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JOY M ISR N D FR NCES KINS

The Welfare State and Women:Structure Agency and Diversity

bstractFeministscholarshiphas provided interpretations of power and poli-tics suggesting that welfare policies reflect the social inequalitiesbetween groups. We review the literature in thisfield discussing thediscriminatory and structural critiques of welfare, efforts to highlightthe importance of women 's agency in the origins of the welfare state,and the recent scholarship that analyzes differences betwen wom enin terms of c lass, race, and ethnicity. We conclude with a call forgreater sensitivity in future research to the diversity of wom en'sexperience and to the importance oflocalconditions in determiningthe status and needs of individual wom en.For most of its history discussion of the welfare state has privileged therelationship betweenstateandclass.Itisonly in the lastdecadethat feministshave forced recognition that the welfare state is also deeply implicated in apolitics of gender . . . Fem inist theory and politics have neverthe less re-mained undeservedly marginal to m ainstream debate about the welfare stateand its contemporary restructuring. No doubt this is partly attributable toplain intellectual sexism: not allurriterswant to face the fundamental ques-tions raised by feminist social scientists. But perhaps feminist theory mustalso take responsibility, both for inadequacies in the analyses offered todate and for abandoning public politics for the more exotic enticements ofsubjectivity, sexuality, and semiotics.Sheila Shaver (1989, 90)

Social Politics Fall 1998 1 998 Oxford University Press

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260 Misra and AkinsIn recent years, feminist scholarship on the welfare state hasexploded, as researchers heed Shaver's call to make feminist workmore central to debates on the welfare state and its restructuring,and as the number of feminist researchers increases. Traditional wel-

fare state studies often neglect to identify the ways in which womenand gender ideologies have affected welfare policymaking or toexamine the gendered impact of those policies (Pampel and Wil-liamson 1988; Hicks and Misra 1993). Feminist theorists have fo-cused on exactly these overlooked issuesin particular, the waysthat welfare policies have impacted women, and the effect of wom-en's movements and gender role ideologies on welfare policy for-mation and maintenance (Mclntosh 1978; Land 1980; Waerness1984, 1987; Abramowitz 1988; Baker 1990; Gordon 1990; Jen-son 1990 ; Bock and T hane 1991 ). Thro ugh their scholarship, feministresearchers have provided an interpretation of power and politicssuggesting that welfare policies reflect the social inequalities be-tween groups, and the strength of certain groups, in shaping welfarepolicy (W ilson 197 7; West 1 98 1; Dale and Foster 19 86; G ordo n1990; Koven and Michel 1993; Orloff 1993; Fraser and Gordon1994).

Feminist scholarship on the welfare state is, however, varied. Somescholars have focused on the welfare state as a patriarchal structureconstraining women's choices and perpetuating their dependence.Others have challenged the assumptions and implications of sucharguments, emphasizing the role of women's agency in the construc-tion of the system itself. On one side of this debate, the state isperceived as limiting women's roles in society; on another side, thestate is perceived as empowering to women.

We argue that this literature needs to advance past this debateby focusing on the diversity of women's experiences and interests.Generalizing about the constraints the state places on women as agroup, or generalizing about the ways in which women as a grouphave created, interpreted, or challenged the state, oversimplify ouranalyses unnecessarily. Women have inhabited more complex posi-tions in welfare politicswomen may be both agents in welfarestate transformation and be limited by demeaning welfare policies.Women may also be involved in creating policies that constrainthe lives of other groups of women. The research on the welfarestate which includes an emphasis on the diversity of women's ex-perience helps resolve this debate by showing that structure is acomplex phenomenon that has had varying effects on women andtheir agency based on a variety of statuses, including class and race/ethnicity.


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The Welfare State and Women 261Structure versus Agency in Feminist Theoriesof the Welfare StateBy feminist resea rch, we refer to scholarship tha t is gro und ed inthe experience of women and which seeks in some way to advancethe position of women in society and history (Ostrander 1989). Weexplore feminist theorizing of the state in terms of the conceptualrelationship between structure and agency because we believe thatthis relationship helps shed light on the divisions in this literature.The debate between structure and agency is central to social theory(Bourdieu 1977 ; Giddens 197 9, 19 84; Fine 199 2; Sewell 19 92; Hays1994).Although stru ctu re is a basic concept in social science, it isalso undertheorized and variously defined.1 Most theorists refer tostructure to mean patterns of social lifefor example, the economic,political, and cultural institutions that make up society. Social struc-ture often suggests som ething tha t transcends ind ividuals, de terminingthe thoughts and actions of those individuals (Hays 1994). Many ofthe greatest sociological insights have been drawn from und erstandin gthe ways in which social structures affect human livesfor example,Durkheim's (1897 [1951]) exploration of the social forces impactingsuicide rates, or Marx's (1844 [1964]) interpretations of the effectsof capitalism on the alienation of workers.Hum an agency usually refers to action, and reflects the possibilityfor change in social structure. Agency can be seen as the foundationof society, which is created through the interaction of human agents.Many sociologists have explored the importance of agency; for exam-ple, Simmel (1902 [1 950], 10) explains that society is merely thename for a num ber of individuals connected by interaction. Ho we ver,social explanations often stress structure, creating a deterministic ap-proach to social life that ignores the effects of hum an agency. Agencyis almost alw ays set against structu re, with agency seen as a con tradic -tion of the very nature of structure. Hays (1994, 57) statesOne of the most prevalent forms of contrast is between structureand agency. In this formulation the interconnections betweenstructure and agency are lost. Further this contrast is oftenmapped onto ano ther set of dichotomies comm on in social theo-rizing and interpreted to mean, for instance, that structure issystematic and patterned, while agency is contingent and ran-dom; that structure is constraint, while agency is freedom; thatstructure is static, while agency is active; tha t struc ture is collec-tive, while agency is individual.Yet, this dichotomy is clearly problematic: by contrasting structureand agency, theorists neglect the interrelations between the two (Hays



