This paper initially examines the intellectual roots of the regime concept, devoting major attention to development of the notion of policy regimes. It then discusses the distinction between gender regimes and gender policy regimes and offers a working definition of a gender policy regime. Next the paper applies the notion of a gender policy regime to several policy areas—welfare state policies, taxation, immigration and integration policies—to understand how gender is encoded in policies. The final section sums up the strengths and limitations of the gender policy regime concept when applied in empirical analysis.
