phd isaac newton/K3

The Gender Basis of American Social Policy Author(s): Virginia Sapiro Source: Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 101, No. 2, Reflections on Promoting "The General Welfare" (1986), pp. 221-238 Published by: The Academy of Political Science Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2151389 Accessed: 12-07-2017 20:51 UTC

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The Gender Basis of

American Social Policy

VIRGINIA SAPIRO

During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, women-

thousands of them -became increasingly organized and active in the attempt to promote the general welfare, especially by helping the most vulnerable members

of society. As individual leaders and as group participants they were in- strumental in organizing and nationalizing movements for public health (mental

and physical), poor relief, penal and other institutional reform, education for the previously uneducated, and child welfare. As the nineteenth century waned and

the twentieth dawned, women were prominent among proponents of a principle which was hitherto nearly alien to American ideology but which has now, a cen-

tury later, come to be an accepted part of our political views: the government and, they increasingly argued, the national government, have a responsibility to promote the general welfare actively by providing initiative and support where

necessary. The degree and types of support remain, perhaps more now than then,

matters of profound political contention, but in the late twentieth century even

the most conservative ideologues tend to agree that government must provide a "safety net" for its people.

The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was also a time during which

thousands of women, many of them the same as those involved in the general welfare movements, were agitating to promote women's welfare specifically. I The

' On women's movements of this period see Barbara Berg, The Remembered Gate: Origins of American Feminism: Women and the City, 1800-60 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978); Ellen

DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of An Independent Women's Movement in

America, 1848-69 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1978); Eleanor Flexner, Century of

VIRGINIA SAPIRO is professor of political science and women's studies at the University of Wis-

consin, Madison. She has published books and articles on gender including Women in American So-

ciety and The Political Integration of Women.

Political Science Quarterly Volume 101 Number 2 Centennial Year 1886-1986 221

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222 | POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY

suffrage movement, aimed at providing women with what we now regard as the basic right of citizenship and the basic means of leverage within a democratic political system, is only the best known facet of the women's movement of that era. As many historians have demonstrated, a large proportion of nineteenth- century feminists came to their concerns for women through their charitable and political efforts aimed at the needy.2 Moreover, many nineteenth-century feminists conceived of their woman-directed activities as means to improve the lot not just of women but of women's families and communities.3

The development of American social welfare policy was heavily influenced by women, who often saw themselves acting on behalf of women. These women -

many of them feminists -were instrumental in the development of the American

social welfare state, such as it is: the efforts in the 1840s of Dorothea Dix to get Congress to provide money and land for the construction of mental institutions (the bill passed but President Franklin Pierce's veto was sustained); the establish- ment of the U.S. Sanitary Commission; Josephine Shaw Lowell's New York

Charity Organization Society and its counterparts; the settlement movement; Josephine Kelley's National Consumers League; many Progressive leaders; the instigators of the Children's Bureau; and the authors and primary promoters of

the 1921 Infancy and Maternity (Sheppard-Towner) Bill. The history of movements for women's welfare and for the general welfare are

virtually inseparable. But we can go further and argue that it is not possible to

understand the underlying principles, structure, and effects of our social welfare system and policies without understanding their relationship to gender roles and gender ideology. Three examples suggest how important understanding this rela- tionship is: widows' or mothers' pensions, protective labor legislation, and the Sheppard-Towner Act of 1921.

In 1911, Missouri became the first state to provide for cash assistance to

widows with dependent children. By 1935, the date of the nationalization of this

policy through Title IV (Aid to Dependent Children) of the Social Security Act, all states except South Carolina and Georgia had acted similarly. As Walter Trattner argues, "Widow's pension laws marked a definite turning point in the

welfare policies of many states. In theory at least, they removed the stigma of

charity for a large number of welfare recipients. They also broke down the nineteenth-century tradition against public home relief."4 Before the advent of widows' pensions, public pensions were limited to military personnel or civil ser- vants, people whose willingness to work for limited public salaries would be re-

Struggle: The Women's Rights Movement in the United States (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univer-

sity Press, 1975); and Stanley Lemons, The Woman Citizen: Social Feminism in the 1920's (Urbana:

University of Illinois Press, 1972).

2 For example, Berg, Remembered Gate; and DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage.

' For example, Linda Gordon, Woman's Body, Woman's Right: A Social History of Birth Control

in America (New York: Viking Press, 1977).

4 Walter I. Trattner, From Poor Law to Welfare State: A History of Social Welfare in America

(New York: Free Press, 1974), 190.

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GENDER AND SOCIAL POLICY j 223

warded with security.5 Widows' pensions were different in that they provided for needy private persons. The Social Security Act, through Aid to Dependent Chil- dren (ADC), did the same at the federal level.

Protective labor legislation offers another example of the role that gender differentiation played in promoting social welfare ideas within the United States. At the turn of the century, efforts to provide for public regulation of working conditions advocated by both trade unions and groups such as the National Consumers' League were turned back consistently on the grounds that they would conflict with the right of employers and employees to make contracts freely and unimpeded by forces outside the market. The major turning point in employment and workplace policy came in 1908 when the Supreme Court, in Muller v. Oregon, upheld the right of a state to limit the working hours of women.6 Although protective labor legislation has been highly contentious among feminists from the first for reasons that will be discussed below, the "thin edge of the wedge" for regulation of the workplace was provided by policies based on a particular construction of gender ideology.

