Séance avec Karen Shire (University of Duisburg-Essen) dans le cadre du séminaire CAPWELCARE "Capitalism, Welfare Regime and Intimate Sphere: Theory of Human Reproduction in Mature Societies in Europe and East Asia".

The talk begins with a critique of the varieties of capitalism approach (VOC) from the perspective of comparative historical sociology, recent theories of global capitalism, feminist critiques of social welfare research and the gendered division of labor in paid and unpaid labor. Reproductive labor has always been a blind spot in comparative studies, yet the degree to which political economy and welfare studies have ignored the role of unpaid labor becomes evident as policies in advanced economies turn from incentives for women to orient their life courses toward unpaid labor in the home, to encouraging higher female labor force participation and moving reproductive labor into market relations. Demographic and political changes, especially in the central cases of "coordinated market economies" have brought policies for shifting unpaid labor to the market to the foreground of family and social policies. With a focus on Europe and East Asia, the talk will discuss how the shift from unpaid work to markets for domestic and care work are re-shaping family, welfare and employment policies in cross-national and world regional comparisons. The talk ends by making a case for variegated rather than varieties of capitalist political economies and world regional over and above national comparisons of reproductive labor in comparative capitalisms.