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262 Misra and Akins1994). Recent theorists have attempted to explore the distinctionbetween structure and agency, arguing that even as agents supportthe structures that exist, they also create structures, and that agentsare empowered as well as limited by structures (Giddens 197 9; Sewell1992; Hays 1994). Sewell (1992, 27) convincingly argues that struc-tures are no t reified categories we can invoke to exp lain the inevitableshape of social life. To invoke structures as I have defined them hereis to call for a critical analysis of the dialectical interactions throughwhich humans shape history.We argue that most of the feminist welfare state literature reflectsthis debate, rather than examining the interrelations hip between struc-ture and agency. This conceptual divide is similarly reflected in themainstream welfare state literature: class approaches often conceptu-alize the s tate aseithera tool of dom ination used by capital to regulateworkers or a structure won through working-class mobilization toprotec t wo rke rs from the vicissitudes of capitalism. This either /orappro ach limits our conceptualizations of the statea bo th/a ndapproach is ultimately more accurate (as noted by Collins [1990]).Yet, we suggest that much of the feminist research on the welfarestate has taken an either/o r app roac h: while some researchers stressthe ways welfare negatively impacts the status of women, other re-searchers focus on women's impact on welfare policy-making.2

Linda Gordon (1990) similarly argues that feminist literature onthe welfare state has shifted from a focus on structure to agency.Feminist research on the welfare state initially developed critiquesof the discriminatory nature of particular programs and structuralcritiques of the entiresystemof welfare as reprodu cing and reinforcinggender discrimination. For example, in her review of the literature,Orloff (19 96 , 52) defines gender relations as the set of mutuallyconstitutive structu res and practices that prod uce gender differentia-tion, gender inequalities, and gender hierarchy in a given society,and notes that gender relations shape the character of welfare states,while the institution of the welfare state also affects gender relations.Yet as Gordon (1990) notes, recent feminist scholarship has ex-tended to works documenting women's political activism and influ-ence in the making of the welfare system. In this review, we focus on w om en rathe r than on gender relations in order to emphasize themany roles of women as actors. In her definition of gender relations,Orloff (1996) primarily addresses the structural limitations placed onwomen (although she also attends to women as agents). We believetha t centering analyses on gender relations m ay privilege the structuralconstraints facing women and undermine important insights aboutwomen's agency. In this paper, we bring the deb ate between structureand agency to the forefront and sh ow h ow this debate has been played



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The W elfare State and W om en 263out in curren t feminist theorizing of the state. We suggest tha t womenneed to be brought back into our conceptualizations of the state, evenas we agree that women's agency must be contextualized in terms ofthe gender relations that structure society.Beyond the structure/agency debate, we argue that a new focus hasnow emerged which details the efforts of working-class and ethnicminority women/groups and the effects of these policies on thosegroups. By examining the different groups mobilizing around welfarepolicy and their conflicting interests, researchers are better able toaddress the contradictions that have emerged, strengthening the ex-plan atory pow er of this research. As Barbara H obs on (1998) rem arks, Studies of race, ethnicity, gender and citizenship status have under-scored the need for multidimensional analyses of social rights, bothto recapture the past complexity in welfare state formation and todevelop frameworks for multicultural societies. Just as feminist re-searchers have suggested that welfare policies reflect gender inequali-ties and the strength of wom en's agency in shaping welfare policy, thisnew literature emphasizing diversity has shown that welfare policiesreflect racial/ethnic/class inequalities and the strength of these disad-vantaged groups in shaping welfare policies. In the next section, wesummarize and critique the thrust of feminist research on the welfarestate, addressing the research in groups characterized as stressingstructure, agency, and diversity.

Feminist Conceptions of the Welfare StateFeminist scholars begin with an original conception of the welfarestate by suggesting that the welfare state is no t just a set of services,it is also a set of ideas about society, about the family, andnotleast importantlyabout women who have a centrally important rolewithin the family, as its linch pin (Wilson 1 97 7, 9). These researchersdraw attention to the gender ideologies that underpin society, whilealso approaching the state in terms of its relationship with womenboth in the ways it acts upon women and is acted upon by women.M ost of this research is historical in natu re, focusing upon the develop-ment of welfare policy and the effects of welfare policy over time.In the following subsections, we review this literature to highlightthe arguments that shape the current concerns of feminist scholars ofthe welfare state. We first summarize works that stress the structurallimitations the state imposes on women. Second, we discuss effortsto highlight the importance of women's agency in the origins of thewelfare state. Third, we present literature that attends to the impor-tance of class, race, and ethnic diversity in welfare state-building andthe experience of the welfare state. Finally, we conclude with an

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264 Misra and Akinsoverview of past scholarship and a call for greater sensitivity in futureresearch to the diversity of women's experience and to the importanceof local cond itions in determ ining the status and interests of individualwomen.

Discrim inatory W elfare Policies and the Structural Critique ofW elfare: Patriarchy, Dependence, and Disempowerm entSpecific welfare pro gram s reinforce sexist arrangem ents and genderconstructions in both domestic and public life (Burkhauser 1979;Campbell 19 79; H artm an n 1979 ; King 1982; Pearce 1985 ). For exam -ple, one study of old-age benefits in the United States illustrates theways that one-earner married couples collect higher benefits thaneither two-earner married couples or single individuals (Burkhauser1979). These studies lead to more structural critiques of welfare,which take the basic assumption that individual welfare programsfunction to reinforce sexist arrangements in both domestic and publiclife, and show how , as a wh ole, welfare policy functions to reinforcethe entire social system of women's subordination, particularly theirconstriction within the family and dependence on m en (Gordon1990, 19).