A third example of the importance of gender in the expansion of American social-policy is the Sheppard-Towner Bill, enacted in 1921 and in force until Her- bert Hoover assured its demise in 1929. Sheppard-Towner provided for the first time for matching federal grants-in-aid to states for the purpose of promoting child and maternal health services. This was the first time the federal government provided grants for state welfare programs other than education,7 and it provided the precedent for later efforts. The program was widely attacked as the first incursion of "bolshevism" into the United States and was the subject of the first major-but certainly not the last-campaign against "state medicine."8 Anxiety over socialism was one of the major reasons for the demise of the pure laissez faire system of labor contract in the marketplace. Sheppard-Towner put government, notably the federal government, in the business of providing the public with social services other than protective services and education.

These cases mark turning points in American political ideology. The notion that "that government governs best that governs least" was transformed, at least to the degree that the standard of what constitutes "least" was questioned. To the belief that people should be self-reliant, which meant providing for them- selves and their families, was added the idea that it was good for private individ- uals to engage in charitable acts (although it was not good for individuals to ex- pect to depend upon these acts), and also that government had some responsibility to provide. Government was now to promote the general welfare not just by assuring civil order, but by providing for that welfare directly.

Of crucial importance here, women were the apparent beneficiaries of these

I James Leiby, A History of Social Welfare and Social Work in the United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978), 212.

6 Muller v. Oregon, 208 U.S. 412, (1908). 7 Trattner, From Poor Law to Welfare State, 187.

8 Lemons, Woman Citizen.

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224 | POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY

policies. When these policies were first set in place, there was no intention on

the part of most policy makers to set any precedents for other parallel reforms

or, certainly, for more widespread changes in the structure or theoretical basis

of political economy. Indeed, there was considerable opposition to these

changes, specifically because they might turn out to be turning points and prece-

dents, as some interest groups such as the labor and the Progressive movements

hoped they might be. Why were women so central to these changes? What does

this "coincidence" tell us about the development of gender ideology, political ideology, and social policy in the United States?

Unfortunately, the standard treatments of social policy offer little assistance in answering these questons because the relationships among gender, feminism,

and the development of social welfare policy has generally been neglected out-

side of feminist scholarship. Marxists and non-Marxists alike have identified the

development of the welfare state as a part of the political process of the develop-

ment of capitalist industrialism; to the non-Marxist especially it is a part of the

political transformation of societies into mass democracies. Within the standard view of the history of welfare states, as Peter Flora and Arnold J. Heidenheimer

write, "one may interpret the welfare state as an answer to increasing demands

for socioeconomic equality or as the institutionalization of social rights relative

to the development of civil and political rights."9 Just so; but academic analyses tend to focus on demands and rights specifically relevant to class conflicts within

society, thus obscuring the roles of women and gender. This, interestingly, is the case as much for non-Marxists as for Marxists. A woman's economic interests

are generally assumed to follow from a husband when the woman is married,

and especially a homemaker, and to be defined adequately by standard class definitions in cases where women are employed. The problem is that standard views of economic interest and organization are defined primarily through male

history and experience, and feminist activists have often been aware of these

differences. 'I

Analysis of the theory and practice of social policy has rarely taken full ac- count of the relevance of gender, and often implicitly accepts without examina- tion certain paternalistic and patriarchal assumptions about the nature of gender that are also embedded in the policies themselves. As a result, there is little un- derstanding of how social policy affects women in particular and, more gener-

ally, how worpen's welfare is linked to general welfare. The remainder of this article examines the relationship between women's wel-

fare and the general welfare within the framework of American social policy, es- pecially as it treats economic dependency. Women have been defined primarily

9 Peter Flora and Arnold J. Heidenheimer, "The Historical Core and Changing Boundaries of the

Welfare State," in Flora and Heidenheimer, e4s., The Development of Welfare States in Europe and

America (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1981), 22.

10 For further discussion see Christine Delphy, Closer to Home: A Materialist Analysis of

Women's Oppression (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1984); and Lydia Sargent, ed.,

Women and Revolution: A Discussion of the Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism (Boston:

South End Press, 1981).

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GENDER AND SOCIAL POLICY j 225

as dependents, because others depend upon their dependency. American social

policy, it shall be argued, not only assumes, but helps to maintain this state of affairs. Further, many social policies that most affect women are not, in fact, aimed primarily at them but rather, in many senses, through them. Finally, anal- ysis of the relationship between women and social policy does not teach us

"only" about women and social policy, but about our construction and under- standing of social policy and the general welfare more broadly.

AMERICAN SOCIAL POLICY: THE STANDARD VERSION

Social policy is, as Albert Weale has written, "a deliberate attempt by govern- ments to promote individual and social welfare in certain specific dimensions

using any suitable policy instruments."11 This definition is useful because it un- derscores the point that social policy is not a matter simply of social services or even more narrowly (and perhaps more commonly believed) social services for

the poor. Social policy, in other words, is not always what it seems to be to the untrained eye. Some of the most important social services are not aimed at the poor (for example, public universities), and many of the social policies that might do the most to promote individual and social welfare are not services (for example, occupational safety and health regulations or benefits policies and nondiscrimination policies). Indeed it has been argued repeatedly that it is not

easy and not always worthwhile to draw definite boundaries among social policy

and fiscal or civil rights policies.12 For the first century and more of American history, social policy basically

rested on the belief that the welfare of the society and its component parts could

best be assured by allowing - encouraging - individuals to pursue their own in- terests freely. This notion was as much a moral as an economic belief. What

came to be known as the "protestant work ethic" supported moral and policy dis- tinctions made among the "just" desserts earned by the diligent well-off and the

shiftless poor and the unfortunate "deserving" poor. As Robert Goodin has pointed out, the emphasis on self-reliance was, at its heart, a concern about the moral character of individuals.13 Conservatives continue to maintain, despite empirical evidence to the contrary,14 that provision of welfare benefits makes in- dividuals psychologically dependent and removes their motivation to pursue their interests in the marketplace and, therefore, short circuits the entire system. In other words, provision of welfare changes the character of individuals so as to make them bad and unproductive members of society.

