Changing Relations of Welfare

Changing Relations of Welfare

For Leonore Davidoff

Changing Relations of Welfare

Family, Gender and Migration in Britain and Scandinavia

Edited by Janet Fink The Open University, UK Åsa Lundqvist University of Lund, Sweden

© Janet Fink and Åsa Lundqvist 2010 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Janet Fink and Åsa Lundqvist have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work. Published by Ashgate Publishing Limited Ashgate Publishing Company Wey Court East Suite 420 Union Road 101 Cherry Street Farnham Burlington Surrey, GU9 7PT VT 05401-4405 England USA www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Changing relations of welfare : family, gender and migration in Britain and Scandinavia. 1. Family policy--Great Britain. 2. Family policy-Scandinavia. 3. Gender-based analysis--Great Britain. 4. Gender-based analysis--Scandinavia. 5. Equality--Great Britain. 6. Equality--Scandinavia. 7. Immigrants--Great Britain--Social conditions--20th century. 8. Immigrants-Scandinavia--Social conditions. 9. Great Britain--Social policy. 10. Scandinavia--Social policy. I. Fink, Janet. II. Lundqvist, Asa, 1968361.6’1’0941-dc22 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Changing relations of welfare : family, gender and migration in Britain and Scandinavia / [edited] by Janet Fink and Asa Lundqvist. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7546-7893-9 (hbk) -- ISBN 978-0-7546-9764-0 (ebook) 1. Family policy--Great Britain. 2. Sex discrimination--Great Britain. 3. Great Britain--Social policy. 4. Family policy--Scandinavia. 5. Sex discrimination--Scandinavia. 6. Scandinavia-Social policy. I. Fink, Janet. II. Lundqvist, Asa, 1968HV700.G7C53 2010 361.6’10941--dc22 2009045787 ISBN 978-0-7546-7893-9 (hbk) ISBN 978-0-7546-9764-0 (ebk) III

Contents List of Abbreviations   Notes on Contributors   Acknowledgements  

vii ix xiii

1 Introduction   Janet Fink and Åsa Lundqvist

1

Part I: Family, Gender Relations and the Welfare State 2 Overshadowed by the Male Breadwinner: Care in 20th Century Britain    Hilary Land 3

Competing Meanings of Gender Equality: Family, Marriage and Tax Law in 20th Century Denmark   Anna-Birte Ravn and Bente Rosenbeck

4 The Institutionalization of Family and Gender Equality Policies in the Swedish Welfare State   Åsa Lundqvist and Christine Roman 5

Paradoxes of Gender and Marital Status in mid-20th Century British Welfare    Janet Fink and Katherine Holden

17

39

65

87

Part II: Gender, Migration and Social Inequalities 6

Migration, Family and British Social Policy in the Late 20th Century: British Pakistani Perspectives   111 Kaveri Harriss and Alison Shaw

7 The Multicultural Challenge to the Danish Welfare State: Tensions between Gender Equality and Diversity   Birte Siim and Anette Borchorst

133

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vi

8

Postcolonial Encounters: Migrant Women and Swedish Midwives   155 Diana Mulinari

9 Afterword   Janet Fink and Åsa Lundqvist

179

Index  

189

List of Abbreviations CA Carers Allowance CEDAW Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women DHSS Department of Health and Social Security DfES Department for Education and Schools Ds Departementsserien [Ministerial report] EC European Council EEC European Economic Community EU European Union HMT Her Majesty’s Treasury ICA Invalid Care Allowance Lpo Läroplanen för förskolan och skolan [National School Curriculum] MWA Moral Welfare Association MWC Moral Welfare Council NCUMC National Council for the Unmarried Mother and Her Child NHS National Health Service NSPA National Spinsters’ Pension Association ONS Office for National Statistics OECD Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development SFI Danish Institute for Social Research SOU Statens Offentliga Utredningar [Government commission reports] TUC Trade Union Congress WTC Working Tax Credit

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Notes on Contributors Anette Borchorst is a political scientist and Professor in Gender Studies at the Department of History, International and Social Studies, Aalborg University. Her research has focused on changes in welfare and gender equality policies and variations in policy logics in different countries. Her publications include ‘Danish childcare policies within path-timing, sequence, actors and opportunity structures’ in Childcare and Preschool Development in Europe – Institutional Perspectives (edited by H. Willeken and K. Scheiwe, Palgrave Macmillan 2008); ‘Women-friendly paradoxes? Childcare policies and gender equality visions in Scandinavia’ in Gender Equality as a Perspective on Welfare: The Limits of Political Ambition? (edited by K. Melby et al., The Policy Press 2008); and ‘Woman-friendly Policies and State Feminism: Theorising Scandinavian Gender Equality’ in Feminist Theory (2) 2009 (with B. Siim). Janet Fink is a Senior Lecturer in Social Policy in the Faculty of Social Sciences at The Open University. Her main research focuses on the historical and contemporary intersections of social policy, family life and popular culture and she has particular interests in the representations of ‘social problems’. She has recently published work related to these interests in Women’s History Review, Cinemascope, Cultural Studies and Paedagogica Historica. In 2009, together with colleagues at the University of Hertfordshire and The Open University, she was awarded a grant from the ESRC Research Seminars Competition to explore the value of visual resources as ‘evidence’ in the policy arena. Kaveri Harriss is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Sussex Centre for Migration Research. With a background in sociology, anthropology and public health, her research interests focus on the impact of transnationalism on the links between migration and health. Her doctoral research, at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, was a study of the material contexts and consequences of long-term ill health among Pakistani migrants in the UK, examining transnational household economies of production, consumption and reproduction. Katherine Holden is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Social Science and Humanities at the University of the West of England, Bristol. Her main research interests are in historical perspectives on the family, with a particular focus on singleness and the care and welfare of children. Her current research is in the history of paid childcare in the parental home. She has published widely with



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most recent work in Women’s History Review and Journal of Family History. A key publication relating to her research is The Shadow of Marriage: Singleness in England 1914–1960 (Manchester University Press 2007). She is currently the convener of the steering committee of the UK Women’s History Network. Hilary Land is Emerita Professor of Family Policy in the School for Policy Studies, University of Bristol. She has written extensively on family policies informed by feminist analyses and using both historical and comparative perspectives. Recent publications include ‘Slaying Idleness Without Killing Care: A Challenge for the British Welfare State’ in Social Policy Review 2009. In 2007 she was awarded a lifetime achievement award by the Social Policy Association. Åsa Lundqvist is Associate Professor in Sociology at the Department of Social Work and Social Policy, Lund University. Her research interests include the analysis of social and family policy development and labour market regulation. Her publications include Familjen i den svenska Modellen [The Family in the Swedish Model] (Boréa 2007); ‘Family Policy between science and politics’, in Gender Equality as a Perspective on Welfare: The Limits of Political Ambition? (edited by K. Melby et al., The Policy Press 2008), and ‘Les Families dans la Model de Nordique’ in Revue d’Histoire Nordique (forthcoming). Since 2007 she has been affiliated with the Nordic Centre of Excellence: The Nordic welfare state – Historical foundations and future challenges. Diana Mulinari is a sociologist and Professor in Gender Studies at the Department of Gender Studies, Lund University. Her research interests include critical globalization and femininst and postocolonial studies. Her recent publications include ‘The new Swedish working class. Swedish Unions and migrant workers’ in Race and Class (3) 2004 (with A. Neergaard); ‘The Promise of the “Nordic” and its Reality in the South: The Experiences of Mexican Workers as Members of the “Volvo Family”’ (with N. Rätzel) in Complying with Colonialism: Gender, Race and Ethnicity in the Nordic Region (edited by S. Keskinen et al., Ashgate 2008). Anna-Birte Ravn is Associate Professor in Gender Divisions of Work and Social Change at FREIA, Feminist Research Centre in Aalborg University. Her area of research is gender history, with a focus on women’s movements and the development of the Nordic welfare state and, more specifically, protective labour legislation, tax legislation and family policies in Denmark in the 20th century. She is the editor, with Kari Melby and Christina Carlsson Wetterberg, of Gender Equality and Welfare Politics in Scandinavia: The Limits of Political Ambition? (The Policy Press 2008). Since 2007 she has been affiliated with the Nordic Centre of Excellence: The Nordic welfare state – Historical foundations and future challenges.

Notes on Contributors

xi

Christine Roman is Professor of Sociology at the School of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences, Örebro University. A main area of her research is continuity and change in gender relations in work and family. Among her publications are Familjen i det moderna. Sociologiska sanningar och feministisk kritik [Family in Modern Society. Sociological Truths and Feminist Critique] (Liber 2004); ‘Actualising the “democratic family”? Swedish policy rhetoric versus family practices’. Social Politics (4) 2008 (with J. Ahlberg and S. Duncan); ‘Academic discourse, social policy and the construction of new families’ in Gender Equality as a Perspective on Welfare: The Limits of Political Ambition? (edited by K. Melby et al., The Policy Press 2008). Bente Rosenbeck is an Associate Professor in Gender Studies at the Department of Scandinavian Studies and Linguistics, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Her most recent publications include Ikke et ord om kærlighed. Ægteskab og politik i Norden 1850 til 1930 [Marriage and politics in the Nordic Countries 1850–1930] written together with Kari Melby, Anu Pylkkänen and Christina Carlsson Wetterberg (Makadam 2006), and ‘The Nordic Model of Marriage’ in Women’s History Review (4) 2006. Alison Shaw is a Social Anthropologist and a Senior Researcher at the Department of Public Health, University of Oxford. Her research interests include kinship and marriage, race and ethnicity, migration and health, social aspects of genetics and new reproductive technologies. Her publications include Kinship and Continuity: Pakistani Families in Britain (Routledge 2000) and Negotiating Risk: British Pakistani Experiences of Genetics (Berghahn 2009). Birte Siim is Professor in Gender Research in Social Sciences at the Department of History, International and Social Studies, Aalborg University. Her research interests include gender and diversity, citizenship and democracy. Her publications include Contested Citizenship (edited with J. Squires) (Routledge 2008); ‘Tracks, intersections and dead ends. State feminism and multicultural retreats in Denmark and Norway’ in Ethnicities (3) 2008 (with H. Skjeie); and ‘Woman-friendly Policies and State Feminism: Theorising Scandinavian Gender Equality’ in Feminist Theory (2) 2009 (with A. Borchorst).

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Acknowledgements The contributors to this volume are connected through their commitment to an innovative project that brought together researchers working in the fields of history, anthropology, sociology, political science and social policy. Its aim was to compare both the relationships between family, welfare and state in Denmark, Sweden and Britain and the dynamics of power and inequality in the lived experiences of families. As editors of this collection, we would like to thank all those who participated in the different waves of the project and to record the contributions of Naomi Tadmor to the early stages of its development. We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the British Academy, the Department of Social Policy and Criminology at The Open University, the Swedish Bank of Tercentenary and the Swedish Research Council, which enabled us to meet and explore ideas together. We are also thankful to Liber förlag, which published a version of this book in Swedish (Fink and Lundqvist 2009) and which, without hesitation, gave us permission to publish this revised English version. The book is dedicated to Leonore Davidoff, who first brought us together in 2003 and whose work and friendship remains a source of inspiration and support. Janet Fink and Åsa Lundqvist

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Chapter 1

Introduction Janet Fink and Åsa Lundqvist

Experiences of family life in Europe are constantly shifting; the products not only of changes in parenting practices, caring responsibilities, employment trends and migration patterns but also attempts by states to define and regulate the rights and responsibilities of their citizens. At the same time there has been much interest by researchers in examining the different ways in which European governments support and intervene in family life and assessing the effects of policy and legislative reforms. Comparative social policy as a field of historical and contemporary study has thus led to a greater understanding of the range of international welfare regimes and their meanings, usefully illustrating how the development of welfare has been shaped by different economic and employment imperatives as well as the gendered divisions of welfare systems (Melby et al. 2008, Daly and Rake 2003, Esping-Andersen et al. 2002, Daly 2000, Hantrais 2000, Sainsbury 1996, 1999, Orloff 1993, Lewis 1992). This has, in turn, highlighted the many ways in which the state might take responsibility for social welfare and the degree to which welfare benefits and services have successfully addressed or alleviated the effects of inequalities experienced in society generally and by families more particularly (Fink and Lundqvist 2009), Bernini 2007, Ellingsæter and Leira 2006, Morgan 2006, Abrahamson et al. 2005, Williams 2005, Leira 2002, Fink et al. 2001, Hantrais and Letablier 1996). Developments in sociological theory have been similarly influential for the conceptualization of family life, with the work of mainstream theorists such as Giddens (1992), Beck (1992) and Beck and Gernsheim (1995) making important contributions to the analysis of intimate relationships in late modernity and illustrating that analysis of families cannot be undertaken in isolation from other social, cultural and political institutions and processes. Moreover, the development of the idea of ‘family practices’ (Morgan 1996) has provided a conceptual space, which is able to incorporate more than simply seeing the family as a social institution. Morgan’s use of the term ‘practices’ emphasizes fluidity, a sense of the everyday and regularity while insisting that practices are ‘historically [and culturally] constituted and the linkages and tensions or contradictions between practices are historically shaped’ (Morgan 1996: 6). Such a conceptualization of family life thus also engages with contemporary sociological theory and refuses the older, more familiar structuralist paradigm in which families are isolated from other social relationships, experiences and meanings (Silva and Smart 1999). These empirical, conceptual and theoretical developments have meant that the