Welfare programs support a social system that rests on the assump-tion that families are composed of a father/breadwinner who worksfor a wage and a mother/wife who provides unpaid domestic work(Wilson 19 77; M clnto sh 1978; Tha ne 1978; Land 198 0; Pierce 198 0;Boris and Bardaglio 1983; Lewis 1983; Folbre 1984; Holter 1984a;Sarvasy and Van Allen 1984; Abramowitz 1988; Gordon 1988; Hy-man 1989). Moreover, the welfare state supports this social systemto the v irtual exclusion of all alternatives. For exam ple, welfare policyoften assumes tha t men earn a family wa ge capable of suppo rtingtheir entire family (Land 1980). The ideology of the family wageembedded in the welfare state suggests that women's poverty willbe alleviated if only they are married to men (with jobs), justifyinginequalities between men and women and devaluing women, as wellas limiting alternative means of independence for women, includingthe development of programs that would provide education and jobtraining, day care, and better jobs for women (Sarvasy and Van Allen1984). The ideology of motherhood has also been a crucial factor inthe development of social policies. For example, Lewis (1980, 224)found th at in early-twentieth-centu ry E ngland, the ideology of mo ther-hood persuad ed married wom en that their role in the home was ofnational importance and that motherhood was their primary duty.Where social policies were founded on the ideology of motherhood,crucial social conditions often received less attention than the promo-tion of go od m othe ring skills; prog ram s offered advice on feeding

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The Welfare State and Women 265and hygiene, but did not provide food, housing, or birth control. Theresult was a gap between what women needed and what social welfareprovided (Lewis 1980).Jane Jenson (1986, 1987, 1990) argues that the representation ofgender dominant in the development of welfare policy determines theeffects of that policy. Jenson combines ideologies of family wage andmotherhood to show that welfare policies can facilitate women's rolesas either mothers or both workers and mothers. Where the familywage remains central, wo m en a re less likely to be seen as both m othe rsand workers because the family wage suggests that fathers are presentas contributing and well-earning members of families with children.Where the family wage is more marginal, women are not necessarilyexpected to rely upon men as family providers, and women are morelikely to be supported in their roles as workers as well as mothers.Gordon (1988) describes how entitlement and job insurance pro-grams, based on wage labor outside the home, have been establishedfor men to ensure their independence and the value of their work,while means-tested, nonc ontribu tory program s have been establishedfor women to enable them to remain within the home, caring forfamily and children. In Regulating the Lives of Women, Abramowitz(1988) argues that social security programs in the United Statesthroughout history have favored married over single parents, home-makers over working wives, and one-earner over two-earner families.Even where women were freed from direct dependence on menthrough welfare state policies, they were made dependent on a systemthat reproduced and reinforced gender inequalities. Boris and Bardag-lio (1983, 85) note

the welfare state institutionalized the power of men over womeneven as it helped to free women from the confines of the nuclearfamily. The state maintainedeven extendedmen's superiorcontrol over material resources by providing unequal benefitsto male and female recipients of entitlement programs.Zillah Eisenstein (1983,1984) similarly suggests that the state wasconstructed with a distinction between private (female) and public(male) as society. Although the welfare state may take a measure ofcontrol over wom en aw ay from men, the nature of this social con trol,now exercised by the state instead of men , remains fundam entally thesame. W ith public patria rch y (as opposed to private pa triarc hy ),the power of individual men has been replaced by the power of men

who use the state to dictate policies and laws that preserve patriarchalprivilege. In its attempt to reinforce the private family, the state hasreinforced a gender division of labor that allows men to be wageearners and makes women dependent on men (Zaretsky 1982). Un-



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26 6 Misra and Akinsmarried women, separated, and divorced women and women whohave been abandoned have no place in the society envisioned by thewelfare state (Leader 1984). And despite their intentions,

laws aimed at protecting the family ultimately protected andpreserved much elsepatriarchal authority; women's economicdependence on men; the ideological elevation of motherhood;pronatalist sentiments; and the normative conception of the fam ily as an ahistorical social unit transcen ding class divisions.(Moeller 1989, 139)Structural critiques of the welfare state also call attention to theway in wh ich welfare policies function to alienate wom en by usurpingthe power that they once controlled in their homes and as parents

(Ehrenreich and English 1978; Ro w bath am 1981;Boris and Bardaglio1983).For exam ple, Christopher Lasch (19 80 , 27) argues that wom enaccepted state intervention because it undermined traditional patriar-chal authority, without realizing that in the long run the state ex-pand ed its con trol no t only at the expense of patriarc hal au thoritybut also at the expense of the authority formerly exercised by womenover childbirth, child rearing, and domestic econ om y. Rather thanemp ow ering wo m en, welfare policies have acted to ma intain standard sof femininity am ong mod ern-day welfare recipients. Elizabeth W il-son (1977, 7-8) recounts:Th e fem inine client of the social services waits patiently atclinics, social security offices, and housing departments, to beministered to sometimes by the paterna l a uth ority figure, do ctoror civil servant, sometimes by the nurturant yet firm model offemininity provided by nurse or social worker; in either case shegoes away to do as she has been told-to take the pills, to lovethe baby.

