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The welfare state literature has an increasing focus on the gender-neutrality of family policies that relieve dependence on the market. Yet as Orloff (1993) argues, if wives face hurdles to the market that their husbands do not, a gender neutrality focus is premature, because policies that seem to help women actually hinder full market access. For example, Morgan and Zippel (2003) argue that increasingly generous leave policies in Europe mask a desire to keep women out of the workforce. Bambra (2004) creates a gender-neutral de-familiasation index, but this and other analyses of family policy focus on parental leave and childcare. These help mothers and fathers, but none relieves women of the dependence on marriage. A complete analysis of family policy requires a focus on policies outside the traditional welfare state sphere. The paper incorporates dependence on marriage into the analysis of family policies in Canada and the United States through an examination of abortion and domestic violence. These policies either remove or create dependence on marriage and thus allow for a complete picture of equality in modern welfare states. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gender inequality is a known phenomenon in many spheres in life; yet, it is especially conspicuous in high-level governmental positions. Men tend to get elected more and more often, to posts of vast political importance. In comparison to established democratic countries, the gender gap in high-level political positions is larger in developing democracies. Theory suggests however, that gender inequality is reduced by democracy. If true, this would indicate that we should see a closing of the gender gap as democratic countries mature. Further, if such a relationship does not exist, this would suggest that factors other than democracy are at play when it comes to choosing between a man or a woman for a high-level office. We test the hypothesis that democracy decreases gender inequality on data collected from developed and developing countries from Europe and Latin America. The results confirm the theory, and further suggest that the number of women in legislature, and the level of female economic activity, have a positive effect on decreasing the gender gap. Finally, wage inequality shows to adversely affect the number of women appointed to cabinet, however the result barely reaches statistical significance. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]