I Albert Weale, Political Theory and Social Policy (London: Macmillan, 1983), 5.

12 Weale, Political Theory and Social Policy; Richard M. Titmuss, "The Social Division of Wel-

fare: Some Reflections on the Search for Equity," in Titmuss, ed., Essays on the Welfare State

(London: Allen and Unwin, 1958), 34-55.

13 Robert E. Goodin, "Self-Reliance versus The Welfare State," Journal of Social Policy 14

(January 1985): 25-47.

14 Ibid.

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226 | POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY

In practical terms, therefore, the nation was to be composed of diligent hard-

working individuals who competed in the marketplace (or, for the agrarian ideal

of self-sufficiency, worked their land) to make something of themselves and to provide for themselves. With the growth of industrialism and the ascendency of

a middle class, the principle of individualistic competition in a free market to assure self-sufficiency became a moral, social, political, and economic ideal. The

implications of this set of beliefs for social welfare have been well summarized by Ramesh Mishra: "Paternalism-of the state but also of the employer-is frowned upon."

Not the bonds of status but those of contract between "free" men typifies the basic

model of social relationship outside the family. Translating these generalities into pat-

terns of welfare, we might say that the middle-class society is likely to develop a "re-

sidual" system of welfare. In the early states of industrialization neither state nor enter- prise welfare is favored. Instead, friendly societies, voluntary organizations, charities,

and market responses to the various problems and needs are encouraged.'5

This is precisely what happened during the second half of the nineteenth century

in the United States. There was an impressive growth of charity and social action (a growth especially among women) as the more negative by-products of indus- trialism became more obvious, but this "social action was largely a voluntary do- it-yourself arrangement among individuals with a common interest."'6

Should individuals be in need of assistance or cooperation, such arrangements were to be made on a voluntary basis. There were clear hierarchies of responsi-

bility or, as Michael Walzer puts it, spheres of justice.17 The core in which as- sistance could be freely sought and in which others had the most responsibility to provide was the immediate family followed by more distant relatives. At the next stage were neighbors and others in the local community. As the public do-

main began to share in provision, the state was seen as more obliged than the

federal govenment. Above all, aid and cooperation were to come from the private world rather than from government. As James Leiby notes, only in the twentieth

century was "social welfare" rather than "charity and correction" widely used to label assistance. "Social welfare," he argues, connotes "a recognition of human

interdependence. . . , a sense of mutual responsibilities and goals among [so- ciety's] classes and parts, and of the need for common policies to realize them."' 8

The earliest social policies fall into two general categories. The first, into which we might put social insurance (originally called "workingman's insur- ance") and pensions, were aimed at helping or providing some added security to

those who were working to help themselves and their society. The second was assistance aimed at those who seemed most inevitably dependent: paupers

I Ramesh Mishra, Society and Social Policy: Theories and Practice of Welfare (London: Mac- millan, 1981), 41.

16 Leiby, A History of Social Welfare, 33.

17 Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice (New York: Basic Books, 1983).

18 Leiby, A History of Social Welfare, 2. For a parallel discussion of charity versus justice, see Robert E. Goodin, Protecting the Vulnerable (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), chap. 2.

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GENDER AND SOCIAL POLICY | 227

without relatives to help, children and especially orphans, and "defectives" such

as the insane and criminally inclined. Later a third type of social policy devel- oped, but did not really flower until the post-World War II era: social regulation

or government intervention in the rules and procedures of the market. Above all, American social policy was developed with a continuing distaste for paternalism and an emphasis on allowing individuals, and by later policies helping individ- uals, compete as individuals in an open market in order to achieve self-

sufficiency and self-reliance. The previous paragraphs offer little more than a standard, albeit boiled down,

rendition of American social policy thinking and practice. Turning our attention

to the place of women in this story we find that this rendition is seriously flawed. It is written in apparently generic gender-neutral terms and, therefore, masks an extremely gender-based story.

Tim REVISED VERSION: BEYOND GENDER NEUTRALITY

In order to see the fault in analysis of social policy and in social policy itself, let us look again at the main themes: dependence and self-reliance, individualism

and paternalism. In fact, if we consider the subjects of policy not in the appar-

ently gender-neutral terms (such as individual, worker, family) usually used, but in the explicit terms of male and female, we find that the dominant ideology un-

derlying social-policy thinking and action has never stressed individualism pure and simple. It has never been uniformly opposed to either dependency or pater- nalism, and it has never supported a universal value of self-reliance, especially in economic terms. Instead, it has supported individualism, independence, and

self-reliance for some people (primarily men) and dependence and reliance on

paternalism for others (primarily women). This is largely because individuals have been viewed in terms of functional roles depending upon gender. Men are

regarded as breadwinners for themselves and their families, and women are re-

garded as wives and mothers who are and should be economically dependent

upon those breadwinners.