In addition to rendering women powerless in their roles as wivesand mothers, social policy also serves to make women dependentupon those roles. Sapiro (1990) outlines the ways that welfare policieshave promoted the dependence of women: women are dependent ontheir husbands to receive social security, they are dependent on theirroles as mothers to receive benefits, and they are dependent on thestate because they lack the support to pursue work or education.M en, in con trast, benefit from prog ram s aimed at prom oting inde-pen den ce. The result is individualism , inde penden ce, and self-reli-ance for some people (primarily men) and dependence and relianceon paternalism for others (primarily wo m en ) (Sapiro 199 0, 42 ).Sapiro claims th at welfare provided to wo me n is no t truly for w om en,but to enab le them to care for their families. Th e result is social policy



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The Welfare State and Women o 267not aimed primarily at wom en, but rather , in many senses, throughthem to men, children, relatives, and the trad itiona l family struc ture(Sapiro 1990, 39).In Scandinavian countries, where welfare policies oriented towardwomen are generally less stigmatized and provide higher benefits,researchers argue that structural inequalities are still reproduced, par-ticularly as the welfare state has resulted in a shift from women'sdependence on men to women's dependence on the state (Hernes198 7a,b; Ho lter 1984 ). Hernes (1987b) sees the transition fromprivate to public dependence, as upholding and even strengtheningthe unequal distribution of power. Patricia Spakes (1989) and KariWaerness (1984) argue that social benefits in Scandinavian countrieshave indirect negative consequences, particularly due to the continuedassumption that women engage in care-giving work. Spakes (1989,614) states tha t current Scandinavian family policies/welfare pro -grams have helped women in the performance of their reproductiveand care-giving functions in the home, but they have served to main-tain many of the structural deficiencies that promote inequalities inthe econ om y. W endy Sarvasy and Judith Van Allen (1984) alsosuggest that the welfare state, by providing social welfare jobs forwomen, has reinforced the gender segregation of the labor market,and ghettoized wom en into nurturing/care-centered jobs. Hernes(1987b) argues that the roles that women fulfill as consumers andclients of welfare services and as employees of the welfare state , rendersthem unable to organize for change. Harriet Holter (1984) points towomen's continued role in the family as caretakers and their refusalto relinquish their concern for others as obstacles in their fight forindependence.Therefore, structu ral critiques show tha t, in many way s, the w elfarestate has reinforced gender inequalities. Th an e (1991,93) summarizes

We have come to learn how social policies (of official or unoffi-cial agencies) are often shaped by, among many other influences,normative assumptions about gender roles, in particular aboutthe sexual division of labor and of social responsibility, withits primary assumption of female dependency on male earningpower. Also about how, reciprocally, sometimes explicitly andintentionally, sometimes n ot, social welfare policies shape, rein-force, and perpetuate such roles.Indeed, such work has served to highlight gender biases in a system

that was long assumed to be gender neutral. Feminist analysis hasbeen central to uncovering the specific experiences of women in thewelfare state, as W ilson (197 7, 7) claims , only feminism has madeit possible for us to see how the state defines femininity and that this



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268 Misra and Akinsdefinition is no t marginal but is central to the purposes of welfarism .However, beyond highlighting structural constraints, this body ofwork offers little insight into the ways in which women have reacted,fought, interpreted, and even contributed to these structural con-straints. Hobson (1993, 396) offers a critique:Feminists who have cast the welfare state as patriarchal reorg a-nizing patriarchy from the family to the state, from dependentwife to the client or recipient of social welfare serviceshavemade similar assumptions to the marginal role of women'sagency in the construction of the welfare state.

Most welfare policies were won only after political struggles, inwhich the influence of organized women cannot be ignored. Womenwere often on the front lines of debate about the family wage, notonly accepting it but agitating for it (Tulloch 1984). Many womenalso benefited from the welfare state, including both welfare workersand welfare recipients (Piven 1990). Although the welfare state wasbased upon assumptions that do not hold true for all women, thewomen who did fit the pattern were rewarded. Women reformersfought for welfare policies in hopes of such rewards (although theiragency did not guarantee women-friendly policy [Pedersen 1989;Lewis 1992; Misra 1998]). Examining this story is also important foran understanding of such policies. In the next section, we examinethe literature that looks beyond structure to the actions of women,as individuals and as members of groups, as volunteers, and as paidprofessionals, to create a policy focused on improving their lives andthe community as a whole.

Beyond Structure: W omen as Agents in the W elfare StateAfter specifying the structural constraints women face, feministscholars have more recently turned to discussions of women's agency.Current research has focused on the influence that women have hadon the formation and perpetuation of the welfare state. In most coun-tries,long before w om en received the right to vo te, they were engagedin political wo rk, active in charitable foundations and wo rking towa rdeliminating poverty even before the state began taking over welfare-related duties (Wilson 1977; Brenner and Laslett1991;Skocpol 1992).As the state addressed the welfare of its citizens, women's experiencein charity work propelled them into policy-oriented discussions.Women concerned about the plight of the poor and the needy

influenced Progressive Era reforms. Dissatisfied with the progress ofprivate charities, women petitioned the state to intervene, requestingprotective policies for workers, mother's pensions, and equal paylegislation. These women, from a range of backgrounds (upper and