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privileging of the nuclear family norm in policy making and wider common-sense notions about family life and its histories can now be more readily acknowledged and challenged as can the role that families play in maintaining the norms and relations of femininity and masculinity (Davidoff et al. 1999, Mackinnon 2006). This collection builds upon such work and extends the analytical concerns through a very particular engagement with the interactions between families, welfare systems and the state in different contexts of time and place. Using examples developed as part of an interdisciplinary research project to explore similarities and differences in the relationship between family, state and welfare in Denmark, Sweden and Britain, the authors examine the ambiguities of family meanings in policy through the 20th and into the 21st century and consider how family life has been imagined, supported and undermined in policy making and by welfare practices. Their analyses is thus focused upon the meanings afforded to family in different policy, legal and welfare contexts in these countries, the evolution of their welfare regimes and the sometimes contradictory nature of their laws, benefits and services. By examining these different sites and processes and by drawing upon methodological, conceptual and theoretical insights from the disciplines of political science, sociology, history, anthropology and social policy, the contributors to the collection demonstrate the complex, multi-layered and over-lapping relationship between the two domains of welfare and family life. Our objective in bringing together this work is to open up different pathways for comparison of change and continuity in policy making and welfare systems. Chapters in the collection are, therefore, linked by two common concerns. First, they indicate the need to problematize models of welfare, normative discourses and ideologies of family and, in turn, to distinguish between policy rhetoric and family practices. Such an approach foregrounds the ways in which particular family formations and family relationships are constructed as the norm and supported through welfare benefits and services while, at the same time, other family groups and practices are marginalized, regulated or demonized. Access to welfare provision is shown to be contingent upon the particular ways in which welfare subjects, and their perceived rights and responsibilities, are constructed and positioned within policy discourses. Moreover we argue that the construction of welfare subjects in relation to their perceived position inside or outside the boundaries of the nation state is of particular relevance for analyses of family policy and its outcomes. For members of migrant families, where gendered and racialized restrictions have long been applied both to their entry to a nation-state and their access to welfare systems and labour markets, we examine how relations of hierarchy position them as both ‘other’ and inferior (Clarke and Fink 2008) and produce differentiated access to welfare services and benefits (Mulinari 2008, Siim and Squires 2008, Schierup et al. 2006, Morissens and Sainsbury 2005, Castles 2000, Dunkwu 1993). In the last two decades these issues have been played out in different but equally significant ways for family policy in Denmark, Sweden and Britain. In Britain, they can be traced through the idea of ‘hard working families’, identified by the New Labour government in the 1990s as ‘the corner-stone of social order,

Introduction



responsibility and security’ (Clarke and Fink 2008: 232). However, while New Labour has sought to accommodate ‘useful and productive migrants’ within this idea (Clarke 2004: 67), a more critical stance towards multiculturalism, especially in areas such as education, health and social services, has emerged (Cheong et al. 2007) as has a determination that ‘those who want to settle … pass tests on English language and knowledge of the UK (Home Office 2005:10). In Sweden there has been a shift in welfare policies that were universally inclusive to increasing forms of forced assimilation, sparked by citizenship debates during the 1980s and 1990s about nationhood and the nature of belonging. And during this same period in Denmark there has been a move away from cultural pluralism to a more restrictive welfare regime that expects migrant families to conform to a ‘Danish way of life’ and ‘Danish family values’. The issue of how members of migrant families are constituted as citizens and welfare subjects is, therefore, argued to be a core dimension for analyses of the policy making process. The second concern of this collection is to illustrate how a historical approach to the analysis of family policy can reveal the diversity of national experiences as well as the ambiguity and uncertainty around the reform, development and implementation of welfare. The chapters point to the ways in which political, economic and cultural shifts in wider society have impacted upon policy making and, similarly, how demographic change, the pressures from social movements and the challenges of research evidence have shaped policy ideas and initiatives. Alongside the determination to engage with the ways in which the normative family is constitutive of social inequalities and social differences, the chapters in this collection foreground how knowledge about the family has been in constant flux over the past one hundred years, demonstrating thereby the risks attached to a focus upon the present in analysis of family policy and its effects. For this reason the authors work to avoid any simplistic distinctions between past and present which are often constituted through ideas of ‘sociological time’ wherein frequently unproblem-atized accounts of a stable and settled past tend to be compared with a view of the present as dynamic, mobile and fluid (Clarke and Fink 2008). Instead they argue for the value of historicizing the present rather than stressing the differences of the past. This leads to a greater awareness of the continuities in the conditions, relations and practices that run through the construction and reconstruction of welfare systems while not losing sight of the changes that have more traditionally received analytical and empirical interest in comparative social policy (but see Koven and Michel 1993, Pedersen 1993, Bock and Thane 1991). The determination to avoid simplistic distinctions between past and present in tracing the meanings of family in policy making and welfare practices has also shaped the selection of resources used by the authors as well as the temporal focus of their research. The availability and nature of historical resources varies across time and within the nation states included here, as does their value for the interrogation of particular issues. As a result the chapters draw upon a range of evidence, from policy documents, legislation, government commissions, ethnographic research to life-story interviews with welfare subjects. However



Changing Relations of Welfare

there are also some valuable similarities in the evidence which has been used with, for example, the reports from different commissions in Sweden and Britain being analysed to illustrate how both these bodies constructed ‘expert’ and ‘scientific’ knowledge about family life, its problems and possible policy solutions. In such ways the essays take advantage of the richness and diversity of historical and contemporary resources to develop case studies of specific policies and pieces of legislation as well as overviews of the development of family policies through the 20th century, carefully mapping the shifting, uncertain and at times contradictory meanings of family onto the social, economic and political contexts of Denmark, Sweden and Britain’s welfare regimes. Meanings, Norms and Values in Family Policy To acknowledge the significance of the temporal and spatial dynamics in which knowledge is produced about welfare subjects and practices is not a new strategy but this collection is especially concerned to trace the connections between national processes, categories and sources of knowledge about family lives and the historical moment in which family policy is embedded. The authors examine how the category of family has been defined and imagined through the past century and into the present, highlighting the normative constructions of gender, class, race and marital status contained within those definitions and their effects. By exploring how the boundaries of family life have been constructed and policed through family policy and interrogating how individuals have been constituted, or not, as family members, this approach also restores certain welfare subjects to the analytic lens. Analyses of the categories of migrant women, single women and unmarried mothers in Parts I and II thus illustrate the restriction and regulation of their access to welfare services and benefits and the discriminatory nature of some welfare practices. Moreover with their particular and sustained focus on these categories, the chapters also demonstrate how marginalized groups of welfare subjects can, in turn, expose the normative dimensions of welfare regimes and their exclusionary processes. The moral assumptions and values that shape the nature of welfare benefits and the constitution of welfare rights are, for example, brought sharply into view in Chapter 5 as is the sustained way in which the needs and rights of the heterosexual married couple have for so long been acknowledged and supported in the policy making process. Authors are also engaged with the reasons why some subjects and family formations become the focus of family policy concerns and interventions. As will be seen in Part I, anxiety about population decline as well as the ‘quality’ of the population more generally in Denmark, Sweden and Britain alike meant that poor working-class couples with large families and people with particular psychological and neurological diseases were at the centre of welfare interventions and eugenic debates around marriage, birth control and sterilization in the first half of the 20th century. While in Part II the relations and practices of migrant and

Introduction



transmigrant families at the end of the 20th century are shown to be the subject of intense scrutiny and regulation across all three countries because they appear not to conform to normative views on family life. The significance attached to different breadwinner models in these value-laden constructions of family life in Danish, Swedish and British policy is traced in all four chapters in Part I and the authors carefully unpick changes, continuities and contradictions through the 20th century. A ‘long view’ of the male breadwinner model and its powerful legacy for Britain’s current welfare system is taken by Hilary Land in Chapter 2. She illustrates how William Beveridge’s recommendations in the early 1940s for the state’s social security system were organized around full male employment and an ideal of family life in which husbands were the principal breadwinners and their wives and children were dependants. Tax allowances, benefit rates and the National Insurance scheme were structured to support the nuclear family, ideologically and economically. As Land argues, this is still being played out at the beginning of the 21st century in Britain. As a result the issue of care and the role of carers remain marginalized in the private world of the home while the masculine culture of work and the public sphere continue to favour those without caring responsibilities. A similar ‘long view’ analysis is offered by Åsa Lundqvist and Christine Roman in Chapter 4 on the development of Swedish family policy. They trace the different breadwinner models that emerged from the work of government commissions through the 20th century as a response to changes in ideologies around women’s place in the home and in the workplace and in concerns, for instance, about declining birth rates and children’s psychological development. Like that of Chapter 2, their analysis illuminates our understanding of the effects of such welfare legacies and their imperatives upon the present and, by mapping the different emphases on particular breadwinner models in the past, both pieces offer a nuanced perspective on the reasons why gender inequalities remain such persistent features of contemporary family life and why the valuing of care work continues to be such an intractable problem for families and governments alike (Pfau-Effinger and Geissler 2005, Daly and Lewis 2000, Meyer 2000, Lewis 1998). The case studies developed in Chapters 3 and 5 are also concerned with the power of breadwinner models to shape the rights, responsibilities and experiences of women. Anna-Birte Ravn and Bente Rosenbeck take the contradictions between Danish marriage and tax laws during the period from 1920 to 1970 to argue that a dual-breadwinner model of family life can be understood as a model for marriage reform in the 1920s since such a model could incorporate and recognize not only the value of women’s work in the home but also women’s individuality, subjectivity and rights. Reform of the marriage acts thus demanded that both women and men must be able to support themselves and their children, albeit predominantly through the gendered roles of provider and housewife. Using examples of the ways in which single women and unmarried mothers were constrained from accessing welfare benefits and services, Janet Fink and Katherine Holden examine the power of the male breadwinner model in different aspects of British social policy during



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the mid-20th century. Like Hilary Land, they too suggest that benefits rates and the organization of the national insurance scheme were crucial in supporting the nuclear family through the male breadwinner. However they also argue that the nuclear family was so normalized in policy that the wider range of familial and quasi-familial relationships, which existed outside those of the nuclear unit with its male breadwinner and dependent wife and children, were left unacknowledged. Accordingly the family responsibilities of single women and unmarried mothers were largely unaddressed and such women had little support in managing the competing demands of paid employment and the home. The Gendered Dynamics of Family Policy These multi-dimensional pictures of the origins, legacies and effects of family policy and its different breadwinner models also bring into view the struggles to address questions of gender equality through the conceptualization of both family life and the relationship between the state and its citizens. In line with the historiography more generally of women’s welfare work (for example, Holden 2007, Kiernan et al. 1998, Kunzel 1993), chapters in Part I illustrate the extent to which women and women’s organizations worked alone and collectively to shape the development and delivery of welfare services and to highlight the gendered inequalities of policy and the law in all three countries from the late 19th century to the end of the 20th century. The interventions of the Danish Women’s Society upon the development of a new Marriage Act in 1925 and its longer-term protests against the gendered tax law system, examined by Anna-Birte Ravn and Bente Rosenbeck in Chapter 3, show the high-profile nature of women’s engagement with the Danish state and its welfare regime. Women’s political influence is also highlighted in Chapter 4, and the respective examples in Chapters 2 and 5 of the Women’s Co-operative Guild and the Spinsters’ Pension Campaign demonstrate how women came together to lobby and take direct political action against policies that were experienced as discriminatory or punitive. Yet these chapters are also sensitive to the tensions and contradictions in women’s engagement with the policy making process. Through the ideas and work of the 19th century feminist Helen Bosanquet, Chapter 2 illustrates how progressive views about the value of women’s education, employment and suffrage were not easily reconcilable with ideologies of marriage and motherhood which positioned women so firmly in the home and within the family. Chapter 3 notes that, by accepting the idea of the family as a ‘natural’ economic unit, the Danish Women’s Society sacrificed gender equality for greater equality between working and middle class families. Moreover Chapter 5 argues that the National Council for the Unmarried Mother and Her Child did not disseminate information about the government’s war-time scheme to support factory workers who were unmarried mothers because of concerns about the public’s possible moralizing

Introduction



response. There is, therefore, a complex story in Part I of this book about the role of women in the making and implementation of family policy. However it is one which can only be understood through the moral, social and political dynamics of the different periods in which the story unfolds and through the different but shared struggles in these three countries to resist particular constitutions of women’s gendered roles and responsibilities. Some of these struggles are long-standing while others have only emerged in more recent years. The gendered nature of responsibilities for the care of family dependants is an issue which occurs and re-occurs through this collection together with the problem of how such responsibilities might be balanced with labour market participation. As Chapters 2, 4 and 5 suggest, the reconciliation of family life and paid employment has had particularly adverse effects on women who have had to manage and negotiate the roles of wife, mother and worker in these two different arenas. Hilary Land argues in Chapter 2 that time spent outside the labour market is now more highly valued if it is spent consuming rather than caring, with the result that care work performed by women in the family continues to remain undervalued. She also outlines how, with less generous parental leave schemes and more expensive child care systems compared to Denmark and Sweden, mothers in Britain have tended to be in part-time work, with lower pay, less security and fewer opportunities for training and promotion as a result. At the same time, by pointing to the emphasis on the parental role in recent British family policy, Chapter 5 suggests the ways in which gender neutral categories and discourses fail to address the particular issues around work–life balance which face employed women with children because the normative role of mother continues to be so deeply influential in the configuration and negotiation of gender relations within the family and wider society. Questions about the effectiveness of gender neutral policy and discourses in challenging gendered familial roles are similarly acknowledged by Åsa Lundqvist and Christine Roman in Chapter 4, where they illustrate the growing criticisms in Sweden of the focus on gender neutrality in equality policies during the 1970s. Such criticisms foregrounded the ways in which gender neutral policies and discourses had few positive outcomes for women’s lives and are useful reminders, today, of the ways in which policy can be complicit in eliding the inequalities constituted through the gendered roles by which individual family members are defined and in the gendered nature of power relations in the home and the workplace, particularly around responsibilities for child care. Where questions of gender equality intersect with those of race and ethnicity an even more complex picture emerges as the chapters in Part II demonstrate. Diana Mulinari explores how the idea of gender equality has been claimed as a particular Swedish value and, in turn, associated with other national values such as democracy and human rights. She suggests that minority ethnic populations are distanced from the so-called norms and attributes of Swedish culture while family lives of migrant women are constituted through discourses of patriarchal oppression. In Britain, Kaveri Harriss and Alison Shaw trace an assumption about



