the role of the state in determining women ’ s economic activities. More recently, gender analysis has focused on how increasing rates of female employment have affected care and welfare regimes worldwide. For example, Esping analyzes the “ new gender contract ” that has emerged in post-industrial societies in which women-friendly policies and child-centered social investment have resulted in the disappearance of housewifery as well as institutional developments in labor market regulation and social policy.