Regulating the Lives of Women: Social Welfare Policy from Colonial Times to the Present

2017 | Business & Finance

Widely praised as an outstanding contribution to social welfare and feminist scholarship, Regulating the Lives of Women (1988, 1996), was one of the first books to apply a race and gender lens to U.S. welfare state history, offering a major corrective to earlier accounts. It successfully exposes how myths and stereotypes built into welfare state regulations define women as "deserving" or "undeserving" of aid based on their race, class, gender - and marital status. Published just after welfare reform's 20th anniversary, this third edition is a timely reminder that public policy continues to punish poor women, especially single mothers, for departing from prescribed wife and mother roles. Abramovitz's revised Preface highlights Neoliberalism's impact on women and the welfare state since 1996. It explains Neoliberalism as a response to the 1970's economic crisis and identifies the strategies deployed to dismantle the welfare state. Bringing women into the Neoliberal framework, Abramovitz argues that diminished social programs undermine the work of social reproduction carried out by the welfare state and women at home.

Based on considerable new research, the Preface includes current data showing that the three core programs discussed in the book - Public Assistance, Social Security, and Unemployment Insurance - continue to regulate the lives of women in the Neoliberal Era. "Trumpism" promises to worsen the already dire consequences for individuals and wider society. Well-reserched but easy to read, Regulating the Lives of Women will appeal undergraduate, graduate ,and postgraduate students of social work, sociology, history, public policy political science women, gender and black studies -as well as today's activists.

Miriam Abramovitz (Author)