In order to understand the relationship of women to social policy, it is neces- sary to consider policy directly regarding the ability of women to provide for themselves. As we have seen, the primary purpose of most American social policy is supposed to be to allow "individuals" to provide for themselves, to re- ward those who have done so, and to provide a back-up for those who have not

been able to do so because of circumstances beyond their own control. If, how- ever, this really was "the" American approach to social policy, it, should apply in a gender-neutral way. In fact, this view did not apply to women; indeed,

throughout most of American history it has been contradictory to the predomi- nant prescription for women.

Until the enactment of the Married Women's Property Acts in the 1840s, women could not own property including that which they inherited or earned through their own labor, and they could not make contacts without their hus-

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228 | POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY

band's consent. In other words, women were barred by law from engaging in the activities that were supposed to be the primary principle of political economy and the civil right most fiercely protected by American law up to the twentieth century-the right to contract freely to pursue one's economic interest. The reason was the common law principle of femme couverte. Women's economic and political identities and interests were incorporated into (not with) those of their husbands. Women's only voluntary contract was the marriage contract, by which they were thought to be giving blanket tacit consent to most future deci- sions made by their husbands.19

Even when free women gained the right to own and manage property and to make contracts, they did not gain the right to provide for themselves. If em- ployers wanted to bar women as a class from employment, their right to do so was protected by the principle of governmental noninterference in private con- tracts. Moreover, as women began to seek training and jobs outside the women's sphere of employment (domestic labor and sewing) states stepped in to help bar women's further progress.

The first Supreme Court case concerning women's economic rights was Brad- well v. Illinois, which in 1874 upheld a state's right to prohibit women's admis- sion to the bar.20 Although the main reason offered by the Court was the prin- ciple of state's rights, the concurring opinion expressed the paternalistic view that has been repeated in law and political argument numerous times. "Man is, or should be, woman's protector and defender," and, therefore, must protect her from the world of work and individualistic competition. Further, "the harmony, not to say identity, of interests and views which belong, or should belong, to the family institution is repugnant to the idea of a woman adopting a distinct and independent career from that of her husband." Most telling of all, the prohibi- tion covered not just married but all women, because women are defined by their actual or potential statuses as wives and mothers. "The paramount destiny and mission of women are to fulfill the noble and benign offices of wife and mother. This is the law of the Creator. And the rules of society must be adapted to the general constitution of things and cannot be based upon exceptional cases." Whereas the Protestant work ethic as applied to income-producing work was a moral and economic principle for men, economic dependency was a moral, God- given principle for women.

Government became increasingly involved in restricting women's ability to provide for themselves and their families and even, in denying women their own rights of citizenship separate from those of their husbands.21 Public institutions of higher education, including the land grant colleges, were generally sex segregated and, therefore, kept women from the programs that might lead them

19 Carole Pateman, "Women and Consent," Political Theory 8 (May 1980): 149-68; and Virginia Sapiro, "Women, Citizenship, and Nationality: Immigration and Naturalization Policies in the United States," Politics and Society 13 (1984).

20 Bradwell v. Illinois, 83 U.S. 130, (1874).

21 Sapiro, "Women, Citizenship, and Nationality."

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GENDER AND SOCIAL POLICY | 229

to professional careers. Women were barred from certain job classifications and in some jobs such as teaching, they were refused employment if they were mar- ried or certainly, if they were pregnant. Female employees were fired if they got married or if they became pregnant. Government discriminated against women in pay. Even the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) signed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933 provided for sex differences in pay despite intensive lobbying by women's groups and assurances by Eleanor Roosevelt and Labor

Secretary Frances Perkins. Moreover, women's jobs were especially likely to be excluded from minimum wage regulations, and the Public Works Administra- tion and Federal Emergency Relief Administration tended to emphasize projects

that involved male jobs.22 Not until nearly a century after Bradwell, in Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights

Act, did the federal government take a stand against sex discrimination in hiring; only in 1971 did the Supreme Court, in Phillips v. Martin Marietta, argue that employers may not discriminate against women, in this case women with chil- dren.23 Following a case in which the Supreme Court upheld the right of an em- ployer to discriminate against pregnant women in occupational benefits,24 Con- gress passed the 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Act, which incorporated into Title VII the principle of nondiscrimination against pregnant women.

Because social policy tends to be analyzed as a class issue, we tend to look to

labor movements and unions as some of the primary instigators of progressive social policy insofar as their role is to pursue the interests of workers. Although women have benefited from labor organization in gender specific ways (for ex-

ample, gender differentials in pay are lower among unionized than non- unionized workers), the early history of the labor movement shows considerable support for paternalistic and exclusionary treatment of women in the job market.25 Although women constituted about 30 percent of printers by 1831 and 16 percent of newspaper compositors by 1850, for example, print unions would not accept women to full membership until 1873.26 Other unions continued to bar women. Samuel Gompers, among other union activitsts, was opposed to women workers on the grounds that they took wages from men and destroyed the family. In 1898 he urged the government to prohibit women from federal em- ployment.