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The Welfare State and Women o 269middle class feminists to working class social Catholics), used theskills and knowledge they had developed in administering charityfunds to app roac h the state in a professional m anne r, providingstatistics and policy outlines, and united aro und specific welfare issues.Lobbying campaigns, directed at legislators and state administrators,and oriented toward specific issues, were first developed by women,and this technique was soon appropriated by other groups. Throughthese issue-oriented campaigns, Paula Baker (1990) argues thatwomen fundamentally changed the nature of the state.Various books and articles, including Koven and Michel's (1993)Mothers of a New World and Bock and Thane's (1991) Maternityand Gender Policies present studies that examine the ways in whichwom en activists sough t to create a welfare state based on the qua litiesof mothering compassion and care givingand aimed at meetingthe needs of wo m en. Koven and Michel (1993) claim tha t since m odernfeminists have distanced themselves from m oth erh oo d and m ater-nalism, historians have dow nplayed wom en's influence on m aterna l-ist policies, yet wom en no t only participated as care givers and recipi-ents, but also played active roles as electors, policy-m akers,burea ucrats, and work ers, within and outside the ho m e (Koven andMichel 1993, 3). Bock and Thane (1991, 2) also highlight the impor-tance of m aternalist politics which prep ared the way for future socialpolicies at large, for women's role in them and for a new vision ofthe relationship between the public and private spheres.Kathryn Kish Sklar (1993) argues that women activists in nine-teenth- and early-twentieth-century United States cham pioned m orethan m oth erh oo d in their fight for the cause of wom en and childrenin a new welfare state. Using the rhetoric of gender, these women allbut succeeded in creating policies that addressed the needs of workersas well as mothers during this period of industrialization. Theda Skoc-pol (1992) argues that welfare policies in the early-twentieth-centuryUnited States, particularly widow's pensions and national health clin-ics for women and children, were the result of lobbying by federatedwo m en's grou ps. Skocpol and her co-authors (1993) further concludethat women's voluntary associations were responsible for the spreadof m other's pensions throu gh ou t the United States before wo men hadthe right to vote.Women had similar effects on maternalist policies in other coun-tries. Several of Britain's largely female private organizations wereresponsible for funding and managing juvenile reformatories, schoolsfor invalid children, and school health clinicsall precursors to amore expansive welfare state (Koven 1993). Buttafuoco (1991) showsthat, in prefascist Italy, feminists successfully lobbied for protectivelegislation for workers and gained legitimacy for the role of women


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27 0 Misra and Akinsas social claiman ts. After instituting local charitab le prog ram s to helpcover maternity expenses of working women, feminists lobbied thegovernment and, in 1912, won a N ationa l M aternity Fun d whichprovided allowances for both married and unmarried women to re-ceive com pen satory pay for leaves for bo th pregnan cy and miscarriageafter the third month. These women then used this legislation tointroduce various other measures.3Through working to establish the welfare state, women directedtheir energies not only toward helping the needy, but also towardbuilding their own careers in the emerging welfare state. Sachsse(1993, 137) points to the efforts of the German bourgeois women'smo vemen t, who se members shaped social w ork into a female profes-sion, con tribu ting to their own careers , as well as to the specificstructure an d na ture of the Germ an welfare sta te. M uncy (1991) offersan in-dep th analysis of the female do m inion in the United States,tracing the rise of professional women in organizations such as HullHo use and the Ch ildren's Bureau. The professional ethos these womendeveloped, stressing self-sacrifice, service, coop era tion , and the popu-larization of scientific knowledge, helped them build professions forthemselves, wh ile accepting the cultu ral con struc tions of femininity(Muncy 19 91 , 21).Women became important state actors in some cases. In the UnitedKingdom, Eleanor Rathbone spent more than thirty years campaign-ing for family allowances, first as founder of the Family EndowmentCommittee, next as president of the National Union of Women'sSuffrage Societies, then as a vice-president of the Family EndowmentSociety (with William Beveridge as president), then as founder of theChildren's Minimum Council, and finally as independent member ofParliament (Land 1980 ; W atts 1 987 ; Lewis 1991 ). In the UnitedStates, Julia Lathrop and Grace Abbot were primarily accountablefor bringing the Aid to Dependent Children program into the SocialSecurity Act (Gordon 1994; Ladd-Taylor 1994). Emerging from an old-girls netw ork of women from p rosperous backgrounds andexcellent edu cations, these wom en had a stron g imp act on maternalistpolicymaking at the beginning of the twentieth century.Yet more than middle- and upper-class women were involved inthe fight for maternalist policies. Seip and Ibsen (1991) show theimpact of wom en in the labor mov ement on Parliam ent in the ad optionof child welfare policies in Norway. Lewis (1991) and Thane (1991)also note the importance of women in unions in pushing for familyallowances in Britain in the twentieth century. Even in the UnitedStates, a country with a notable lack of strong unions and laborparties, poor and working-class women pressured the state for the


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The W elfare State and W om en o 271maternal and child health-oriented Sheppard-Towner Act (Ladd-Tay-lor 1993, 1994).W om en's gro ups did face limitations, in part due to their emphasison m atern alist policies. M aternalist rhetoric was too limited foraims supp orting women as w ork ers, and in the end, the bourgeoisproved ineffective spokespersons for work ing class w om en (Michel1993, 8). Lake (1993, 393) argues that Australian women also usedmaternalist policies to help ease the effects of patriarchy, but wereunsuccessful in using motherhood to attain a radical system of newentitlem ents, concluding w ithin the confines of a patriarc hal state,in which citizen and worker are defined in masculine terms, neither'sameness as' nor 'difference from' men will pro duce a genuine democ-racy for women.