Changing Relations of Welfare

gender equality within the benefits system, which expects that husbands and wives pool their resources. This, they argue, can be prejudicial for those women whose spouses or partners refuse to share such income and, in particular, for British Pakistani women whose family lives are experienced through an economic system predicated on ‘togetherness’. As a result some women have little individuated access to family resources and policy reinforces thereby ‘traditional’ imbalances of gendered power. And while Denmark might be popularly understood to have achieved a good degree of gender equality in employment terms for the majority of its population, Birte Siim and Anette Borchorst argue in Chapter 7 that there has been a political determination in recent years to force migrant women into the labour market through the reduction of benefits. In this context migrant traditions around employment, care and family life are perceived to be in conflict with Danish norms and ideals of gender equality with the result that integration of migrant women through the labour market has become a punitive process. The maintenance of gender equality as an ideal for family policy in Denmark is thus shown to be achieved through the constitution of other social, cultural and racial inequalities and through discriminatory discourses, policies and practices. Multiculturalism, Migration and Family Policy These questions of inequality, discrimination and exclusion are taken up as a particular focus in Part II of the book. Through their analysis of the power of the normative family in policy making, the chapters here point to the effects of such norms for the constitution of the rights and responsibilities of citizenship as well as for families who are diverse in structure and composition and whose relationships are understood and experienced through multiple dynamics of differentiation and belonging (Williams 1995). The chapters are concerned, therefore, with the intersections of gender, race and family lives and the different ways in which Danish, Swedish and British legislation and policy have been used to regulate not only immigration but also the lives of migrant and transmigrant families. As Calloni and Lutz (2000) observe, migration movements have a long history in Europe but they dominated political debates in very particular ways in the postwar years and migrants significantly contributed ‘to the modernization and prosperity of the Western and Northern European countries, many of which were thereby enabled to develop their welfare state system’ (Calloni and Lutz 2000: 154). To meet the peacetime demands of economic growth, large numbers of workers were recruited from the colonies and former colonies of Britain (but see Miles 1993) while Sweden encouraged ‘labour force immigration’, mainly from Finland, Italy, Yugoslavia, and Greece (Ginsburg 2001, Peterson 1999). By the 1960s, many workers had settled permanently, formed new families or were reunited with existing family members, however as each chapter demonstrates, the presence of these families is often only tolerated and usually in ways that

Introduction



emphasize their difference, their subordination and their status as minority groups (Rosello 2001). Questions of difference and subordination are thus common threads that run through Part II as a whole. They highlight the widespread political assumptions that family members should organize and understand their responsibilities to each other and the state through shared (national) values and attitudes. This means that, as Chapter 8 demonstrates, migrant families’ encounters with welfare can sometimes be adversely shaped by discriminatory and contradictory views about their family lives and relationships. An understanding by midwives that migrant families provide much needed support to pregnant women but, simultaneously, are too involved and protective points one of the reasons why subordinated groups, with family practices that are considered different from the norm, can have an ambivalent relationship with health professionals and welfare practices. As Chapter 6 records through the experiences of British Pakistani families, this determination to mark difference can range from the most formal statements of nationality and entitlement in legislation to the everyday practices of welfare agencies. So, for instance, the size of British Pakistani families means that they are disadvantaged by a benefits system which does not increase income incrementally for each extra child since large families are not considered to be the norm in Britain. At the same time, and following the arguments in Chapter 7, policies to integrate migrant families through the labour market can result in marginalizing or assimilating migrant women to the dominant gender, cultural and family values of the state. Policies and practices based on a normative family model have, therefore, profound consequences for some family formations and can produce noticeable disparities between minority and majority families. Another example of these processes is taken up in Chapter 7 through an analysis of how forced and arranged marriages became a major subject of concern in Denmark during the 1990s. Identifying a discourse about the clash of cultures between the norms of Danish marital relations and a perceived tradition of forced and arranged marriages amongst some minority ethnic groups, Siim and Borchorst argue that this issue and its related discourse were used to simultaneously stigmatize the marriage practices of some migrant families and to uphold and idealize the practices of ethnic Danish families. Harriss and Shaw argue similarly in Chapter 6 that normative views about the marital relationship have been influential in Britain with the result that marriage migration is intensely regulated because it is assumed to be motivated either by economic migration or by the migration of spouses from arranged marriages. As these examples demonstrate welfare systems are often insensitive to family structures and practices that differ from normative constructions of family life and fail to recognize the extent to which many migrant families are dependent upon the welfare state as a vehicle for their social inclusion (Klausen and Tilley 1997).

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Conclusion Using different periods through the 20th and early 21st centuries and different examples from policy and legislation, the chapters in this collection examine how welfare systems in Denmark, Sweden and Britain produce, reproduce or modify social inequalities that are commensurate with social divisions of gender, class, race and marital status. All consider the nature of the relationship between family and policy and seek to reveal the extent to which relationships between families, states and welfare systems are continually in a state of flux. They illustrate how the different national welfare systems of Denmark, Sweden and Britain articulate specific conceptions of family and, as importantly, suggest that the ideals of these conceptions have impacted upon the lived experiences of families, equally, across each of the three countries. At the same time the collection indicates how citizenship and access to welfare have been tightly bound up with questions of belonging (Castles and Davidson 2000), even though the conditions and meanings of being a citizen might have been constructed differently in the three countries. This association of citizenship with welfare provision is significant because, as Daly and Rake (2003) have written, ‘at least part of what it means to be a citizen is defined in rights of access to social services and public resources … [and] social citizenship establishes a counter-logic of exchange to that prevailing in the market’ (Daly and Rake 2003: 16–17). As a consequence, the authors argue for the importance of recognizing how experiences of citizenship are also located in the relationships and practices of family life and the ways in which these are supported, regulated and challenged through welfare benefits and provision. Such arguments foreground the difficulties of addressing the gendered, classed and racialized inequalities within and between families through contemporary policy reforms in which normative views on the family and its practices are not acknowledged or where their legacies are left unconsidered. The result is a collection that not only highlights the similarities and differences of family policies in Denmark, Sweden and Britain but also critically engages with their common effects upon the lives of families in both the past and the present. References Abrahamson, P., Boje, T.P. and Greve, B. 2005. Welfare and Families in Europe. Aldershot: Ashgate. Beck, U. 1992. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: Sage. Beck, U. and Beck-Gernsheim, E. 1995. The Normal Chaos of Love. Cambridge: Polity. Bernini, S. 2007. Family Life and Individual Welfare in Post-war Europe: Britain and Italy Compared. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Introduction

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Bock, G. and Thane, P. 1991. Maternity and Gender Politics: Women and the Rise of the European Welfare States, 1880s–1950s. New York: Routledge. Calloni, M. and Lutz, H. 2000. Gender, migration and social inequalities: the dilemmas of European citizenship, in Gender, Economy and Culture in the European Union, edited by S. Duncan and B. Pfau-Effinger. London: Routledge, 143–70. Castles, S. 2000. Ethnicity and Globalization. London: Sage. Castles, S. and Davidson, A. 2000. Citizenship and Migration: Globalization and the Politics of Belonging. London: Macmillan. Cheong, P.H., Edwards, R., Goulbourne, H. and Solomos, J. 2007. Immigration, social cohesion and social capital: a critical review. Critical Social Policy, 27(1), 24–49. Clarke, J. 2004. Changing Welfare, Changing States: New Directions in Social Policy. London: Sage. Clarke, J. and Fink, J. 2008. Unsettled attachments: national identity, citizenship and migration, in Culture and Welfare State: Values and Social Policy in Comparative Perspective, edited by W. Oorschot, M. Opielka and B. PfauEffinger. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 225–44. Daly, M. and Lewis, J. 2000. The concept of social care and the analysis of contemporary welfare states. British Journal of Sociology, 51(2), 281–98. Daly, M. and Rake, K. 2003. Gender and the Welfare State. Cambridge: Polity. Daly, M. 2000. The Gender Division of Welfare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Davidoff, L., Doolittle, M., Fink, J. and Holden, K. 1999. The Family Story: Blood, Contract and Intimacy, 1830–1960. London: Longman. Dunkwu, P. 1993. Communities of resistance in Fortress Europe, in Invisible Europeans? Black People in the ‘New Europe’, edited by L. Back and A. Nayak. Birmingham: AFFOR, 129–36. Ellingsæter, A.-L. and Leira, A. (eds). 2006. Politicizing Parenthood in Scandinavia. Bristol: The Policy Press. Esping-Andersen, G., Gallie, D., Hemerijk, A. and Mykes, J. 2002. Why We Need a New Welfare State. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fink, J., Lewis, G. and Clarke, J. (eds). 2001. Rethinking European Welfare. London: Sage. Fink, J. and Lundqvist, Å. (eds). 2009. Välfärd, Genus och Familj. Malmö: Liber. Giddens, A. 1992. The Transformation of Intimacy. Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies. Cambridge: Polity. Ginsburg, N. 2001. Sweden: the social democratic case, in Comparing Welfare States, edited by A. Cochrane, J. Clarke and S. Gewirtz. London: Sage, 195–222. Hantrais, L. (ed.). 2000. Gendered Policies in Europe: Reconciling Employment and Family Life. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Hantrais, L. and Letablier, M. 1996. Families and Family Policies in Europe. New York: Longman.

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Holden, K. 2007. The Shadow of Marriage: Singleness in England, 1914–60. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Home Office. 2005. Controlling our Borders: Making Migration Work for Britain. Five Year Strategy for Asylum and Immigration. London: HMSO. Kiernan, K., Land, H. and Lewis, J. 1998. Lone Motherhood in Twentieth-Century Britain. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Klausen, J. and Tilly, L.A. (eds). 1997. European Integration in Social and Historical Perspectives. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield. Koven, S. and Michel, S. 1993. Mothers of the New World: Maternalist Policies and the Origins of Welfare States. New York: Routledge. Kunzel, R. 1993. Fallen Women, Problem Girls and the Professionalization of Social Work, 1890–1945. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Leira, A. 2002. Working Parents and Welfare States: Family Change and Policy Reform in Scandinavia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lewis, J. 1992. Gender and the development of welfare regimes. Journal of European Social Policy, 2(3), 159–73. Lewis, J. 1998. Gender, Social Care and Welfare State Restructuring in Europe. Aldershot: Ashgate. Mackinnon, A. 2006. Fantasizing the family: women, families and the quest for an individual self. Women’s History Review, 15(4), 663–75. Melby, K., Ravn, A.-B. and Carlsson-Wetterberg, C. 2008. Gender Equality in Scandinavia: Limits of Political Ambitions. Bristol: The Policy Press. Meyer, M.H. (ed.). 2000. Care Work: Gender, Labour and the Welfare State. London: Routledge. Miles, R. 1993. Racism after ‘Race Relations’. London: Routledge. Morgan, D.H.J. 1996. Family Connections. An Introduction to Family Studies. Cambridge: Polity. Morgan, K.J. 2006. Working Mothers and the Welfare State: Religion and the Politics of Work-Family Policies in Western Europe and the United States. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. Morissens, A. and Sainsbury, D. 2005. Migrants’ social rights, ethnicity and welfare regimes. Journal of Social Policy, 34(4), 637–60. Mulinari, D. 2008. Women friendly? Understanding gendered racism in Sweden, in Gender Equality in Scandinavia: Limits of Political Ambitions, edited by K. Melby, A.-B. Ravn and C. Carlsson-Wetterberg. Bristol: The Policy Press, 167–82. Orloff, A.S. 1993. Gender and the social rights of citizenship: the comparative analysis of gender relations and welfare states. American Sociological Review, 58(3), 303–28. Pedersen, S. 1993. Family, Dependency and the Origins of the Welfare State: Britain and France, 1914–1945. New York: Cambridge University Press. Peterson, M. 1999. The traumatic dismantling of welfare: the Swedish model in global culture, in Welfare and Culture in Europe: Towards a New Paradigm

Introduction

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in Social Policy, edited by P. Chamberlayne, A. Cooper, R. Freeman and M. Rustin. London and Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 43–62. Pfau-Effinger, B. and Geissler, B. (eds). 2005. Care and Integration in European Societies. Bristol: The Policy Press. Rosello, M. 2001. Postcolonial Hospitality: The Immigrant as Guest. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Sainsbury, D. 1996. Gender, Equality and Welfare States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sainsbury, D. (ed.). 1999. Gender and Welfare State Regimes. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schierup, C.-U., Hansen, P. and Castles, S. 2006. Migration, Citizenship and the European Welfare State. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Siim, B. and Squires, J. 2008. Contesting Citizenship. London: Routledge. Silva, E. and Smart, C. (eds). 1999. The New Family? London: Sage. Williams, F. 1995. Race/ethnicity, gender and class in welfare states: a framework for comparative analysis. Social Politics, 2(2), 127–59. Williams, F. 2005. Rethinking Families. London: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.