22 Lois Scharf, " 'The Forgotten Woman': Working Women, the New Deal, and Women's Organi- zations," in Lois Scharf and Joan M. Jensen, eds., Decades of Discontent: The Women's Movement, 1920-40 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1983), 243-60. On women in the New Deal see also

Susan D. Becker, The Origins of the Equal Rights Amendment: American Feminism Between the Wars (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1981); and Susan Ware, Beyond Suffrage: Women in the New Deal (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981).

23 Phillips v. Martin Marietta, 400 U.S. 542, (1971).

24 General Electric v. Gilbert, 429 U.S. 125, (1976).

2S Bettina Berch, The Endless Day: The Political Economy of Women.and Work (New York: Har- court, Brace, Jovanovich, 1982).

26 Maron Marzolf, Up From the Footnote: A History of Women Journalists (New York: Hastings House, 1977); and DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage.

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230 | POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY

The perspective of labor unions leads us back to specific consideration of so- cial policy. The labor movement and its leaders such as Gompers were among

the most committed supporters of protective labor legislation for women. Their reasons varied. Certainly some of the motivation was the desire to assist those

in a relatively weak position in the labor market. As suggested earlier, unions saw woman-directed policies as the "thin edge of the wedge" of more widespread protections for all workers. But another major motivation in the U.S. as in other

countries was to use legislation directed at women to protect male jobs and wages. Protective labor legislation for women could directly and indirectly keep

women out of competition for "male" jobs and make them less desirable to em-

ployers. Indeed, "protection" has generally been applied less strenuously to "fe- male" than to "male" jobs. Hours and weightlifting limits, for example, were

never applied to domestic labor, paid or unpaid. Protective labor legislation

made women more expensive to hire than they had been. As femininst observers

have often remarked, this type of policy has served at least as much to keep women out of higher paying jobs as it has to improve their working conditions. This has been true of later types of protective legislation as well.27

Another early proposal of the labor and other movements concerned with

workers was not just the provision of a living wage, but of a family wage; that

is, a wage that would give the (male) breadwinner the ability to support his

family without needing to depend on a wage-earning wife. Again, the thinking did not simply concern the economic situation of a family, but the character of those in the family. Women, it was thought, should not have to seek employment because their jobs were to care for the other members of the family. Men should not have to compete with women for jobs; after all, men need to support their

families. Most important, "manhood" was defined in part by the ability of a man to support his family. Men were - and still to some degree are - taught to feel emasculated when they depend on women's wages. The goodness or badness of dependency depends on who is depending on whom. Husbands' economic de- pendence upon wives is bad. Wives' economic dependence upon husbands is good, in part because it is often thought to allow men to be more independent.28

Most social policy aimed at women has been designed explicitly to benefit

them in their capacity as wives and mothers and more particularly, to benefit those who depend upon them for nurturance and domestic service: husbands, children, and elderly relatives. The widows' pensions and Sheppard-Towner Act mentioned above are early examples. In an important sense, women have not

been the main targets of these policies but rather, they were the main conduit of these policies, which were aimed at providing for children. The original con-

27 On occupational safety and health, for example, see Wendy Chavkin, ed., Double Exposure: Women's Health Hazards on the Job and at Home (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1984).

28 For an economic history that treats the changing psychology of gender divisions of labor, see Julie A. Matthaei, An Economic History of Women in America: Women's Work, The Sexual Divi-

sion of Labor, and The Development of Capitalism (New York: Schocken, 1982).

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GENDER AND SOCIAL POLICY | 231

struction of ADC provided for support of the children in one-parent families.

Only later was support extended to the caregiver.29 Social policy aimed at women has been designed to benefit them in their ca-

pacity as wives and mothers only in a limited sense. Its intention has been to en- able them to care for their families and not, by and large, to provide for them

in the sense that is expected of a breadwinner. Often, as in the case of ADC (and

its later incarnation as AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children)), it has

been aimed at relieving mothers of the "need to work." Women were expected

to remain economically dependent because of domestic responsibilities assigned to them. In contrast, the "man in the house" provisions, which allowed adminis- trators to withhold funds if any evidence was found to indicate a man (related

or not) was living in, or even a frequent visitor to the house, underscores the de- gree to which men were still regarded as responsible for economic support.

Only in the late 1960s and especially the 1970s were any serious efforts made

to enable women to be economic providers for themselves and their families. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act was given some force in 1971 when the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC) gained power to litigate. The

growth of affirmative action programs signaled governmental support for im-

proving the employment prospects of women, even if no employers were actually

punished for failing to achieve hiring goals. The Work Incentive (WIN) Program

established at the end of the 1960s began to suggest that even for women, "work goes with welfare." At first, however, men were given priority in WIN funding, followed by women on a first-come-first-served basis.30 In 1971, AFDC regula- tion required for the first time that female recipients of AFDC funds with chil-

dren over six years old should seek employment.31 Even the relatively meager ef- forts to provide women with the means and incentive to seek employment have remained controversial and, during the Reagan administration, have been at- tacked and reduced.32

Even if there is more widespread support for the breakdown of familial gender roles in the marketplace, support for traditional gender roles within the home

remain firm even, in a sense, with regard to families in which there is no adult

male. Programs of employment incentives and supports for women have not in-

cluded provision of child care services, which remain the responsibility of mothers. A bill passed through Congress that would have provided federal funds

for day care centers was vetoed by Richard Nixon on the grounds that such ser- vices would break up "the family." Despite the pro-nationalist claims of recent

administrations, the United States remains one of the few Organization for Eco-

29 Dorothy C. Miller, "AFDC: Mapping a Strategy for Tomorrow," Social Service Review 57 (De-

cember 1983): 599-613.

