Claims for Child Care as Struggles over Needs: Comparing Italian and Danish Women's Organizations

This article presents a comparison of claims on child care issues addressed by women's organizations to public institutions in Italy and Denmark from the 1960s to the early 1970s. It focuses from a women's agency perspective on the process of the construction of claims, examining them as interventions in the political struggle on needs interpretation. This perspective is used to analyze the connections between the strategic aspects of activities conducted by the various women's organizations and their identity as interpreters of women's or other subjects' needs. The contrast provided by the comparison highlights variations in these connections while questioning assumptions and generalizing tendencies in studies on women's agency.