The Future of Care-Related Reforms in Liberal Welfare States: Between Magic Realism and Path Dependency.

Since the 1970's, despite a process of welfare state retrenchment, many capitalist post-industrial states have increased budgetary spending on child care and care for the elderly. As women - traditionally responsible for familial care - enter labor markets en-masse, and as the aspiration for full (men's and women's) adult market participation grows, states began investing in and regulating such care provision, previously seen as a strictly 'private' responsibility. However, various welfare regimes vary in their distribution of care responsibilities between the state, the family, or the market. Liberal welfare states, such as the U.S. and Australia, tend to enhance, regulate, and subsidize market solutions for care needs, e.g., tax deductions of child care costs, and subsidies for day care services. This policy is often criticized by both feminist scholars and welfare state theorists as incapable of altering gender relations and market inequalities.This paper will critically examine feminist legal scholars' engagement with the liberal welfare state 'turn to the market' and the possibility for change through legal reform. Juxtaposing the insights of political economy and (feminist) legal discussion, I argue that both positions fail to offer a practicable platform for reform: legal feminism often collapses into 'magic realism' in its disregard of conditions of possibility and limits of legal reform; while political economy scholarship is overly deterministic, in essence inhibiting the possibility of reform. I will then turn to explore a possible realist-pragmatist alternative to the two narratives, one that incorporates political choices and agency in conceptualizing possible reforms and trajectories of current welfare regimes. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]