30 Sar A. Levitan, Martin Rein, and David Marwick, Work and Welfare Go Together (Baltimore:

Johns Hopkins Press, 1972), 77.

31 Deborah K. Zinn and Rosemary C. Sarri, "Turning Back The Clock on Welfare," Signs 10

(Winter 1984): 355-70. 32 Ibid.

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232 | POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY

nomic Cooperation and Development (OECD) nations that lacks a maternity leave policy. It lags in other supports for pregnant women and families with chil- dren as well.

It is important to note that although women and children are supposed to de-

pend upon a male breadwinner for financial support, public policy has not been vigorous in enforcing this goal. Marital law still assumes that husbands are responsible for financial support, but court cases continue to conclude that if a woman is actually residing with her husband that is proof enough that he is supporting her adequately regardless of what he provides or what he is capable of providing. This is an unwarranted assumption either that husbands provide adequate allowances to their wives or that married couples pool their resources in such a way as to allow each individual to draw on them freely. One of the major causes of poverty among women and children in recent decades has been the refusal of divorced husbands to comply with court orders for support pay- ments. Only when the Reagan administration realized that considerable sums of AFDC money could be saved was a serious policy of enforcement initiated, but it was originally designed to encompass only women who were eligible for AFDC funding. The implication was that support of women by their husbands is a pri- vate matter of no concern to government unless or until women became public charges because of lack of spousal support. If for much of our history, women's welfare was supposedly safeguarded by a husband, we are led to the deduction that for most of our history, women's welfare has been of little concern to government, except insofar as it served instrumental purposes in providing care and services for others.

Women's primary relationship to the structure of the general welfare is to pro- vide essential services that might otherwise cost money either to the private or public sector." As many feminist observers have pointed out, when it is said that families have the primary responsibility to care for themselves, what one really means is that women have the primary responsibility to care for others in the

family.34 Given the continuing gender division of labor in the family, it is not the family as a unit but rather women in families who care for children, the elderly, and other dependents, including breadwinners who are dependent upon these services for their own day-to-day maintenance. Of course, given gender di- visions of labor in the marketplace, when people are employed to replace what has previously been women's domestic labor, these services continue to be ren-

dered by women. A major and generally hidden question in social policy, there- fore, is whether women should be required to provide for the general welfare in a way that often necessitates that they remain economically dependent and ulti- mately perhaps in need of social welfare provisions themselves. Or can women

and others provide for the general welfare in a way that allows women to provide for themselves as well?

33 See, for example, Gerdt Sundstrom, "The Elderly, Women's Work, and Social Security Costs,"

Acta Sociologica 25 (1982): 21-38.

34 Michele Barrett and Mary McIntosh, The Antisocial Family (London: Verso, 1982).

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GENDER AND SOCIAL POLICY | 233

Women's contribution to the general welfare goes beyond the provision of ser- vices that need to be done. Even in the minority of cases in which women do not contribute wages to a household, they help determine the worth of the wages

that are contributed by others. Again, because of the continuing gender division of domestic labor, women's efforts in shopping, cooking, and other household tasks affect the value of each dollar brought in. Although public pronounce- ments have often acknowledged the importance of women's contribution to the home, there has been little effort to give women a return. Only in this decade,

for example, have courts begun to recognize women's investment in domestic labor as an economic contribution to be considered in dividing household assets following divorce. Homemakers do not receive their own social security benefits but rather are supposed to benefit through their husbands' contributions. In fact, only 54 percent of women receiving social security benefits make their claims on the basis of their own work records; the other 46 percent claim as wives.35 In the case of divorced women, however, only those who qualify under very stringent conditions find that their years of contributing to their husband's maintenance and worth results in payment.

It is women's provision of care and the expectation that they should do so that does the most to make women dependent. Those who are most economically vulnerable are the women who do the most to fulfill a paternalistic and patriar- chal gender ideology: they devote themselves full time to caring for their fami- lies. Any human capital investment they made in earlier years through education, training, or employment becomes devalued with each year they are home- makers,36 and they lack the further benefits afforded by continuing job ex- perience. They foresake both the independent security of employment and employment-related benefits including pensions, and they foresake a consider- able amount of ability to provide for themselves should the need arise. Women's

economic activities, however, cannot be regarded as choices in the full sense of the word. Our social policies assume that women are the primary care givers, which means there is little assistance to be offered to women who are, in addi- tion, breadwinners. Our social welfare system depends on women either being dependent or taking on what has become to be known as the "double burden." Even when women attempt to seek employment, they continue to face job dis- crimination based on this gender ideology. Although it is illegal for employers to take marital or maternal status into account, they continue to devalue women as employees because of the assumption that women's primary focus of atten- tion is the home.

Reality contradicts the persistent view that women are not providers. The majority of women are now in the labor force, including the majority of women

11 Barbara J. Nelson, "Women's Poverty and Women's Citizenship: Some Political Consequences

of Economic Marginality," Signs 10 (Winter 1984): 223.

36 Marnie Mueller, "Applying Human Capital Theory to Women's Changing Work Patterns,"

Journal of Social Issues 38 (Spring 1982): 89-96.

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234 | POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY

with children as young as two.37 They now spend relatively few years out of the

labor force. Women make important financial contributions to their households.