At times, women activists faced other limitations when they pairedmaternalist politics with nationalist sentiments. For example, inFrance, the early twentieth-century feminist movement pushed thegovernment to protect motherhood by playing to fears about thedeclining birth rate and population concerns (Cova 1991; Offen1991), and women were some of the most vehement supporters ofthe pronatalist movement. Yet, after World War I, despite the factthat women had long been entrenched in the French labor force,pronatalists argued that women should be forcibly evicted from thew ork force as a solution to the crisis in birth rate s and male unem ploy-ment (Offen 1991). The feminist response strategically encouragedpronatalists to petition the state for allowances to alleviate the finan-cial need that forced women into the workplace, while also retainingw om en's right to make a cho ice abo ut participating in the laborm arket (Pedersen 1993 a,b). In other coun tries, women were less suc-cessful. Nash (1991) and Saraceno (1991) observe that women inSpain and Italy were able to acquire extensive benefits for mothersbut were met with hostility when attempting to gain greater accessto birth control information and abortions for all women.By focusing on the ways that women have shaped welfare policies,this theorizing has brou ght w om en back into p olitical analyses. Power-ful women and women's organizations pushed for change and suc-ceeded, actually impacting the development of the welfare state. Al-though the welfare state has posed many structural constraints onwomen, it also has acted as an arena in which women have effectedchange, at times improving individual women's lives and the condi-tions of society as a whole.While some of this research has highlighted the role of poor andworking-class women in the adoption of welfare policy, most hasfocused on the efforts of the middle- and upper-class wom en in volun-


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272 Misra and Akinstary association and on the professional track. Yet, it is clear fromthis research that women's strategies for lobbying differ based ontheir resources. Gordon (1990, 24) suggests that in the United States

white women's strategies were often based on the substantialpolitical influence, economic resources, and social mobility thatman y ha d, relying on wealth and connections to lobby for legisla-tion and win administrative power through jobs and appoint-men ts to comm ittees and comm issions . . . Excluded from pri-vate and go vernm ental white welfare program s, minority welfareactivity was often indistinguishable from civil rights activity.More research, not only on the role of working-class and poorwomen, but also on the role of women of different races and ethnici-

ties, is needed to explore how the differences between women mightexplain some of the confusion about the nature of welfare policy.Welfare policy is sometimes conceptualized as limiting to women andat other times is seen as a result of wom en's em pow erm ent. W e suggestthat this difference in perspective between structural approaches andthose that focus on agency can be explained by examining in moredetail the women affected by and affecting welfare policy. Womencanno t be simply conceptualized as belonging to one comm on gro up ,sharing a comm on w om an 's experience (Young 1995). The nextsection of this paper explores the body of literature that draws outdifferences among women as individuals and groups and examineshow those differences affect the lives and action of all women.

Race, Class, Culture, and Ethnicity: Accountingfor Differences in Women's LivesWe have presented a picture of the ways in which white, mostlymiddle- and upper-class women have participated in the welfare statethrough state-building. As Boris (1993, 215) observes, these women

were able to use the statetransfer their program s to the state ,becoming administrators of new state agencies dedicated to maternaland child welfare. But there are clear differences between w om enand between the contexts in which women organize. In addition,racism within the feminist movement, the interactions between womenwelfare workers and their clients, and the ways in which differentgroups of wom en experienced the welfare state are im po rtant factorsthat can help shed light on the operation of the welfare state.Focusing on the contexts of women's agency can help link structurewith action. For example, Jenson (1987, 554) focuses on the contextof women's movements to explain the different sorts of outcomes inwelfare policies: wheth er the state is friend or foe depend s on theconditions of political conflict and the forms of strug gle. H ob son


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The W elfare State and W om en 27 3(1998) shows that Swedish feminists strategically use dominant ideo-logical discourses to create coalitions that further their goals. Misra(1998) similarly argues that the ideological context plays a key rolein determining the kinds of strategies that French and British women'smovements took in lobbying for expanded welfare states and in theresulting welfare policies. Lewis (1994 , 55) further com plicates analy-ses of the relationship between women's agency and welfare statestructure when she suggests the more institutional the welfare regim e,the more it has an effect of increasing the possibility for female agencyin the political institutions . . . In this analysis, state welfare p rovisionbecomes the cause rath er tha n the effect of w om en's agency. In theseworks, structural factors are connected to the approaches of womenactivists.

Mariana Valverde (1992) confronts the important issue of racismwithin early feminism and the way that this ideological con text playeda key role in determining the social policies that followed. Valverdeargues that Canadian first-wave feminists not only accepted much ofthe racist thought popular at the beginning of the century, but usedracism for their own purposes. By emphasizing women's roles as mothe rs of the race , feminist theorizing did not ally wom en basedon their role in reproduction, but instead emphasized women's roleas m oral teachers of childre n, privileging those wom en who secultural and racial background marked them as more adult, moreevolved, m ore moral and better 'mothe rs of the ra c e ' (Valverde1992,20) . If wom en 's political action was influential on w elfare statepolicymaking, the racism (and classism) within the movement wasalso an important factor.Gwendolyn Mink (1990, 1995) shows that the problems of thepresent-day U.S. welfare state lie with its origins in New Deal policieswhich attempted to use m othe rhoo d as a solution to wh at wereactually racial problems. The welfare state entrenched gender andrace discrimination in its entitlements, rewarding white women onlyas mothers and economic d epend ents, disregarding or seeing m inoritywom en as in need of pr op er training, and rewa rding m inority menonly if their experiences were already the same as white men in termsof occupation, union membership, and income. Lori Ginzberg (1990)similarly argues tha t social policy was founded on the ideal of prom ot-ing morality and virtue in working-class and poor women. Classbecame a moral issue, to be resolved by the individual through educa-tion and transformation, rather than an economic, social, or racialissue to be dealt w ith by society. Middle- and upper-class wo m enhave benefited by separating themselves from working-class and poorwomen, particularly insofar as they have increased the possibilityof professional careers in social welfare for themselves by defining


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274 Misra and Akinsworking-class and poo r women as nee dy. M arilyn Lake (1992)likewise shows that Australia used motherhood to deal with a racialquestion, suppo rting w hite m others while punishing aboriginal m oth-ers for their difference.