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Part I Family, Gender Relations and the Welfare State

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Chapter 2

Overshadowed by the Male Breadwinner: Care in 20th Century Britain Hilary Land

Introduction In Britain at the beginning of the 20th century, inequalities between men and women were the subject of many public debates. These debates encompassed the position of women within the home and family as well as in paid employment and civil society. Women had yet to win the right to vote in national elections although they had recently become eligible to vote and stand for election in local government. Poverty and malnutrition, particularly among women and children, had become more visible. The pioneering social surveys of Charles Booth (1897) and Seebohm Rowntree (1903) showed poverty was more widespread than previously supposed. Infant mortality rates were high and those who survived beyond their first birthday were often sickly. Compulsory elementary education from the age of five years, which had been introduced in 1870, continued to expose the extent of ill-health and disability among young children. The high rejection rates of Army recruits on the grounds of poor physique were also evidence of the poor state of the ‘Imperial race’. School meals, which from 1906 could be subsidized by local government, were introduced in some areas and proposals that mothers should be educated in order to feed and look after their children better and men should be paid a ‘family wage’ so their wives could stay at home, were under serious discussion across the political spectrum (Davin 1978). The question of what the wage was for – the maintenance of an individual worker or a family – was also brought more sharply into focus by minimum wage legislation, introduced in 1909 when Trade Boards were established to regulate pay and hours of work in selected occupations. The argument that men, unlike women, had dependants to support and therefore needed a higher wage was used by opponents to growing feminist demands for equal pay. In reply the Women’s Industrial Council estimated that many women (between a third and a half) had dependants and one in eight adult women was a widow (Hutchins 1911). Proposals for allowances for widowed mothers so they could stay at home to look after their children (for example the Minority Report of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and the Relief of Distress 1909)  A Royal Commission in Britain is a committee appointed by the government of the day to investigate a social problem and make policy recommendations. The membership

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attracted support but it was not until the end of the First World War that more radical schemes to endow motherhood and pay allowances for all children were discussed beyond left wing and feminist circles. These schemes also raised the question of whether or not mothers should stay at home full time while their children were young for some schemes included an allowance for the mother. In the event, contributory widows’ pensions were introduced in 1925, while a national scheme of family allowances had to wait until 1945. (Neither scheme required mothers to stay at home full time.) The Married Women’s Property Acts passed between 1876 and 1884 had given married women control over their own property and income. Income included their earnings, which was of particular importance to working class women. Meanwhile, irrespective of their husband’s views (men had the right to refuse their wives permission to take paid employment), middle-class women were being excluded from the labour market by the introduction of nation-wide marriage bars at the turn of the century. These bars gave their employers the right to require them on marriage to resign from teaching, the civil service and many other professions. They remained in place until the mid-1940s. These policy issues divided not only feminists, trades unionists, social reformers and politicians of every political persuasion in the early 1900s, but also reflected a more widespread confusion within British society about the roles of men and women, the future of which, Jose Harris explains in her social history of Britain between 1870–1914, was ‘increasingly contested and uncertain’ (Harris 1993: 31). This is not surprising because the issues involved touch on fundamental economic and social systems in society and are complex and contentious. As Mabel Atkins (1914) a member of the Fabian Women’s Group wrote: … the problem before the future is to secure for women freedom and independence, the right to control their own destinies, and yet to make it possible for the same women to be wives and mothers. The solution of this problem will not be easy. It cannot be attained … neither by feminists of the more old fashioned sort, on the one hand, who simply demand for women the same rights as men possess, ignoring all the inevitable differences of sex; nor is drawn from experts and distinguished people from across the political spectrum. It receives oral and written evidence and presents its Report to the appropriate Minister(s). Its recommendations are not binding on the government and may not even be debated in Parliament. (A previous Chancellor of the Exchequer (Dennis Healey) described such Commissions as chickens sitting on nests of china eggs.) However, they reflect and influence informed opinion about the nature of a social problem and on acceptable policy solutions. Their influence is therefore indirect rather than direct. Their papers are a valuable source for social historians and they have been used in the preparation of this chapter, together with contemporary and historical accounts.  The Fabian Society, established in 1884, is a broadly socialist pressure group, believing in changing society by means of reform rather than revolution. Its pamphlets, which addressed economic and social problems, were widely read, particularly in the early decades of the 20th century.

Overshadowed by the Male Breadwinner

19

on the other hand, by those who believe that sex is the only characteristic of women that matters, and disregard in her the human nature that she shares with man. Neither independence alone nor protection alone will meet the case (Atkins 1914: 20).

This chapter will examine the model of the family which had at its core the ‘independent’ male breadwinner and the ‘dependent’ wife and mother, focussing in particular, on how upon marriage women were allocated the care of children and any other dependent relatives needing care as well as the provision of services for their able-bodied husbands. Marriage was a very clear contract: in return for care, sexual and domestic services a married man had to maintain his wife (at a standard determined by him) provided she remained sexually faithful. This model was embedded in many economic and social policies of 20th-century Britain. In the post-Second World War British welfare state the male breadwinner continued to be heavily subsidized in the tax system and was privileged in the social security system. In contrast to universal health and education services, childcare and social care for elderly people remained residual services for those who were poor and without families – or at least ‘normal’ families. Only in the last decade of the 20th century did the care of children and to a lesser extent older people move more firmly into the public world and the cash nexus. In other words, throughout most of the 20th century care remained the responsibility of women within the family as mothers, daughters, sisters and above all, as wives. In order to understand why social policies developed in Britain very differently in some important respects from those in Scandinavian countries, the broader economic and political contexts within which economic and social theories of the time adopted a male breadwinner model of the family, rendering women’s work and care within the home invisible and taken-for-granted, will be briefly summarized. Second, the ways in which the male breadwinner-full-time housewife model shaped social security, personal taxation and social care and childcare policies and the gender contract within them, throughout most of the 20th century will be described. Finally the legacy this has left at the beginning of the 21st century for those still concerned to reduce inequalities between men and women in general and in particular to value care more highly, will be discussed. The Rise of the Male Breadwinner in Practice and in Theory In Britain, particularly in the latter half of the 19th century, waged work increased with the decline in agriculture, which was accompanied by a huge growth in manufacturing and rapid urbanization. This did not occur evenly in time or place over the country, and the following brief overview inevitably greatly oversimplifies   Until 1978, a single act of sexual infidelity by his wife absolved a man of this responsibility. He continued to be responsible for the maintenance of his children.

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and smoothes out local variation, complexity and contradiction. Nevertheless it is clear that Britain had become an industrial society which was distinguished by ‘the magnitude of the group dependent on wages, compared with those which are interested in the ownership of property and the direction of economic enterprise’ (Tawney 1964: 65). Moreover, ‘the agricultural system itself, with its dependence on large numbers of landless agricultural labourers, approaches more closely to the industrial pattern than is the case in most other communities’ (Tawney 1964: 67). Despite the difficulties, discussed more fully below, in comparing working populations over time and between countries (Higgs 1987), these patterns of employment, different from much of urban and rural continental Europe as well as Scandinavia, show that by the end of the 19th century, the majority of Britain’s visible working population was comprised of wage-earners. These differences between countries continued, particularly for men, into the 20th century. In Britain, the 1911 census returns showed that over three quarters of men in the labour market were wage earners. By 1931 this had increased to five out of six. In contrast, Alva Myrdal (1945) used the Swedish 1930 census to identify that independent, non-salaried income earners in Sweden accounted for one in three of men who were active earners. She therefore concluded that: … the family wage system as a solution of the problem of child maintenance is wholly inadequate … It only solves the problem, in so far as it suffices even there, of family maintenance for a limited proportion of the families, that is for the families with incomes in the form of wages … The family problems of the small businessman, the farmer, and the independent craftsmen are just as important as those of the laborer, the office employee, and the civil servant. The relative weight of the various groups may be different in different countries (Myrdal 1945: 138).

It is therefore not surprising that the concept of the ‘family wage’ had more salience in Britain. The differences in the extent to which the male breadwinner model underpinned wages and social policies in Western and Northern Europe were still visible at the end of the 20th century (Lewis 1992). Men’s responsibilities for the maintenance of their families were emphasized in many ways. Factory Acts in the earlier part of the 19th century had placed limitations on the working hours and conditions of employment of children. These were later extended to women ‘on the grounds of protecting the mothers of the future’ (Knowles 1921: 152). The Factory and Workshops Act 1901 consolidated the protective legislation of previous Factory Acts. As a result, restrictions on women working at night continued and their employment in factories was prohibited within a month of confinement and for a month afterwards. Men on the other hand protected themselves by forming trade unions in order to improve their pay and conditions. Thus ‘… the Factory Acts envisaged women and children, while the trade unions have helped to protect men. The unions were the masculine side of the Factory Acts …’ (Knowles 1921: 152).

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21

The scope and powers of the trade unions were increased significantly from the early 1870s. Within the trade union movement there were those who adopted the ideal of the ‘family wage’, supported protective legislation for women and used both to bargain for higher wages for men. While some used the family wage argument only strategically, others clearly supported it in principle as well as practice. When in 1909, a resolution to ban married women from employment outside the home altogether was put forward to the annual conferences of the Trade Union Congress (TUC) and to the newly formed Labour Party it was withdrawn from the former but only lost in the latter after a very heated debate (Land 1980). Women as well as men were divided on the question. Given the sheer drudgery of housework in insanitary, overcrowded and ill-equipped rooms combined with the necessity of earning money to supplement their husband’s inadequate, uncertain wages usually under exploitative conditions (Ross 1993, Roberts 1984, Black 1907), some saw this as a way of ending their burdensome ‘double shift’. For these and other reasons, the male breadwinner–dependent housewife model was not one simply imposed from above (Bourke 1998). Moreover, it persisted well into the 20th century. The image of the male breadwinner supporting his wife and children, for example, can be found in the TUC’s ambivalence towards the acceptance of the principle of equal pay beyond the public service sector after the Second World War (Royal Commission on Equal Pay 1946). It also lingered in the later debates in the reform of allowances for children in the 1970s, 1980s and again in the late 1990s when the question of which parent should receive the allowance or tax credit surfaced again. The life of the wives and daughters of professional and business men (Davidoff 1995) as well as of farmers had also changed in the 19th century. Commercial and professional activities were increasingly conducted away from home so women’s opportunities to act as partners, (albeit subordinate in law) in their husband’s or father’s enterprises and professions, diminished (Davidoff 1995, Davidoff and Hall 1987). As a result, ‘women seem to have dropped the slender guiding reins they once held in matters economic’ (Hutchins 1911: 24). Moreover, for women to follow their men-folk into employment outside the home would have diminished the status and dignity of their fathers, brothers and husbands. By the middle of the 19th century, the ‘idle’ wife and daughter had become a symbol of prosperity in both town and country. The daughters of the middle class subsequently achieved entry to education and training for the professions (Dyhouse 1989), but as Veblen wrote at the end of the century, the middle-class wife had become the ‘chief menial’ of the household, organizing its consumption in ways which signaled its members’ status to the outside world (Veblen 1899, 1970: 128). She remained dependent upon her husband. Some feminists described her as ‘a parasite’ (Strachey 1978, Atkins 1914). Others deplored the narrow outlook which full-time housewifery fostered in middle-class women (Holtby 1935, West 1913). On the other hand, as both contemporary and subsequent historical accounts reveal, some were far from idle in the wider society (Hollis 1987). Although dependent upon domestic servants in the home, they were involving themselves in activities which, after the

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Second World War, would become paid jobs in the formal labour market in general and in the welfare state in particular. Helen Bosanquet, the wife of Bernard Bosanquet, an Idealist philosopher who shared her interest in poverty, social reform and social work, was a leading member of the Charities Organization Society. She was a member of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress, writing large sections of the Majority Report (Lewis 1991). Bosanquet took a more positive view of the economic contribution that a woman’s management of the family budget made to the economy as well as to the individual family, noting ‘in determining the distribution of the family income she is also performing a national function, for by laying down the lines of consumption she is also laying down the lines of production and directing industrial and commercial enterprise’ (Bosanquet 1906, 1915: 280). A Conservative feminist, Bosanquet supported the education and training of women and supported women’s suffrage before Beatrice Webb, who wrote much of the Poor Law Commission’s Minority Report. However, she disagreed with Eleanor Rathbone about the need for family allowances, endorsed the male breadwinner model of the family and was very clear that irrespective of class, a mother’s duties lay in the home. She wrote: With respect to the proper position and function of the woman in the Family there is general agreement up to a certain point. If the husband is the head of the Family, the wife is the centre. It is she who is primarily responsible for the care of the children: to the utmost extent of which the family means will allow, it is her duty to see that they are well cared for, both physically and morally: and it is generally agreed that this duty can only be properly fulfilled by personal attention … The wealthy mother who hands over her children to the care of nurses and governesses, however highly she may pay these, without constant and adequate supervision, fails just as reprehensibly of her duty as the poorer mother whose carelessness or ignorance leaves them wholly neglected. It is a duty which cannot be delegated (Bosanquet 1906, 1915: 279).