Many people have noted that women who do not have a husband to help support

themselves and their families are particularly likely to suffer from poverty. In

1983, more than one quarter of all divorced and separated women were on wel-

fare. Thirty-seven percent of single mothers with one child were poor, as were 85 percent of single mothers with four children. But married men are also poorer

if they do not have a wife who makes financial contributions to the home.

Among married white couples, 9 percent of the families in which the husband

was the only earner were poor compared with 3 percent in which both spouses worked. The difference is even more stark among black families, where we find

24 percent were poor if only the husband was a wage earner compared with 4

percent if both were.

BEYOND GENDER-BIASED SOCIAL POLICY

Women constitute a majority of the beneficiaries of most major social welfare

programs in existence today-with the exception of unemployment insurance.

Among adults receiving AFDC, the largest single item in what is regarded as the welfare budget, over 80 percent of the beneficiaries are women. As Barbara

Nelson reports, women constitute 70 percent of the housing beneficiaries, 65 per-

cent of Medicare users, 62 percent of beneficiaries of social security (Old Age,

Survivors and Disability Insurance or OASDI), 57 percent of food stamp recipients, and 56 percent of Medicaid users.38 It is no wonder. These programs

are intended primarily for the poor and aged, and women are a majority of both. Indeed, they are an increasing proportion of the poor (now roughly two thirds),

a phenomenon known as the "feminization of poverty." American social policies, including those targeted particularly at helping the

economically vulnerable, are not simply part of the solution, they are part of the problem. They have helped women primarily in their capacity as wives or, espe-

cially, as mothers, and not because any positive value has been placed on removing women from a dependent state. As Barbara Nelson observes, "The

poorer a woman, the greater the likelihood that she makes a claim for benefits on the basis of her position as a wife or mother."39 One of the reasons is that women's poverty is increased substantially by their economic dependence brought on by the dependence for care that others place in them. Here it must

be reemphasized that those who depend on women's care include not just chil-

dren and elderly relatives, but able-bodied working husbands. Moreover, whereas the more obviously vulnerable such as children and elderly relatives de-

pend on women's care and caring, husbands have also depended psychologically

37 Elizabeth Waldman, "Labor Force Statistics from a Family Perspective," Monthly Labor Review

106 (December 1983): 16-20.

38 Nelson, "Women's Poverty and Women's Citizenship," 209-231.

39 Ibid, 223.

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GENDER AND SOCIAL POLICY | 235

on women's dependency itself, a point made as long as a century ago by John Stuart Mill in his "Subjection of Women."40 Although this point might suggest that gender divisions of labor make women and men mutually and, therefore, acceptably dependent upon each other, the dependency of men on women's de- pendency and the particular vulnerabilities of women created by others' depen- dence on them means we cannot properly say that the women and men in this relationship are truly interdependent, a term that would suggest more symmetry of power.41

Because of gender role assumptions, the family presumption in caring-that

those outside the family, and especially government, have only a residual role to play -is really a presumption that women should have the primary role in caring

or offering personal services and only a secondary role in financial provision.

Conversely, this outlook defines men's primary role as provision and their sec- ondary role as caring. Contrary to the standard rendition of social policy, we do

not assume a single line of responsibility for caring that runs from family to

other private individuals and organizations to government. Predominant beliefs and attitudes encompass a dual hierarchy of responsibility, one for provision and one for caring. For provision the line extends from the male "head of the family"

outward, in ideological terms skipping over the female adult on the grounds that it is less demoralizing for a man to be supported by outside males (or agencies)

than to be supported by a woman. For caring, the line extends from the wife and

mother outward, in ideological terms skipping over the male adult on the

grounds that men are not competent at caring or that their primary role is provi-

sion. Here lies another interesting assumption: a man cannot provide and care, a combination of efforts faced by most married women today. The reality con- tradicts the belief; women do indeed provide. There has been somewhat less

change in familial patterns of caring men; their assumption of the caring role has not increased as dramatically as has women's assumption of the provision

role.

In order for our policies to cease supporting the dependency of women, it is necessary for society to cease depending on women as women; that is, it is neces-

sary that we do not define women in terms of what have up to now been consid- ered women's unique roles and propensities toward caring. This also requires that we no longer depend on men as men or, in other words, on the man's exclu-

sive roles as provider. The pressing policy question that arises from this discussion is: If we abandon

the gender division of responsibility in the family, who will provide and, espe- cially, who will care? Do we place the primary responsibility on governmental

40 John Stuart Mill, "The Subjection of Women," in Alice Rossi, ed., Essays in Sex Equality

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 123-242. For a psychoanalytically based attempt to

explain this relationship, see Nancy Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and

the Sociology of Gender (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978).

41 For more discussion of intrafamilial vulnerability and dependence see Goodin, Protecting the

Vulnerable, chap. 4; and Patricia Thlloch, "Gender and Dependency," in Dorothy Broom, ed., Un-

finished Business: Social Justice for Women in Australia (Sydney, Australia: Allen and Unwin, 1984).

