Modern citizenship is rooted in individuality. Modern societies have abandoned the feudal ‘orders’ whose legitimacy was rooted in the sacred nature of royal power. At the heart of the modern concept of social cohesion are individuals whose freedom and equality enable them to enter into the rights and duties of contractual exchange. It was access to full individuality that was long denied to women. Such access depends on autonomy; it is, therefore, incompatible with the dependency and, particularly, the tutelage or authority of the husband that for a long time lay at the heart of the ‘female condition’, particularly in France and the Latin countries. However, while this autonomy is acquired through legal and political rights, in societies like ours that are based on work and the production of value added, it also entails economic independence. In this sense, having disposal of an income derived from one's own capacities – in principle one's work and the rights that ensue from it – put to use in the production of wealth is a pillar of modern citizenship that has not yet been replaced.

In both France and Sweden, as in all industrialised countries, women can be said to have acquired full citizenship in the area of civil, legal and political rights. Nevertheless, having full access to the rights of citizenship clearly does not necessarily involve full social membership (O’Connor, 1993; Kymlicka and Norman, 1994). In particular, economic independence remains more effective for men than for women and despite a considerable increase in women's participation rates over the last three decades, the domestic space and domestic activities are still largely the responsibility of women in all the industrialised countries. This responsibility shapes their mode of entry into the labour market and the positions they occupy in it. Thus public policies that impact on the relationships between paid work and the family have a considerable influence on women's employment. However, these same public policies are constructed on the basis of reference systems: we refer here to the works of Jobert and Muller (1987), for whom: