Gender Regimes and Historical Change: Sequencing and Critical Turning Points in Britain, Sweden, and Ireland since 1918

The article argues that gender regimes make a difference to history and that gendered critical turning points are important in historical periodisation. Most theorization of change at a macro level has treated gender as irrelevant or derivative or narrowed gender to the concept of the family. The article compares the historical transformation of the gender regime in the UK, Sweden, and Ireland since 1918. While in each, there has been a historical transition from domestic to public gender regime, there are differences in the outcome as to whether this is a social democratic, neoliberal, or authoritarian variety of public gender regime. The article develops gender regime theory to address critical turning points in path dependent trajectories of gender regimes; and shows how feedback loops in the rapid spiralling of gender restructuring can catalyse economic growth. It finds that the sequencing of economic and political
modernisation has implications for the variety of gender regime that is the outcome. This offers an alternative account of historical development to that centred on modernity, capitalism, and coloniality alone.