Distinctions between groups of women affect state policies in avariety of contexts. Saraceno (1994, 77) points out the ambivalencesand contradictions in the Italian welfare state that mean that womenexperience the state differently based on their regiona l location (relatedto local context and culture of social policy and citizenship rights )and participation in the labor market. Knijn (1994) and Hobson(1994) similarly point out differences in the experiences of solo moth-ers and other mothers. Knocke (1995) shows that in the EuropeanCommunity ethnic minority women immigrants are disadvantagedfor example, with limited rights to settlement and work. In Israel,welfare policies that support many Jewish Israelis leave Palestiniansstructurally disadvan taged (Z ureik 1993). Jo-A nne Fiske (1995) ar-gues tha t in Cana da the paternalistic relationship between the stateand Indian women is of particular salience in understanding theirsocial position, for the Canadian Parliament has assigned Indianwomen fewer fundamental rights than their male peers and has sub-jected them to different definitions of their legal Indian status formore than a cen tury. Fiske shows that First N ation w ome n in Canadaare ambivalently positioned due to the contradictions inherent in thepractices of the welfare state.In the United States, the impact of racial politics on welfare policymaking has been further elucidated. Klaus (1993, 190) suggests thatthe defeat of the maternalist m ovement in the 1930s had its rootsin racism because the notion of race be tterm en t, which was crucialto the w om en's movement, unde rcut the mo vement as it left reform-ers ill-equipped to challenge the racism and hostility to the poor thatcharacterized U.S. social policymaking. 4 Jill Quadagno (1994) hasalso shown the ways in which racism has limited welfare policymakingin the United States, although she has paid less attention to the waysin which racism has affected women's agency. Boris (1995, 170)supports Quadagno's assertion that racial politics assured that federalrelief programs would be locally implemented, and this local imple-m enta tion m ean t racialized gendered differentials and exclusions. Ifthe cotton crop needed pickers, African American women would bedropped from the relief rolls; the same was true in Colorado forM exican Am erican women when the beet cro p was ready to harvest.

Boris (1993, 217) examines black and white women activistsin the early twen tieth century, arguing tha t both groups relied onmotherhood as image and rhetoric to forge a new definition of 'politi-cal. ' For African American wom en , politics based on difference struc-


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The W elfare State and W om en 275tured a fight for a better life within the home. Because many blackwomen had been forced to work outside the home, they envisionedliberation as the ability to move their work back into the home full-time, while also hoping to establish greater respect for black womenas m others in the home wom en in highest w om an ho od (Boris1993, 235). These convictions led them to fight for wages for home-based w ork . In contrast, white wom en were less concerned w ith justi-fying their roles as m oth er and w om an , since culture and societyalready saw them as such. They were more comfortable using therhetoric of motherhood for benefits outside the home, including work-place protec tion, such as the eight-hou r work day . Brenner and Laslett(1991) also explore the different sorts of struggles faced by white andminority women, showing how changes in the organization of socialreproduction affected women's political organization. They remark(1991, 329 ) that the differences in the politics of self-organizedAfrican American and white middle-class women reflected the differ-ent dem ands and possibilities African Am erican wo men faced in carry-ing out their responsibilities for social reproduction.Linda Gordon (1991) compares black and white women activistsin the early twentieth century in the United States, agreeing that racestructured women's opportunities and paths to affect reform. Theefforts of black and white women rarely overlapped due to the racismand the concentra tion of African Am ericans in the South. This segrega-tion defined the focus of action for women. White women targetedworkplace issues in the industries of the Northeast through govern-ment influence, while black women pursued rural concernsthosethat confronted them on a daily basisthrough voluntarism basedon action rather than on money. Additional research specifies theimportance of a self-help tradition among black women (Hine 1990)and the impact of class on the philanthropy done by Latinas (Hewitt1990).

Nancy Naples (1994) finds in her ethnographic study of a smallMidwestern town with a recent influx of Mexican Americans thatthe state intervenes in the lives of people in many different ways (forexam ple, via the IN S, the City C ouncil, the police, the DM V, teachers,schools and the school board, the Farmers' Home Administration,H U D ,and health and social service workers). Naples (1994, 2) arguesthat analyses of the state can be deepened by community-based ap-proaches, finding that. . . first, the social regulatory role of the state is fluid and changesover time and across policy arenas; second, the dynamics ofsocial regulation works differently in the lives of similar racial-ethnic group s depending on certain historical, econ om ic, political


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27 6 Misra and Akinsand social factors; third, a socially embedded exploration candeepen our unde rstanding of how the state interacts across ever-shifting and multiple arenas; and finally the situa ted kn ow l-edg e of those affected by state interventions can help uncove rdimensions of state activity often hidden from view.Naples' study shows the importance of examining the state fromdifferent perspectives and of understanding how different racial andethnic groups not only affect the state in different ways but canexperience the state in entirely different ways. Boris (1993,215) sup-ports this analysis with her discussion of black women activists:For black women activists, the state was hardly neutral. It oftenfunctioned as a negative force, blocking the advancement of therace. From municipal ordinances that hampered black artisansfrom pursuin g their trades to explicit public segregation of publicfacilities and the underfund ing of limited social services, southernblack women confronted a state that did not act in the interestof mothers, their children, or family life as whole.

These studies reflect an important shift in welfare state analyses.Rather than assuming a monolithic state, which treats the membersof a state similarly, or at least treats all women in similar ways, thisresearch has shown that there are many divisions, based on culturalcon text, class, gender, family stru cture , and race th at im pact the effectof the state, as well as impact the state.Furthermore, this research has shown that the state is a more fluid structure tha n previously envisioned. The state appears inmany different guises, at time limiting some women's lives, whileempo wering o ther w om en's lives. W om en's agency is affected by otherpositions they hold. This research is able to point out the ways thatthe state structures women's lives, while also addressing the agencywomen have and the way they have shaped and continue to shapethe state.