She was just as clear about a husband’s responsibilities: Nothing but the combined rights and responsibilities of family life will ever rouse the average man to his full degree of efficiency, and induce him to continue working after he has earned sufficient to meet his own personal needs … The Family in short is from this point of view the only known way of ensuring with any approach to success, that one generation will exert itself in the interests and for the sake of another (Bosanquet 1906, 1915: 222).

In other words, this model of marriage and the family had a clear public purpose in all social classes, sustaining male work incentives, providing for the next generation as well as buttressing married women’s duties to put the needs of children and their husbands first (Lewis 2001a).

Overshadowed by the Male Breadwinner

23

The Invisibility of Care and Women’s Work in Economics William Beveridge, an economist with an active interest in social and economic reform long before he produced the government report (Beveridge 1942), which created the framework for the British social security system after the Second World War, wrote: Society is built upon labour: it lays upon its members responsibilities which in the vast majority of cases can be met only from the reward of labour. ... its ideal unit is the household of man, wife and children maintained by the earnings of the first alone … The wife so long as she is bearing and bringing up children, should have no other task – but how, if the husband’s earnings fail and she has to go to work? Everywhere the same difficulty recurs. Reasonable security of employment for the breadwinner is the basis of all private duties and all sound social action (Beveridge 1909, 1930: 1).

Later, in the mid-1920s, Eleanor Rathbone convinced him of the need for universal family allowances and henceforth he believed ‘the theory of a living wage based on an average family is the greatest statistical fallacy of this or any age’ (Family Endowment Society 1927: 4). However, he did not change his mind about the centrality of the male breadwinner model described above. In his plan for social security, Beveridge made clear that housewives would be treated as ‘a distinct insurance class’ who upon marriage undertook ‘to perform vital unpaid service’ (Beveridge 1942: 53). A married woman was expected to rely on her husbands’ earnings and contributions for a (lower) pension when he retired. The minority of married women in paid employment (he assumed one in eight) who chose to contribute in their own right would receive lower benefits than their brothers or single sisters when sick or unemployed. Maternity benefit however was to be paid at a higher rate. As Beveridge, fearful of a falling birth rate, explained ‘In the next thirty years housewives as mothers have vital work to do in ensuring the adequate continuance of the British race and of British ideals in the world’ (Beveridge 1942: 53). Widowed mothers remained within the social insurance system and for the first time divorced, separated and never married mothers could claim means-tested assistance without being required to register for employment. In the early 1960s this requirement was also dropped for single women caring for an adult dependant (Beveridge’s ‘domestic spinsters’) and for lone fathers ten years later. Cohabitation with a man however, continued to extinguish a woman’s claim to means tested assistance until changes were made in the 1980s to bring the social assistance scheme into line with the European Council’s (EC) 1978 Equal Treatment directive. Couples can now decide who is the main breadwinner and the benefit will be paid to that person, provided the couple’s income is below a certain threshold. In practice most couples chose the man to be the claimant.

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The male breadwinner model was thoroughly embedded in the work of Alfred Marshall, a leading neo-classical economist, who was a major influence in the development of his academic discipline. Acknowledging that poverty compelled many mothers to seek paid work outside the home, he focussed less on their poverty and more on their behaviour and the deleterious effect it had on their children’s health and welfare: ‘If we compare one country of the civilized world with another, or one part of England with another, we find that the degradation of the working classes varies almost uniformly with the amount of rough work done by women’ (Marshall 1901: 113). High mortality rates among the infants of the poor were not so much due to their fathers’ inadequate wages but due to their mothers’ ‘want of care and judgement in preparing their food’ (Marshall 1901: 113). The solution was to appeal to mothers’ instincts and duties: The most valuable of all capital is that invested in human beings; and of that capital the most precious part is the result of the care and influence of the mother, so long as she retains her tender and unselfish instincts, and has not been hardened by the stress and strain of unfeminine work (Marshall 1901: 271).

He argued against an increase in wages for women in general and against equal pay in particular, explaining that it would be ‘a great gain in so far as it tends to develop their faculties; but an injury in so far as it tempts them to neglect their duty of building a true home and of investing their efforts in the Personal capital of their children’s character and abilities (Marshall 1901: 342). Marshall’s assumptions about the division of responsibilities within the family were perpetuated well into the 20th century by his students, many of whom became both leading economists (Pujol 2003) and policy advisers. For example, Arthur Pigou had a direct impact on policy through his membership of the first Royal Commission on the Income Tax in 1920, which endorsed the extension of the married man’s tax allowance, discussed below. He believed that ‘other things equal, the factory work of mothers is injurious’ (Pigou 1920, 1962: 187, original emphasis). Moreover he was very clear that children needed the care of their own mothers: The suggestion that the injurious consequences of the factory work of mothers can be done away with, if the factory worker gets some unmarried woman to look after her home in factory hours is mistaken, because it ignores the fact that

  Marshall did not have children, but his wife Mary Paley, was one of the first women to read economics at Newnham College Cambridge. He wrote The Economics of Industry with her and it was published in both their names in 1879. She never had paid employment but she continued to help him with his academic work, although declined joint authorship of his subsequent books (Marshall 1901, preface viii).

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a woman’s work has a special personal value in respect of her own children (Pigou 1920, 1967: 188, f/n 1).

Pigou’s views were shared with many other social reformers such as Bosanquet discussed above. Moreover, even those who, like Eleanor Rathbone (1924), were not opposed to mothers working outside the home were suspicious of collective care for children. This may partly explain why the theories of maternal deprivation of the psychologist and childcare expert, John Bowlby, outlined in his book Child Care and the Growth of Love (1953) were so influential in Britain. Between the 1950s and 1980s, these theories were used to legitimate official policies based on the belief that young children needed to be cared for at home full-time by their mother who was ‘not free, or should not be free to take employment’ (Bowlby 1953: 85). When the children were in school aged five, they could work part-time. Lone mothers, on the other hand could be expected to work full-time, placing their children in a day nursery once they were three years old (Bowlby 1953: 91). By and large, if alternative care was needed the closer it resembled family care the better. It was also a lot cheaper (DHSS 1976). Free part-time nursery education for three and four year olds increased from the 1970s and now over 90 per cent of these age groups use it. However, care for pre-school children was and still is treated differently. Full-time day nursery provision stalled until the late 1990s, when the New Labour government introduced a child care strategy which provided support for working parents needing childcare by means of the tax credit system. Over 90 per cent of day nursery provision is found in the private-for profit sector and parents offset the tax credit against the fees. Debates over the interpretation of statistics concerning infant mortality and children’s malnutrition continued throughout the 1920s and 1930s. While there is no doubt that a mother’s ability to manage money could make a difference to her family’s standard of living and sometimes to its very survival (Ross 1993) blaming mothers’ behaviour was (and remains) easier than confronting the causes and consequences of structural unemployment, poverty and inequality. However a much more serious consequence of focussing solely on mothers’ behaviour is that these debates redefined married women’s employment as a moral rather than an economic question (Davidoff 1995). This was reinforced and justified by the development of economic theories and concepts which rendered women’s work and care invisible in the home for they did not belong in the market place. As Pigou explained in a series of introductory lectures in economics given towards the end of his career, ‘money income represents real income’ which is described ‘broadly’ as ‘the net inflow of goods and services becoming available per income period’. However: By convention we do not reckon as real income the whole of this net flow, but only a part of it – only that part of it which is paid for with money or is easily represented in money terms. We exclude the flow of services rendered

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Changing Relations of Welfare gratuitously to one another by members of the same family or by friends (Pigou 1946: 7).

This separation of the ‘real’ economy from the ‘family’ economy had also been facilitated by changes in census definitions at the end of the 19th century. Early in his career, Marshall advised the Treasury and those responsible for developing and collecting government statistics. The centrality of marriage in defining a family and household was already embedded in census definitions. As the 1871 census commentary stated: ‘The natural family is founded by marriage, and consists, in its complete state, of husband, wife and children’ (cited by Harris 1993). This definition of a family, co-resident in a single household, persisted into the 20th century and tidied away messier family forms and relationships which spilled across households. For example, the census ‘hid’ unmarried mothers if they were living with their parent(s) because they and their children counted as children of their parent(s) and therefore comprised a single family. The Finer Committee set up to investigate the circumstances of one parent families in Britain in the early 1970s found that as a result, the official figures under-estimated their actual numbers by half (Committee on One Parent Families 1974). The changes Marshall was instrumental in making, together with Charles Booth (who was opposed to equal pay and women’s suffrage), revised census definitions of ‘occupation’ and ‘productive activities’. These revisions were also long-lasting, reducing the visibility of women’s work in general and of married women in particular (Waring 1989, Higgs 1987). From 1881 the census no longer included the full-time housewife among the economically productive. Instead they were placed in a residual ‘unoccupied’ category. Previous censuses had recognized that they could be involved in outwork and numerous productive activities as well as providing or exchanging services such as taking in washing, lodgers, boarders and so on, for which they might be paid in cash or in kind. There was, and is, much evidence that these activities had not declined and were still crucial to a family’s survival. (See for example, Ross 1993, Hutchins 1911, Black 1907.) From 1891, women active in a family business such as, for instance, farming and shop-keeping were also removed and placed in a ‘domestic’ category. Male relatives in these households however, continued to be counted among the economically productive. The exclusion of these categories of women from the economically productive in the national census did not happen if at all, in most other Northern and Western European countries until well after the Second World War. Social Security and Tax Systems Fears of the consequences of the changes in, or even breakdown of some of the old hierarchical relationships found in rural and urban communities for centuries are reflected in the 1834 Poor Law reforms, which were to underpin the English system of poor relief for the rest of the century and beyond. The reforms were

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concerned in particular to sustain the working incentives of able-bodied men. The poor were only offered assistance in the workhouse at a level below that of the poorest independent labourer (the principle of lesser eligibility). All recipients of public assistance were stigmatized and lost rights associated with citizenship, including the right to vote, which after the 1860s had been extended to many working-class men. At the same time the reforms made it more difficult for mothers to claim support from the father of their children unless they were married to him (Thane 1978, Finer and MacGregor 1974). Under the Poor Law the able-bodied were responsible for the maintenance of their parents and grandparents as well as their children and grandchildren. This remained the position until 1948 when the National Assistance Act removed obligations between adults and their grandchildren or grandparents (see also Chapter 5). Married or cohabiting women had no independent right to claim assistance then or now. A stigmatizing means-tested social assistance system survived into the 20th century, although recipients ceased to lose civil rights. The hated household means test of the 1930s which forced unemployed fathers to be dependent on their co-resident wage earning sons, or worse, daughters was abolished in 1940. Beveridge kept a means tested national assistance system as a ‘safety net’ to his contributory social insurance scheme. A man who refused employment in order to support his wife and children could still be sent to prison and every year a few hundred were imprisoned for this reason. Only exceptionally could benefits be paid either in whole or in part directly to a claimant’s wife. This contrasts with benefits claimed by men over pension age. When means-tested non contributory state pensions for those over 70 years were introduced in 1908, men and women were entitled to the same pension (five shillings each) irrespective of their marital status. The payment of the wife’s pension directly to her was not an issue. This was partly because the majority of those entitled were women, many of them single or widowed (Macnicol 1998: 162). There was no need to take into account male work incentives, for these older men were no longer in paid work. The debate focused more on how the pension would affect the incentives of adult children to support and care for their elderly parents. When contributory state pensions were introduced in 1925, wives could be paid directly their (lower) share of the pension even when it arose from their husband’s contributions and this practice, which was carried over in the Beveridge reforms with little debate, continues today. The treatment of a married woman of working age was different: she was a dependant of her husband and he should receive any dependant’s allowances on her behalf. The British national insurance system, until the reforms of the late 1970s, was based firmly on the assumption that only a man’s or single woman’s earnings needed to be replaced in sickness or unemployment. In the early years of the scheme before the First World War, only male occupations were included in the unemployment benefit scheme. However, the sickness benefit scheme had a broader coverage. Despite the views of the senior civil servant responsible for devising the scheme, namely that married women were not ‘… an insurable risk.

