This regime revolves around traditional family values and believes the economy should be structured around status differentiating programs that are earnings related.
[2] The three welfare state regimes highlight employment opportunity, wage gaps, and health status as differentiating factors when it comes to gender.
[3] Varying beliefs between the three regimes on gender roles in the labor market effects the level of poverty pertaining toward sex.
The theory of decommodification looks to decommodify labor in order to substitute for wages, creating disparity between the pay of low-income earners (a category over-represented by women).
Free markets, with little government interference, allows for competitive exchange which maintains equal opportunity for everyone to contribute to the economy and be successful.
The conservative regime believes strong leadership and traditional gender and family roles are what allow a society to function smoothly.
[8] Juha Kaariainen and Hekki Lehtonen comprised a study that focused on the relationship between social capital development and the welfare state.
The conservative regime was more positive with the society-centered theory because they believe in bonding social capital through family and community ties.
Universal trust was stronger in northern Europe who are considered social democratic, followed by the liberal and conservative regimes.
As contemporary economist Adam Smith believed, the liberal welfare state ideologies would eliminate inequalities and privileges in regards to employment by having minimal government interference.
The conservative welfare state views on job opportunity wanted government interference in order to create hierarchal powers and class differentiation.
Although working conditions, job satisfaction, health status, and psychological issues vary with genders in each regime, the general trend is that females face a disadvantage when finding good employment.
Women also struggle with economic difficulties resulting from the high rates of abandonment, divorce, and widowhood which has been increasing in recent decades.
[13] As was highlighted by Hadas Mandel and Michael Shalev in their theoretical analysis looking at how the welfare states shape the gender pay gap, the theories of decommodfication and defamilialization underline the key differences.
The liberal welfare state looks to encourage the activity of people in a free market economy and to be able to support themselves with private social and family services.
The liberal regime calls for women to join the work force in order to pay for these services and contribute to the economy.
The social democratic welfare state believes in universalism which means that government provides public services, and thus allows more women to join the work force.
To help display the differences that these theories have on the gender pay gap, Hadas Mandel continued his research to discover how welfare state policies effect socio-economic positions.
When it comes to low income earners, the study found that there was not a significant wage gap between men and women in the liberal and social democratic regimes.
The conclusion of the study was that the gender wage gap was determined by the advantage or disadvantage mothers faced with the welfare states interference.
The social democratic welfare state believes in universal public care services in return for full employment by society.
[18] A study conducted by Eikemo et al. depicts how welfare state regimes impact health issues caused by socio-economic disadvantages.
Liberal and social democratic regimes substitute worker wages and receive care service to compensate for that loss.
Over the decades, they have become less corporatist and less authoritarian.” [22] A lot of the scrutiny which Esping-Anderson's research concluded was due to the legitimacy of what each welfare state represented.