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236 | POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY

institutions? This is certainly the view taken by conservative critics of feminist

arguments, who see women's apparent abandonment of exclusive domestic roles

as both the cause of the need for social services and as a force that will weaken

men's incentives to be providers. It has also been the suggestion of some early

Marxist theorists, who called for the "socialization" of domestic labor, and of

the influential Progressive, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who at the turn of the century offered a slightly different picture of taking domestic labor out of the home and out of the realm of women's familial responsibility.42

It would be a sad commentary on the human state if our acceptance of respon-

sibility to help others is based only on a structure of gender inequality and power hierarchies. As Robert Goodin has argued, our fundamental moral responsibili- ties spring from the situation of being able to help those who are vulnerable and dependent, and especially those who are vulnerable to us.43 We have these responsibilities regardless of gender. One cannot shirk moral responsibilities on

the basis of a functionalism of gender.

Goodin's theory of responsibility and vulnerability is important, because it provides a way of analyzing and assessing our hierarchies of responsibility for

others. It is in the intimacy of the family that we are most likely to find both vulnerability and ability to help that is linked to specific individuals, especially

with respect to the kind of necessary caring that has been defined as women's responsibility. Responsibility does move outward to family, friends, community,

and others most likely to be aware of the situation and have individual and mutual ties to those who need help. By emphasizing the notion of those who are

next most responsible, Goodin draws the line of caring to the community as a

whole and its administrative voice, government, which, he argues, has responsi- bility under three circumstances: "when no one has been assigned primary responsibility," when "those with primary responsibilities . . . prove unable to

discharge them," and when "the persons with primary responsibilities prove un- willing to discharge them."44

This construction of the residual responsibility of government does not leave

us where we started, with government providing only the barest of safety nets for those who have already fallen. We know, for example, that parents are unable to work at full time jobs with inflexible schedules (as most have) and take care of dependent children at the same time. If we, as a community know this to be

a pattern in a significant proportion of economically active members of our so- ciety, we could argue that we as a community, through government, have a responsibility to help. Alternative means of assistance include workplace policies

that mandate more flexible job schedules; parental leave policies that allow parents leave time without making them and their families more vulnerable through loss of pay, benefits, or career opportunities; and direct or indirect pro- vision of child care servies. Goodin argues that the purpose of social policy is

42 Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Women and Economics (New York: Harper and Row, 1966). 43 Goodin, Protecting the Vulnerable.

44 Ibid, 151-52.

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GENDER AND SOCIAL POLICY | 237

to protect the vulnerable and dependent. Protecting the vulnerable implies pro- tecting those at particular risk, not just those who are already in trouble. It follows that social policy, in seeking to protect the vulnerable and dependent, should not at the same time create vulnerability and dependency. Our minimalist social policies up to this point have done just that.

Women have suffered, in a sense, from the tendency to make relatively rigid distinctions between social policies and rights policies. There is not a space here to repeat in full the arguments that claim that the distinctions are not great and that some social policies, including the provision of certain services, constitute rights.45 Let us, rather, briefly consider one example that has served as a theme

throughout this discussion. For most of our history, Americans have accepted the idea that women should be dependent upon their husbands and that they should not, if possible, provide for themselves through gainful employment. Fol- lowing from this idea, men have been accorded higher priority in training and

jobs, even when there were more qualified women available. In public debate today, policies aimed at securing education and jobs for women are labelled rights policies. If we also thought of them in terms of social policy, we would

be more likely to define the goals of these policies as providing for the general welfare -that is, of providing the means whereby a significant portion of the so-

ciety could become more economically secure and less dependent and vulner- able. We would then not only allow women to become self-reliant, we would en- courage it.46

This is a call for collective as well as individual responsibility and it is a criti- cism of crass individualism, even if that individualism is softened with an overlay of voluntaristic altruism. Advocacy of collective responsibility does not, as some critics would argue, mean the demise of the individual as an agent in society. To the contrary, it is entirely consistent with Albert Weale's argument that "there is

one overriding imperative to which government action ought to be subject to its authority. This principle of autonomy asserts that all persons are entitled to re- spect as deliberative and purposive agents capable of formulating their own projects, and that as part of this respect there is a governmental obligation to

bring into being or preserve the conditions in which this autonomy can be realized."47

This is precisely what has been missing in social policy as it concerns women:

the preservation of conditions of autonomy. In a sense this is true for men as well, because their roles also have been dictated by prescriptions that are made

on the basis of sex. But for women the prescription is dependency including de- pendency of identity itself.48 Social policy has assumed that women are not au-

41 See, for example, T.H. Marshall, "Citizenship and Social Class," in Marshall, Sociology At The

Crossroads and Other Essays (London: Heinemann, 1963); and Mishra, Society and Social Policy.

46 For a parallel discussion of policies of toleration versus liberation, see Virginia Sapiro, The Po-

litical Integration of Women: Roles, Socialization, and Politics (Urbana: University of Illinois Press,

1983), chap. 8.

47 Weale, Political Theory and Social Policy, 42.

48 For the classic development of this theme, see Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (New York:

Knopf, 1953).

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23 8 | POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY

tonomous individuals and moral agents, but that they live contingent lives. With specific regard to their economic lives, their ability to provide for themselves and others is supposed to be contingent upon whether others around them need their

caring services. Choice as a moral agent is missing. Women are defined as indi- viduals who place themselves second. The irony is that this "altruism" often

keeps them from helping not only themselves, but others they would wish and feel obligated to help.

We are in great need of constructing more humane social policy for the future and also of reinterpreting what has gone before. Historically, for vast numbers of men the individualistic ideology of self-reliance has not worked. For women it never existed.*

* I would like to thank Graham Wilson and Bob Goodin for their helpful comments and

criticisms.

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