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They want insurance for others, not themselves’ (Braithwaite 1957: 245), married women were included among the contributors. The consequences of including them were alarming and within months of the introduction of the scheme the government had set up a committee of enquiry to examine the ‘excessive’ claims from married women. At best it was thought their claims were false due to ignorance, at worst they were fraudulent. In fact they reflected the poor health of working-class women (Women’s Co-operative Guild 1917). The resulting controversies reveal the strength of the male breadwinner–dependent caring housewife model. First, the married woman’s sickness benefit initially was paid to the husband, even though she had paid the necessary contributions. It took two years of campaigning by the Women’s Co-operative Guild and other women’s groups to get the benefit paid directly to her. The argument against doing so was that it was insulting to question her husband’s willingness to support her and payments made directly to her by the state might undermine his incentive to do so. Similar arguments were later used against paying family allowances to mothers (Land 1975). Second, the test of genuine sickness was not whether or not she was too ill to do her usual paid job but whether or not she could still do the housework or childcare. For example, she was allowed to do ‘light’ housework so she could feed but not bathe a baby because that was ‘heavy’ housework (see Land 1986). Third, if an insured woman married a ‘foreigner’, she lost all entitlement to benefits: it was assumed she would – and should – adopt her husband’s domicile. The capacity or willingness to do the housework remained the ultimate test of whether or not a woman was genuinely ill, incapacitated or unemployed. In the 1930s, single unemployed women were disqualified from unemployment benefit if they refused the offer of residential domestic service. Married women were disqualified if they refused the offer of daily domestic service. In the 1970s, when a non-contributory disability benefit was introduced, the test for the married or cohabiting woman was whether or not she could perform her ‘normal domestic duties’. The current system of support in the social security system for those with a disability or long-term illness no longer explicitly discriminates against women but in practice it is biased against women and carers, in part because of gender differences in the incidence of diseases and employment histories. Men’s experiences are still taken as the norm (Deacon et al. 2007). The Invalid Care Allowance (ICA) was introduced in 1976 for men and women who gave up paid employment in order to care for a chronically ill or disabled relative needing constant attention (later extended to include non-relatives). Married, cohabiting or women receiving maintenance from a divorced or separated husband were ineligible to apply on the grounds that they would be at home anyway and they could rely on their husband for maintenance. It was not until the case was challenged ten years later in the European Court under the 1978 Equal Treatment Directive that entitlement was extended to married women. The numbers claiming  This was replaced by a Severe Disability Allowance which in turn has been replaced for some by Incapacity Benefit.

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ICA, now Carers Allowance (CA), increased ten-fold. Neither the amount of the allowance nor the threshold has been regularly up-rated. Despite recent increases in both, at £48.65 weekly in 2007–08 it remains the lowest earnings replacement benefit in the social security system. Income Tax By the beginning of the 20th century in Britain it was clear that birth rates were falling, particularly in the higher and skilled professions. The age of marriage had risen, more marriages were childless and a growing proportion of young adults were not marrying at all. Feminists pointed out that there was a surplus of women, especially in urban areas, partly because of differential mortality and migration rates, mainly to the Empire. Between 1870 and 1914, for example, over six million Britons emigrated, three quarters of them men (Harris 1993: 43). Marshall explained that the earnings of men in middle-class occupations peaked much later than those of manual workers. Therefore it was entirely rational for working-class men to marry and have children while young and their earnings still rising and for middle-class men to start their families later and have fewer children (Marshall 1901: 117). These differential birth rates between the social classes were seen as ‘a source of great danger’ (Marshall 1901: 117) especially by those who believed that the middle and upper classes were genetically superior to the working class. Some even argued that if trends continued the average intelligence of the British population would decline. Nobody either then or now fully understood or agreed about what determined these demographic changes (Szreter 1996, Harris 1993), but they did draw attention to the need for government to consider policies which could have an impact on marriage and family life in all income groups. When Lloyd George, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, reformed the income tax system in 1909, replacing a tax proportional to income with one consisting of bands of increasing tax rates, he argued that the responsibility for the maintenance of children reduced a man’s ‘taxable capacity’. At this time the tax threshold was well above the average working man’s earnings so income tax only affected the middle and higher income groups. He therefore introduced a tax allowance for each child of those men ‘whose earnings just bring them within the clutches of the income tax collector … when they have a family dependent upon them, the obligation to keep up the appearances of respectability of all their dependants is very trying’ (House of Commons Debates 1909: Vol. 4, col. 508). Ten years later, married men became entitled to an allowance in respect of their wives. It was held that a wife also reduced a man’s taxable capacity. Husbands as well as fathers needed an additional allowance. It was set at the same level as the child’s allowance. Following the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Income Tax in 1920, both the married man’s and the child tax allowances could be offset against the taxable income of all taxpayers however wealthy. The economic historian and feminist, Lilian Knowles, together with Walter J. Clarke, an expert

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on living standards, were the only members of the Commission to oppose these ‘hidden bounties’ recommending instead cash benefits for all children. In their Reservation to the Commission’s Report they explained: ‘The bounty should be given in the case of children, but should be given where it can be seen, where it can be estimated directly and in a form in which people realize what they are getting (Report of Royal Commission on Income Tax, Reservations to Part IV 1920: 151). It took nearly 60 years for these ‘hidden bounties’ to be abolished, when in 1978 child tax allowances (which increased fathers’ take home pay) and family allowances (paid to mothers in cash) were abolished and replaced by a tax-free child benefit in cash for every child, paid to the mother irrespective of her marital, employment or household status. This transfer from ‘the wallet to the purse’ was hotly debated within the TUC as well as in parliament. Having failed to prevent this transfer, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Dennis Healey, increased the married man’s tax allowance the following year from 140 per cent of the single person’s allowance to 157 per cent to compensate them (Land 1977). The needs of the widower with or without children were not ignored. From 1919 he could claim a housekeeper allowance if he was maintaining a female relative who was resident with him and providing him with domestic services. Initially it was set at the same level as the married man’s allowance but it fell in value because it was not up-rated regularly. During the Second World War the requirement that the housekeeper was a relative was dropped but she still had to be female. In the early 1960s a non-residential housekeeper’s allowance was introduced which an employed lone father or mother could claim. So too could a man with a disabled wife. It was not available with respect to the earnings of a wife with a disabled husband, because his disability did not prevent her from carrying out her primary duty which was to care for him. In the mid-1970s, following the recommendations of the Finer Committee, this allowance was increased to the level of the married man’s allowance in order to support single women and men who were struggling to combine employment and care for children ‘single handed’. By 1980 half of all lone parents were benefiting from this allowance which was costing £150 million in foregone revenue (Kiernan et al. 1998: 179). It was not until 1990 when independent taxation was introduced that a married woman ceased to be a dependent person as far as the tax authorities were concerned. (Despite the Married Women’s Property Acts, a married woman’s income was always aggregated with that of her husband and deemed to belong to him. He was responsible for paying tax on it.) By then the majority of women were in paid employment most of their married lives. Their husbands were tax payers for tax thresholds had fallen during the Second World War so that the average workingclass man had become a tax payer. They fell even further in the post-war years and by the late 1960s the tax and benefit systems had collided, hence the growth in interest in tax credit systems at this time. (See for example, Cmnd 511: Green Paper Proposals for a Tax Credit System 1973.)

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By the mid-1980s the cost to the Exchequer in forgone revenue of the married man’s tax allowance was comparable to the total cost of cash benefits for the maintenance of children: £4.4 billion. This can be seen as a very crude and indirect subsidy of the care and domestic services provided by married women and far outweighed the cost of direct support to mothers and carers, despite the increases in the numbers of lone mothers and the proportion dependent on means-tested benefits. The cost of supporting lone mothers on means tested assistance had risen to nearly £2 billion by 1985. In addition, in the year 1985–86 £13 million was spent on the ICA, £25 million on maternity pay and £164 million on maternity allowances in the social insurance system (Kiernan et al. 1998). In addition, there was an Attendance Allowance paid directly to those needing constant care. This could be used to pay carers including co-resident relatives. Expenditure on this in 1985–86 was £686 million. The resistance to the introduction of independent taxation was considerable (Kiernan et al. 1998) and even after its introduction it was another ten years before the subsidy to husbands (renamed the married couple’s allowance) was finally abolished in 2000 for those of working age. Meanwhile the working tax credit system was introduced in 2003 to target support on poorer working families. At the same time child tax credit was introduced. Benefits for adults are paid to the claimant but child tax credits are paid to the main carer, so poorer mother’s incomes have improved even when she is out of the labour market and living with a partner. However, the system still favours the one earner couple family because it creates disincentives for the second parent (usually the mother) from taking up employment. In other words it favours the male breadwinner model where mothers have partners. As the former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, told the Daycare Trust at their annual conference in 2004 ‘the Working Tax Credit (WTC) enables half a million mothers to choose to stay at home’ (emphasis added). At the same time the Chancellor of the Exchequer boasted that the WTC helps lone mothers into employment and pressure on lone mothers to return to paid employment has increased since then and in 2010 they will have to return when their youngest child reaches seven years of age. Childcare subsidies in the tax credit system are only available to mothers in employment. Half the beneficiaries are lone mothers and their economic activity rates have increased to 57 per cent, which is still below that (70 per cent) of partnered mothers (ONS 2007). Childcare is a means to an end rather than a public good for all children unlike free part-time pre-school education which is available to all who want it. The Legacy of the Male Breadwinner–Full-time Housewife Model Economics plays an important part in the life of man [sic] but it is not the whole of the life of man. Informal caring is a term which hides a rich variety of human relationships: between children and parents; between spouses; between kith and kin and friends and neighbours. Most care without giving a thought to the

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Changing Relations of Welfare financial cost of caring. It somehow demeans them to reduce their dedication to cash amounts (David Lipsey, Note of Dissent, Royal Commission on Long Term Care 1999: 133).

This economist’s view is based on an assumption about care which is consistent with those described earlier in the chapter. It is also one still shared by many policy makers in the British government. For example, there has been a growing interest across the European Union (EU) in giving disabled and elderly adults needing care more choice. Schemes of Direct Payments so that they can purchase the care they want, rather than relying on services provided directly by social services departments are becoming increasingly common. In continental European countries direct payments are used to give those needing care more choice in general and, in particular, to sustain and even increase the care which wives, daughters, sisters and other relatives – and in some countries husbands – provide (Lundsgaard 2005). In England these payments are also being promoted to increase choice but their main purpose is to stimulate and sustain the private-for-profit markets in domiciliary and residential care which are already providing most formal social care services. However, England is different in only exceptionally allowing these payments to be used to pay relatives for the care they provide and then only at the discretion of local authority. Similar considerations inform childcare policies. Explaining why childcare provided by a friend or family member, unless they register as childminders and meet certain requirements, is excluded from the provisions of the Childcare Tax Credit scheme, which pays a proportion of the childcare costs of employed parents, the Minister of Children said: ‘The Government does not think it appropriate to intervene in private family arrangements’ (DfES, Childcare Made More Affordable. Press Release 17 May 2004). Moreover childcare by grandmothers is ‘freely given’ (DfES and HMT 2005). That does not mean it is costless to those who give care. Moreover, the much more costly married man’s allowance was never presented as an intrusion in the family because it was subsidizing the ‘independent’ male breadwinner. (As long as tax payers were middle-class Englishmen no-one checked that fathers were actually maintaining the children they were claiming tax relief on.) Decreasing the direct dependence of female carers on that breadwinner was altogether different. There is not a consensus about paying relatives to care for each other but at least the opportunity costs of caring by grandmothers and other relatives could be recognized as is now the case of parents with young or disabled children and since 2007, carers of disabled or frail adults. They have the right to ask to work shorter hours. Parents can claim WTC when working 16 hours, unlike other claimants who must be working 30 hours unless they are themselves disabled.

 Despite the increase in formal childcare provision (mainly in the private sector) since 1997, employed mothers’ dependence on informal care, especially provided by grandmothers, has not declined (Kazimirski et al. 2008).

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The belief that cash and care do not mix is shared by one of the leading and most effective of the organizations representing carers. In 2006, Carers UK, began campaigning not only to confine the term ‘carer’ to those who are caring for family or friends unpaid but also to stop the widespread practice of referring to members of the social care workforce as ‘paid carers’ or ‘formal carers’. This, it is claimed is a misuse of the term ‘carer’. However this is to perpetuate the damaging dichotomies which as discussed above, were consciously constructed in the 19th century and perpetuated in Britain and elsewhere in the world throughout the 20th century. Attempts to challenge these highly gendered dichotomies between rational choice in the economy on the one hand and moral sentiment and duty in the family on the other, are resisted on the grounds both that women would care less in the family as a result and that the economy would become less competitive and productive. Given the gendered division of domestic responsibilities in the family and that the workplace has been designed in the interests of male full-time workers, it is still easier for men than women to ignore the interdependence of family and economy and give priority to the demands of the workplace and claim the ‘independence’ which is still associated with masculinity. There are also dangers for both givers and receivers of care in treating care as a commodity in a competitive market. This does not mean that care should not be provided in exchange for money. Carers do not live on air, they incur opportunity costs (recognized inadequately by CA) and additional expenses. It is in recognition of this that one in ten of employed mothers pay family and friends for the childcare they provide (Kazimirski et al. 2008). A cash payment at least makes care visible and can be a valued token of recognition. Above all, care wherever it takes place, is based on a relationship of trust, which takes time to establish and sustain. A cash payment may facilitate this and as discussed above, unlike in Britain, direct payment schemes in continental Europe recognize this. However, left to the market, with pressures to hold down the cost of care, especially the wages of care workers, care may be reduced to a list of tasks and the quality of care falls (Himmelweit and Land 2008). Conclusion As marriage and cohabitation are becoming almost indistinguishable in law, the male breadwinner model is being displaced in theory by the individual citizen worker model (Lewis 2001a, 2001b, 2004). Women, irrespective of their marital status and whether or not they have young children or grandchildren, are now expected to be in the labour market. They are being pushed as well as pulled into employment as the proportion of men earning a wage sufficient to support a family, always a minority (Bowley 1921, cited in Ross 1993: 45), has declined. Most households with children depend on two or at least one-and-a-half earners. Those who have no or only one earner are likely to be poor. In contrast to the decades prior to the Second World War when the male breadwinner model was applied consistently across government departments, the post-war government in

