The gender division of paid labor is embedded within systems of class stratification. The gap
between the average earnings of men and women derives from the tendency for women to
occupy inferior class positions and thereby to disproportionately pay the price of class
inequality. From a class perspective, welfare states have multiple impacts on the gender pay
gap. They influence women's class locations and also shape inequality between and within
classes. We theorize and test the effects of three dimensions of welfare regimes on three
components of the gender gap. Using both income and occupation-based measures of class
and microdata for 17 post-industrial societies, we reveal systematic regime-level variation.
The results resolve previous puzzles by showing that multiple aspects of welfare regimes
have different and often contradictory effects on the class/gender components of the wage
gap. Women face distinct tradeoffs across welfare regimes, depending on their class
positions.