About

Ann Shola Orloff is a Professor of Sociology and Political Science at Northwestern University, holding the Board of Lady Managers of the Columbian Exposition Chair. She has previously served as a Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and as a visiting professor at the European University Institute in Florence. She holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University and an A.B. from Harvard University. Her research and publications focus on gendered social policies, states and feminist politics in rich capitalist democracies, social and feminist theory, and historical, comparative, and global social science. Orloff is the co-editor of 'Remaking Modernity: Politics, History and Sociology' and the co-author of 'States, Markets, Families: Gender, Liberalism and Social Policy in Australia, Canada, Great Britain and the United States.' Her most recent book is 'Many Hands of the State: Theorizing Political Authority and Social Control,' co-edited with Kimberly Morgan. She is currently working on a manuscript examining changes in gender, employment, and social policies in the US and Sweden over the last half century. Orloff has served as past President of the Social Science History Association and of RC 19, the Research Committee on Poverty, Social Welfare and Social Policy of the International Sociological Association, and was a founder of 'Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society.' She has held visiting positions at several prestigious institutions, including Sciences Po in Paris, the Institute for Future Studies in Stockholm, and the Australian National University in Canberra.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Computer Science
• Law
• Gender studies
• Political economy

Selected publications

• Gender

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2021 · 8 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Gender studies

  Abstract This chapter traces how scholars have conceptualized the relationship between gender and welfare states, examining significant differences among mainstream, gender-aware, and feminist perspectives. We discuss how feminist scholarship has broadened scholars’ understanding of social citizenship, how gender structures, and is structured by, the policies and institutions of the welfare state, and how women and men participate in social politics. We describe how insights from intersectionality theory and the adoption of more fluid conceptions of gender have shaped investigations of social policies and politics, bringing greater accuracy to analyses of the gendered effects of welfare states. Finally, we turn to analyses of how welfare states have reorganized in response to crises of care. We conclude by discussing normative debates over the role of welfare states in reducing gender inequalities and supporting people’s choices about care and employment.

  PublisherDOI

• INTRODUCTION:

  Princeton University Press eBooks · 2020 · 4 citations

  • Computer Science
  • Computer Science
  PublisherDOI

• The Political Origins of America’s Belated Welfare State

  Princeton University Press eBooks · 2020 · 44 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  PublisherDOI

• EPILOGUE:

  Princeton University Press eBooks · 2020-12-08

  book-chapter
  PublisherDOI

• Social Provision and Regulation: Theories of States, Social Policies, and Modernity

  2020-11-25 · 30 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Research in international relations has identified a variety of actors who appear to influence U.S. foreign policy, including experts and “epistemic communities,” organized interests (especially business and labor), and ordinary citizens or “public opinion.” This research, however, has often focused on a single factor at a time, rather than systematically testing the relative importance of alternative possible influences. Using three decades of extensive survey data, Jacobs and Page conduct a comparative test, attempting to account for the expressed foreign policy preferences of policymakers by means of the preferences of the general public and those of several distinct sets of elites. The results of cross-sectional and time-lagged analyses suggest that U.S. foreign policy is most heavily and consistently influenced by internationally oriented business leaders, followed by experts (who, however, might themselves be influenced by business). Labor appears to have significant but smaller impacts. The general public seems to have considerably less effect, except under particular conditions. These results generally hold over several different analytical models (including two-observation time series) and different clusters of issues (economic, military, and diplomatic), with some variations across different institutional settings (the U.S. House, Senate, and executive branch). 1 A revised version of this essay will appear in Remaking Modernity: Politics, History and Sociology, edited by Julia Adams, Elisabeth Clemens, and Ann Shola Orloff (forthcoming 2004 from Duke University Press). Many thanks to colleagues who have read and commented on earlier versions of this essay, including those at the initial “Remaking Modernity” conference held at Northwestern University in spring of 2001. Lis Clemens, Lynne Haney, and Rianne Mahon offered especially useful critiques and suggestions. Julia Adams was more than a co-editor: she read countless versions of the draft (and of particularly difficult paragraphs, relayed back and forth over email), made insightful comments and offered helpful rewordings, citations, arguments, all the while convincing me that this essay could indeed be written under unusual circumstances. (The curious may ask me in person about the roast pig, the printer that is “just like a woman,” and how I worked under the sign of “torno subito.”) I am grateful to the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern University for support of a sabbatical leave, during which I wrote this essay.

  PublisherDOI

• Learning from feminist scholarship on the welfare state

  Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks · 2019-09-02 · 5 citations

  book-chapterSenior author

  The chapter discusses the ways in which welfare states have responded to the challenge of an emerging ‘care deficit’ in both rich and poor countries, and to the challenge of persistent patterns of gender inequality in wages and opportunities. Gender relations remain central to social politics and social policies. The chapter assesses to what extent welfare states have been successful in promoting gender equality. It is claimed that even in places where there is an explicit commitment to gender equality, concerns with gendered power, or with the role of social policies in addressing gender vulnerabilities, is too often absent from political discourses. Although gender awareness has become the norm in much welfare state scholarship, issues of power are often occluded. The conclusion is that to better understand the potential of states to promote gender equality, one has to build on the long tradition of feminist scholarship that has emphasized the workings of power inside welfare states.

  PublisherDOI

• Commodification, vulnerability, risk: gendered social policy developments in the United States, 1980–2018

  Journal of International and Comparative Social Policy · 2019-02-01 · 6 citations

  articleCorresponding

  Abstract Over the last few decades, the position of women vis-à-vis the welfare state has changed dramatically. Welfare states have adapted to women's increased labour force participation and to the “new social risks” that characterize postindustrial societies. In this paper, we examine gendered policy developments in the US, focusing on conceptions of vulnerability that inform policies meant to mitigate gendered social risks. Focusing on three policy areas: parental leave, domestic violence and disability, we show that policies increasingly target women's integration into the workforce and self-regulation as strategies to mitigate gendered social risk. We also discuss how these policies rely on individual interventions implemented by what we call punitive therapy practitioners, who encourage women's workforce participation and psychological self-regulation. Finally, we argue that enduring gendered conceptions of vulnerability have shaped the specific designs of policies that emerged in the 1960s–1970s, intensified through the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s, and persist today.

  PublisherDOI

• Gender and Welfare States

  Handbooks of sociology and social research · 2018-01-01 · 13 citations

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• 10. Motherhood, Work, and Welfare in the United States, Britain, Canada, and Australia

  Cornell University Press eBooks · 2018-12-31 · 5 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Gender and Welfare States

  The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology · 2018-04-27 · 1 citations

  otherSenior author

  Abstract The involvement of welfare states with gender has undergone major reconfigurations in the last century. Understanding these developments requires paying attention to women as caregivers, workers, and political actors, and to issues of power – how they shape redistributive and regulatory state projects, politics, and relationships within households.

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Frequent coauthors

• Sheila Shaver

  13 shared

• Julia S. O‘Connor

  13 shared

• Theda Skocpol

  12 shared

• Margaret Weir

  John Brown University

  7 shared

• Julia Adams

  7 shared

• Bruno Palier

  Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

  6 shared

• Kimberly J. Morgan

  George Washington University

  6 shared

• Elisabeth S. Clemens

  University of Chicago

  5 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Sociology

  Princeton University

  1985

• A.B., Sociology

  Harvard University

  1975

Awards & honors

• Past President of the Social Science History Association
• Past President of RC 19, the Research Committee on Poverty,…