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Britain did not speak with one voice. The social security system assumed marriage would remove women from the labour market. However the welfare state itself created hundreds of thousands of jobs in health, education and social services and in response to the Ministry of Labour’s exhortations, women joined the expanding labour market in growing numbers. However, for the reasons discussed above, the British Government chose to avoid developing formal child care services to enable mothers to work full time. Instead, where full-time workers were needed, especially in the expanding health and welfare services they were recruited from the Commonwealth countries. British mothers were then accommodated by the creation of part-time jobs. In 1950 only one in 20 employees worked part-time (less than 30 hours). By 2000 this had increased to over one in four. Women have paid dearly for this method of reconciling their family ‘duties’ and the demands of paid work. Part-time employment in Britain has always carried lower pay, less security and fewer opportunities for training and promotion. The gender pay gap for women working part-time has remained the highest in the EU (Manning and Petrongolo 2005) despite the various EU Directives seeking to reconcile employment and family needs. The ‘long hours culture’ which has developed in Britain over the last 25 years disadvantages those who work shorter or flexible hours or take leave, even though more of the latter are now paid. It is significant that in Britain ‘flexible’ working is presented as a means of achieving ‘work–life balance’ for the carers of children, people with disabilities and frail elderly people. This does little to value care more highly or to recognize care is essential to economic productivity as well as to society at large. Balance implies a zero-sum game which is different from ‘work–life reconciliation’, the more common phrase used in the rest of the EU. The more fundamental issue is that the gendered division of labour embodied in the male breadwinner model has deeply affected the way not just work but time is structured and valued (Lewis 2004). It is interesting to note that Sidney Webb (1919) advocated not only a minimum wage but also a legally enforced national minimum of leisure and recreation. Time spent outside the labour market is more highly valued if it is spent in consuming than in caring and full-time mothers and carers are still defined as ‘unoccupied’. By the end of the 20th century, feminists were arguing that ‘an ethic of care’ is needed to inform a wide range of public and social policies in order to recognize and value care and those who need and provide it (Sevenhuisjen 1998, Tronto 1993). In Britain, some of the toughest problems lie not only in sharing care differently within the home and compensating carers adequately but also as Eleanor Rathbone had predicted over 70 years ago (in Reiss 1934: preface viii), in reforming the economic sphere, with its culture and practices which favour those – mainly men – without caring responsibilities. The male breadwinner model so firmly embedded in British policies for well over a century, still keeps care and carers in the shadows.

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Himmelweit, S. and Land, H. 2008. Reducing gender inequalities to create a sustainable care system in Viewpoint 2293. York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 1–12. Hollis, P. 1987. Ladies Elect: Women in English Local Government 1865–1914. Oxford: Clarendon. Holtby, W. 1935. Women. London: Bodley Head. Hutchins, B. 1911. The Working Life of Women. Fabian Tract 157. London: Fabian Society. Johns, A. (ed.). 1986. Unequal Opportunities: Women’s Employment in England 1800–1918. Oxford: Blackwell. Kazimirski, A., Smith, R., Butt, S., Ireland, E. and Lloyd, E. 2008. Childcare and Early Years Survey 2007: Parents’ Use, Views and Experiences. Research Report DCSF 025. London: Department of Children, Schools and Families. Kiernan, K., Land, H. and Lewis, J. 1998. Lone Motherhood in Twentieth Century Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Knowles, L. 1921. The Industrial and Commercial Revolutions in Great Britain during the Nineteenth Century. London: Routledge. Land, H. 1975. The introduction of family allowances, in Change, Choice and Conflict in Social Policy, edited by P. Hall, H. Land, R. Parker and A. Webb. London: Heinemann, 157–230. Land, H. 1977. The child benefit fiasco, in The Year Book of Social Policy 1976, edited by K. Jones and S. Baldwin. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 116– 132. Land, H. 1980. The family wage. Feminist Review, 6, 55–77. Land, H. 1986. An analysis of the meaning of women’s work as manifested in British income maintenance systems. International Sociology, 1(3), 243–58. Lewis, J. 1991. Women and Social Action in Victorian and Edwardian England. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Lewis, J. 1992. Gender and the development of welfare regimes. Journal of European Social Policy, 2(3), 159–73. Lewis, J. 2001a. The End of Marriage? Individualism and Intimate Relationships. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Lewis, J. 2001b. The decline of the male breadwinner model: the implications for work and care. Social Politics, 8(2), 152–70. Lewis, J. 2004. Individualization and the need for new forms of family solidarity, in Solidarity between the Sexes and the Generations, edited by T. Knijn and A. Komter. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 51–67. Lundsgaard, J. 2005. Consumer Direction and Choice in Long Term Care for Older Persons, Including Payments for Informal Care. Health Working Paper No, 20, Paris: OECD. Macnicol, J. 1998. The Politics of Retirement in Britain 1878–1948. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Manning, A. and Petrongolo, B. 2005. The Part-time Pay Penalty, London School of Economics and Women and Equality Unit, CEP Discussion Paper No. 679.

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Marshall, A. 1901. Economics of Industry Vol 1. London: Macmillan. Myrdal, A. 1945. Nation and Family. London: Kegan Paul. ONS (Office for National Statistics). 2007. Social Trends 39. London: HMSO. Pigou, A. 1946. An Introduction to Economics. London: Routledge. Pigou, A. 1962, first published 1920. The Economics of Welfare. London: Macmillan. Pujol, M. 2001. Into the margin!, in Toward a Feminist Philosophy of Economics, edited by D.K. Barker and E. Kuiper. London: Routledge, 21–36. Rathbone, E. 1924. The Disinherited Family. London: Allen & Unwin. Reiss, E. 1934. The Rights and Duties of Englishwomen. Manchester: Sherratt and Hughes. Roberts, E. 1984. Labour and Love. Oxford: Blackwell. Ross, E. 1993. Love and Toil: Motherhood in Outcast London. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rowntree, S.B. 1903. Poverty: A Study of Town Life. London: Macmillan. Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress. 1909. Report. (Cmnd. 4499), London: HMSO. Royal Commission on Income Tax. 1920. Report. (Cmnd. 615), London: HMSO. Royal Commission on Equal Pay. 1946. Report. (Cmnd. 6937), London: HMSO. Royal Commission on Long Term Care. 1999. With Respect to Old Age. (Cmnd. 4192–I), London: The Stationery Office. Sevenhuisjen, S. 1998. Citizenship and the Ethics of Care. London: Routledge. Strachey, R. 1978. The Cause. London: Virago. Szreter, S. 1996. Fertility, Class and Gender in Britain, 1860–1940. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tawney, R.H. 1964. first published 1931. Equality. London: Allen & Unwin. Thane, P. 1978. Women and the Poor Law in Victorian and Edwardian England. History Workshop Journal, 6, 29–51. Tronto, J. 1993. Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care. London: Routledge. Veblen, T. 1970, first published 1899. The Theory of the Leisure Class. London: Allen & Unwin. Waring, M. 1989. If Women Counted: A New Feminist Economics. London: Macmillan. Webb, S. 1919. The Necessary Basis of Society. Fabian Tract 159. London: Fabian Society. West, R. 1913. The sin of self-sacrifice, in The Young Rebecca. Writings of Rebecca West 1911–1917, edited by J. Marcus. 1983. London: Virago, 30–33. Women’s Co-operative Guild. 1917. Memorandum on the National Care of Maternity. London: Women’s Co-operative Guild.

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Chapter 3

Competing Meanings of Gender Equality: Family, Marriage and Tax Law in 20th Century Denmark Anna-Birte Ravn and Bente Rosenbeck

Introduction Until the early 1970s, negotiations and compromises between four political parties, representing the major social groups of the country, shaped Danish politics. In the period between 1920 and 1970, the Social Democrats, often in alliance with the Social Liberal Party, held government power for more than 30 years, alternating with Liberal governments, which were supported by the Conservative Party. The Social Democrats and the Social Liberals were more radical in regard to gender equality, but all parties supported equality and marriage reforms. However, although equality between spouses was introduced in the Danish marriage laws of the 1920s, husbands continued to be defined in Danish tax legislation as heads of household until 1970, with the result that in this 50-year period the tax law system recognized neither married women’s individuality nor their right to pay their own taxes. Using this apparent contradiction as our analytical focus, this chapter examines the meanings of gender equality as they were constructed and contested in Danish parliamentary and public debates over marriage and tax law reforms, and considers more generally what they reveal about the relationship between family, gender and the state. Our main argument is that although the idea of gender equality was formulated and broadly accepted from the 1850s in Denmark, the meaning of equality differed between political actors and shifted over time. What was thought of as equality in the 1920s was perceived to be inequality in the 1960s. Moreover, the idea of gender equality was often used as a means to further other ends. In the early part of the 20th century, it was deployed mainly to bolster the institution of marriage as a  The Danish Social Democratic Party never gained a majority in the way its Norwegian and Swedish counterparts did.  In 1901, after 25 years of political battle, the old Right (representing landed aristocracy and urban capitalists) finally gave in to the principle of Cabinet responsibility – wherein the governing party/parties should have a majority in the Lower House – and handed over power to the Left (the Liberal Party).

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foundation stone of the emerging welfare state: an institution to which population policy ascribed a primary responsibility for family maintenance as well as for reproduction. From about 1960, the notion of gender equality became a means in labour market policy to secure both a supply of labour and economic growth, which was the sine qua non of the mature Danish welfare state. This meant that, while in the early period the goal of gender equality was pursued within the family, during the later period gender equality involved married women’s ‘de-familialization’. Our aim is to contribute theoretically to a more differentiated picture of family policies through the 20th century and we therefore use as our point of departure a contextualized concept of equality and historically specific debates about citizenship. On the one hand, our argument will confirm or even strengthen the idea of the ‘women-friendliness’ (Hernes 1987) of the Scandinavian welfare states. We suggest that the marriage reforms of the 1920s did not result in a ‘weak male-breadwinner model’ (Lewis 1993, 1997), but a ‘modified dual-breadwinner model’. Contrary to other European countries, the Nordic welfare states have recognized married women’s individuality since the early 20th century. Married women were not treated by the state as mere accessories of their husbands; they were recognized as equal individuals whose contribution to family provision and care was understood to be essential for a healthy and productive population. On the other hand, the tax law system and the debates over reform of that system show that, until the 1960s, married women’s situation was precarious when it came to fundamental citizenship rights. In this way, Carole Pateman’s notion of a ‘sexual contract’ being the basis of the social contract and women’s secondary citizenship (Pateman 1988, 1989) also applies in the Nordic context. However, married women’s attainment of full citizenship around 1970 occurred earlier than in other European countries, and becomes more understandable in the light of their continual contribution to family maintenance, be that as producers in the family or in the labour market. The fully developed dual- or universal-breadwinner model in turn laid the foundation for the steps taken by the Nordic welfare states towards a ‘universal-caregiver model’ (Fraser 1997b) or, in Alice Kessler-Harris’s words, a ‘gender encompassing economic citizenship’ (Kessler-Harris 2001, 2003).   The term ‘de-familialization’ is defined by Lister (1997:173) as ‘the degree to which individual adults can uphold a socially acceptable standard of living, independently of family relationships, either through paid work or through social security provisions’.   We understand ‘family policy’ in a broad sense to include, for example, tax policies. The term ‘family policy’ was not used in Denmark until the early 1960s.  Scandinavia includes Denmark, Norway and Sweden.   ‘Daddy quotas’ – the earmarking of father’s leave which was not transferable to the mother – were introduced in the Nordic countries in the late 20th century, first in Sweden.  The notion of ‘a gender encompassing economic citizenship’ captures ‘rights and obligations attendant to the daily struggle to reconcile economic well-being and household maintenance with the capacity to participate more fully in democratic societies’ (Kessler-Harris 2003: 168).

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The empirical sources on which we draw are, first, parliamentary and government documents, including central commission reports, and second, journals published by the Danish Women’s Society and the Social Democratic Women’s Clubs, as well as reports from meetings of Nordic lawyers’ and women’s organizations. The central role played by ad hoc commissions is a specific feature of Nordic policy processes. These commissions typically included representatives of all political parties, as well as interest groups, civil servants from relevant ministries and academic experts, and they functioned as knowledgeproducing institutions, as instruments for policy planning (commissions would, for instance, often propose new legislation) and as an arena for consensus building (Lundqvist 2008). It was through the work of the commissions that the capacity of the Nordic political culture for negotiation and compromise between opposing social and political groups – labour versus capital,10 landed versus urban interests – crystallized. Danish modernization in the 19th century was primarily agrarian, and until about 1960 agriculture was the leading export trade, while urban industries and trades produced mainly for the home market. Agriculture was dominated by middle-sized family farms, but also included a large group of independent smallholders, whose numbers grew until 1945. As in agriculture, urban industries and trades were primarily medium-sized and many depended on family labour. From the late 1950s, however, a second wave of industrialization and economic growth made family business ever more unprofitable, and rising numbers of women decided to stay in the regular labour market after marriage. Our argument is organized into two sections. The first examines the reforms to marriage legislation that occurred in the 1920s, the main principles of which have remained unchanged in Denmark until the present day. The second section, on tax law reforms, begins by commenting briefly on the efforts of Danish women’s rights organizations at the beginning of the 20th century to change the gendered tax law system – efforts that were strengthened as a consequence of the marriage reforms of the 1920s, but which remained in vain until 1945. Our discussion then moves to the period following the Second World War, 1945–1970, when women’s organizations’ critique of the tax law system was heard and accepted.

