Social Policy

The second edition of this highly successful text is structured along the lines of the first and has been revised and updated to take into account the effects of new legislation and changes to policy.
No-one can hope to understand the workings of the welfare state without first appreciating women's part in it. In the past decade the significance of the gendering of welfare states has become widely accepted, extensively charted in research, and more systematically theorised. This edition reflects this substantial development of work on women and social policy. It also reflects extensive social changes in women's participation at work, educational achievement, security in marriage; and policy changes aimed at producing a mixed economy of welfare, increasing family responsibility in health, community care, housing, education and income security. It examines the changing pattern of welfare provision, with increasing reliance on women's unpaid work, the gendered nature of UK welfare structures, the continuing dependence of women, on men's incomes and on welfare benefits, the public/private divide, women's non-citizenship as carers for young and old; and the changing political climate of the 1980s and 1990s.