ConclusionsThe feminist literature on the welfare state is rapidly expanding,providing new insights into the interactions between welfare policyand the members of each state. The debate between structure andagency has been central in sociological theory, and this debate has

also existed w ithin feminist theo ry, as theorists try to un derstan d theposition of women in society by either emphasizing the structurallimitations faced by wom en or w om en's pow er and agency.5Feministsstudying the welfare state have reflected this debate, arguing that the


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The W elfare State and W om en 27 7state works to constrain women and maintain patriarchal dominationand also that the state empowers women.Yet recent research moves beyond this debate to acknowledge thatwomen's agency can be limited structurally, with different limitationsbeing accorded to those with different resources, whether those re-sources be affected by race, class, region, or any other factor. Thestate is no longer simply good or bad for women, but a more flexibleand varying construct, and women are no longer either acted uponor actors, but both. Sharon Hays (1994, 62) remarks

Agency explains the creation, recreation, and transformation ofsocial structures; agency is made possible by enabling featuresof social structures at the same time as it is limited within thebounds of structural constraint; and the capacity of agents toaffect social structures varies with accessibility, pow er, an d dura-bility of the structure in question.To rephrase, we believe that by reframing the literature on womenand the welfare state in this way , we are able to see wom en as creating ,re-creating, and transform ing the state, throug h the enabling featuresof the state, while also being limited by the state, and having theiragency vary based on their access to and the power and durability ofthe state. Set in this context, any contradictions between agency and

structure in the welfare state can be understood and explained.The earliest questions pursued in feminist studies of the welfarestate focused on whether women's interests are achieved or harmedby welfare state policies. These questions were linked to a set ofrelated questions that considered whether women should be seen asagents or victims of the state. Although these questions should notbe conflated, a contradiction about (at least some) women workingfor welfare policy as agents, but creating welfare policyagainst manywomen's interests emerged. Making sense of this contradiction is thenext challenge of welfare state research.We argue that this challenge is best confronted by contemplatingthe vast diversity am ong wom en . Because women are positioned differ-ently in the overall structure of the welfare state and are affordedvarying oppor tunities in pursu ing interests as agents, policy necessarilyaffects women differently. Determining whether women's interestshave been achieved has everything to do with how those interests aredefined. Several scholars have pointed to the limitations of definingwomen's interests narrowly. For example, Molyneux (1985) clarifiesthe different types of gender interests available to women based ontheir position in the overall structure of gender relations, practicalinterests (those that improve women's material interests, but do notchallenge the underlying structure), and strategic interests (those that


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27 8 Misra and Akinsdo challenge the underlying structure). Jonasdottir (1994) points outthat feminists have been biased in defining women's interests simplyin term s of econom ic disadvantage or in the con text of men 's violence,ignoring the fundamental oppression of women: the exploitation oflove and emotion.Poststructuralists, like Pringle and Watson (1992), have gone far-ther toward making sense of women's diversity. Pringle and Watson(1992, 62) claim tha t a feminist orie nta tion to the politics of differ-ence means that we each recognize that any standpoint we take isnecessarily partial and based on the way in which we are positionedin relation to class, race, education, background, and any number ofother factors. We argue tha t an increasing understanding of thediversity of wo men can help us clarify w ha t we mean by w om en 'sinterests, according to who pursues them , in wh at context, and wh atresult their success may have on varying groups of women.By being sensitive to the experiences of different groups (in termsof class and race) within studies of welfare policy, we can addressthe contradictions that have arisen between agency and structure.Even more important, a richer understanding of the welfare state canemerge, leading to improved theorizing and m ore effective transform a-tions of the welfare state. We believe that this new feminist literatureof the welfare state promises to reveal those factors that have beenmost important and influential in the development of the welfarestate, and which will, as Boris (1995, 172) has so eloquently argued, advance our struggle for a more equitable welfare state in whichwelfare regains its positive meaning in terms of the welfare of thepopulat ion.

OT SWe acknowledge the helpful comments of Irene Browne, Lisa Brush, NancyCau then, Alexander Hicks, Sara McL anah an, Rick Rubinson, and W endySimonds, as well as a number of anonymous reviewers on earlier drafts ofthis paper.

1. William Sewell (1992,1) rem arks: 'Str uc tur e'is one of the most impor-tan t and most elusive terms in the vocabu lary of social science . . . But ifsocial scientists find it impossible to do without the term 'structure,' we alsofind it nearly impossible to define it ad eq ua tely . Hay s (1994, 57) similarlyrem arks Althou gh m ost sociologists recognize the concept as slippery andcontested, it continues to be used in ways that are often ambiguous andmisleading.2. Those focused on women's impact can conflate two separate questions:Are wo men advantaged by the welfare state? and D o women act to shapethe state? This scholarship often assumes that women would not mobilizefor policies against their own best interest, but as our later focus on women's


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The W elfare State and W om en 279diversity will show, this is not necessarily true because women's interestsmay vary.3.Ho wev er, although they won many concessions during the ten yearsafter the institution of the National Maternity Fund, Italian feminists werenot powerful enough to continue their fight after the shift in government tofascism and had to wait until 1945 to achieve the right to vote.4. Klaus (1993) shows how racism was particularly problematic in termsof black children in the South. Wh ite child-care ad vocates ignored the specialproblems black children faced, despite the fact that black children facedtwice the risk of dying in their first year. Black women's organizations wereimportant to improving health conditions in the South, but they never gainedthe political influence accorded white women's organizations.

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