 The Danish Women’s Society (Dansk Kvindesamfund) was established in 1871, and from 1884 published the journal Kvinden & Samfundet [Women and Society]. From the 1930s, many Social Democratic women joined the Society.  The Social-Democratic Women’s Clubs published the journal Frie Kvinder [Liberated Women] between 1947 and 1973. 10 After a major labour market battle in 1899, a settlement between labour and capital stipulated the conditions for future collective bargaining and agreement on wages and working conditions. One important background for this settlement was a very high degree of organization (about 75 per cent of male and about 20 per cent of female workers around 1900).

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Both sections compare the Danish case with corresponding developments in other Nordic countries11 and in Europe as a whole. Marriage and Marriage Acts12 Following the first Danish democratic constitution of 184913 and a general economic liberalization in the mid-19th century, unmarried women attained civil rights in 1857. Married women’s citizenship rights were soon to follow (Dahlsgaard 1980, Lading 1939, Lemche 1939) and in 1880, married women in Denmark gained the right to dispose of their own earnings. The 1899 Danish Property Act bestowed on them majority rights, but did not imply full equality between the spouses.14 The wife could decide over her separate estate, but overall disposal of joint property, together with legal custody of the children, lay with her husband. At the beginning of the 20th century, marriage reforms were introduced in all Scandinavian countries and included three major changes: the marriage contract was reformed, divorce law was liberalized and women’s individual rights were extended. Alongside these reforms new child laws were introduced, giving illegitimate children the same rights as children born in wedlock. The new marriage Acts were equality laws, which stated that the spouses were equal15 and they were underpinned by other kinds of legislation, especially women’s achievement of political citizenship. Danish women were enfranchised in 1908 for local elections, and a revised constitution of 1915 gave women and servants equal and universal enfranchisement for parliamentary elections. Long before that, however, women’s organizations were taking active part in political decision making by petitioning government – or government commissions – and Parliament, and in most cases women’s voices were heard. One example is the early factory 11 The Nordic countries include Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland. 12 This section builds on the results of a Nordic research project ‘Marriage in the Northern Countries from a European Perspective – Modernization and the Construction of Gender’, which includes national and comparative analyses of the early 20th century legal developments in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, as well as an investigation of the Nordic collaboration in relation to matrimonial law (see Melby et al. 2000, 2001, 2006a, 2006b, Rosenbeck 2000). 13 The constitution of 1849 gave equal and universal enfranchisement for parliamentary elections to men in charge of a household. 14  Corresponding legislation was enacted in Sweden in 1875 and in Norway in 1888. 15 The result was, in Sweden, marriage and divorce reform in 1915 and a new Marriage Code in 1920; in Norway, the Law on Formation and Dissolution of Marriage of 1918 and the Law on the Property Relations of Spouses of 1927; and in Denmark, the Law on Formation and Dissolution of Marriage of 1922 and the Law on the Legal Effects of Marriage of 1925. Iceland and Finland chose to follow the Scandinavian marriage model in 1923 and 1929.

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laws of 1901 and 1913, which – contrary to protective labour legislation in most Western industrialized countries – did not include prohibition of women’s night work and thus contributed to women’s full economic citizenship.16 This outcome was probably influenced by a strong alliance of the Danish Women’s Society and female Social Democratic trade unionists, protesting against the ban on women working night shifts. Such cross-class cooperation between women’s organizations is a characteristic of Nordic political culture, giving women a relatively strong voice in policy processes. From the 1880s, the Danish Women’s Society had been concerned with the equality of married women, and in the first decades of the 20th century its policy demands were met. It was the women’s rights movements and the lawyers’ organizations which prepared the way for the marriage reforms. Nordic cooperation also played an important role and had a very long tradition, especially in regard to cultural collaboration in civil society.17 Members of the legal profession, natural scientists, women teachers, painters and writers maintained close ties through Nordic conferences and in inter-Nordic specialist journals. Collaboration also took place among politicians, among lawyers and within the labour movement and the women’s rights movement. Nordic lawyers tried to establish a forum for regular meetings in order to coordinate the creation of laws between the Nordic countries (Tamm 1972). The first Nordic meeting took place in 1872 in Copenhagen and included 400 participants. These meetings became an important source of inspiration for a common Nordic legislation. At the first two meetings, in 1872 and 1875, matrimonial legislation was discussed, together with matters of property and inheritance. Legislation became the means for seeking Nordic unity and harmonization. In the 19th century, women’s rights organizations held a few Nordic meetings, but no foundation was laid for continuous cooperation. However, the goals of the various women’s organizations in the Nordic countries, concerning married women, were very similar. The Danish Women’s Society was not satisfied with the Property Act of 1899, which was relevant only if the wife earned her own living. In 1908, the Society attempted to intervene in the legislative work and sent a proposal for a new marriage law to the Danish Government (Gift Kvindes Retsstilling [Married Women’s Legal Position] 1908). The proposal advocated equal rights in disposal of property and in custody of children. In 1909, a further decisive step was taken 16 The right (and obligation) to maternity leave in Danish factory laws from 1901 strengthened women’s social citizenship. The Norwegian and Finnish parliaments also decided not to include a night work prohibition for women in early factory legislation, whereas in Sweden – in spite of considerable protest from Social Democratic women – such prohibition was enacted in 1909 (see Wikander et al. 1995). 17 The 19th century saw a proliferation of transnational ideology extolling a Scandinavian or Nordic spirit of communality parallel to nationalism. It started as wide-scale political vision, but was replaced by pragmatic cooperation and cultural coalitions working in civilian society.

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towards marriage reform. The initiative came from Sweden, and delegates from that country, Norway and Denmark met to undertake a revision of the existing regulations. Inter-Scandinavian migration was mentioned at the Intergovernmental Conference of 1909 as a factor necessitating harmonization of marriage laws. Another explicit goal was equality. It was feared that young women would be hesitant about marrying and the aim was therefore to change the legal status of women within marriage, thereby modernizing marriage in accordance with the demands of society. It was argued that, as individuals, women should be accorded the same rights as men. The Scandinavian Family Commission, of which only lawyers and government officers were members at its inception, met numerous times between 1910 and 1918. During the process the commissions in the three countries consulted representatives of the women’s movement on their opinion of the first draft bill concerning contraction and dissolution of marriage. The church, which for centuries had been the most important institution after the state concerning the regulations of marriage, was not involved in the preliminary negotiations or in the political process. Instead, members of the medical council, together with women’s organizations, were among the experts whom the commission asked for advice on the draft bill. It is significant that the doctors, not the priests, were asked for their opinion on the reform of marriage, a sign that the importance of the church in Denmark had diminished. The church appears to have accepted both this new role and the marriage reforms, which included liberal regulations governing divorce. However, priests obtained the right not to marry divorced people, which had been the church’s most important claim. What kind of equality did women campaign for? At the 1914 Nordic meeting of women’s rights organizations in Copenhagen, one of the principal issues concerned the Scandinavian marriage Acts, which were in preparation at the time (Beretning 1914). The meeting discussed the meaning of equality: how could women be treated as both equal to and different from men? The intention was not that women should work outside the home, but that they should be valued for their work within the home. Motivated by the wish to see an increase in appreciation of women’s family work, a Swedish representative suggested that a woman should have a right to a part (at least 5 per cent) of her husband’s income for her personal spending. Astrid Stampe Feddersen, president of the Danish Women’s Society, had called for the Nordic meeting in 1914. She was one of the Danish women who over the years had most explicitly formulated a policy and a vision of equality between husband and wife (Feddersen 1888, 1885). To be a wife and a mother was seen as the calling of a woman and motherhood was highly valued. Stampe Feddersen therefore wanted women to have a worthier standing in society, next to that of men and for women – married as well as unmarried – to be drawn into society. Her goal was both to extend women’s rights and to ‘enrich the world with a more direct female influence’ (Stampe Feddersen 1888: 47, our translation). She was not campaigning for complete economic independence for women, but for a division

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of work that would allow them a degree of independence (Stampe Feddersen 1888: 38). It appears that the Danish Women’s Society rejected a strict formulation of equality (Richman 1916); the most important issue for the Society being the right of the wife to an appropriate part of the husband’s income. In this context, the wife was seen as an educated companion, the mainstay of her husband and carer of his children. The women’s movement wanted citizenship rights for women first and foremost as mothers and housewives in the private sphere and used arguments that confirm Pateman’s (1988, 1989) reasoning regarding women’s secondary citizenship. The Scandinavian Family Commission had issued a report (Udkast til Lov 1913) dealing with the formation and dissolution of marriage, which was discussed in Copenhagen in 1914. The meeting also adopted a resolution suggesting that women should take part in the commission. Three women became members in 1915 and the commission delivered its final report in 1918, addressing the legal effects of marriage (Udkast til Lov 1918). The legislative bodies of each country passed the bills concerning the contraction and dissolution of marriage with only minor amendments. All political parties in Denmark supported a new marriage Act, with only a few members of the Conservative and Liberal Parties speaking against it. There was, however, some resistance in society at large. The controversial issues were divorce and the question of married women’s economic independence and work outside the home. Many Conservatives interpreted the reform as an attack on patterns of family life and sexual hierarchies and opposed the new marriage laws for the very reason they had been introduced: because they recognized a concept of the family based on equality and independence. They feared that the new Act would have the effect of abolishing patriarchy and viewed the legislation as a threat against the ‘natural’ relationship between the sexes. F. Vinding Kruse, a law professor at the University of Copenhagen, described the law proposal as ‘a terrifying example of abstract principles … with no consideration for human nature and the undeniable differences between man and woman’ (Vinding Kruse 1920: 241, our translation). These were minor issues, however, and the laws were passed in 1922 and 1925. The political consensus – or the will to compromise – was evident. All Danish political parties supported the marriage reforms. What were the most important changes in the Danish marriage Acts? The Marriage Act of 1925 aimed at the legal equality of husband and wife (Lov om Ægteskabets Retsvirkninger 1925). The law imposed an obligation on both spouses to maintain the household (Åmark 2006). Husband and wife both had an obligation to contribute to household maintenance, but it was further decided that women’s contribution – of work in the home – could be recognized on equal terms with payment of money. The result was an economic partnership that combined independence and equality. Spouses could contract for separate property (Lov om Ægteskabs Indgaaelse og Opløsning 1922), and the wife gained a right to financial support during marriage, which was of great importance when a marriage came to an end. The Custody Act of 1922 aimed at the legal equality of parents concerning

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the children in a marriage and strengthened the position of the mother in the event of divorce. For these reasons we prefer to speak of families with two breadwinners, instead of a ‘weak’ male-breadwinner model, in order not to ignore the changes brought about by the marriage reforms concerning women’s individuality, subjectivity and rights, and to make visible the fact that housework provided welfare. Much of what women did was not paid work, but it was conceptualized as important work and was afforded both social recognition and respect18 by politicians and the women’s movement who both recognized women as co-providers or co-breadwinners. According to the maintenance model of the marriage Acts, all adults were obliged to be able to support themselves and their children economically. Women’s responsibility was extended and they had to support the household economically on their own in the absence of a male breadwinner. Work in the home was considered to be ‘proper’ work that granted women formal civil and economic rights both during marriage and in the case of divorce. The model for the reform of marriage was in principle, therefore, a dual-breadwinner model. It might also be referred to as a modified or patriarchally dominated two-breadwinner model. Although married women were given rights within the institution of marriage and their position as mothers was strengthened, considerable gender inequality remained. The man was still the family provider and the woman the housewife (Hirdman 1994). The construction of individual rights in marriage was based on a gendered relationship of duties and liberties. The individual rights of women were enhanced, but on the basis of complementarity. Treatment of issues such as surnames, nationality and the tax system in the three Scandinavian countries still recognized the husband as the principal partner. Women were liberated from direct male guardianship and control, but ended up in a situation where their role as mothers was indirectly made their primary choice. This did not change until the 1960s. Marriage was still based on different roles for the sexes, but the legislation did constitute a remarkable gain in terms of civil rights for married women. It was also important that mothers were given equal status as parents. As we have emphasized earlier, for a large part of the women’s movement at the time, there was no contradiction between equality and a gendered division of work. Equality was understood not as sameness or similarity, but as recognition of the equal worth of work carried out both within and outside of the home. According to the Act of 1922, the regulations governing divorce were widened and now allowed for incompatibility. A legal separation could be obtained both by mutual agreement and, in more limited circumstances, unilaterally; the separation could be converted into divorce after a period of time. Norway, Sweden and Denmark adopted the same framework for no-fault divorce. Scandinavian law was liberal not only regarding the possibilities for obtaining a divorce, but also when it came to its judicial consequences. As a rule, the matrimonial property was to be distributed equally between both spouses. During the period 18 Theories of recognition are developed by Fraser (1997a).

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of separation, mutual maintenance continued. After divorce, a maintenance order could be issued, requiring the one to support the other, depending on needs and capacity. Women could not marry for money but they could lose it on divorce. Medical Matters, Eugenics and the Early Welfare State The marriage law reform generated a broad debate on impediments to marriage on medical grounds and the legislators sought the opinion of medical experts on the reform proposal. As mentioned above, the church did not play an important role in the political process and the rather modest role played by the church is evidence that the marriage laws had been secularized and that the influence of the church had been restricted. Religious values were being replaced by secular rationalism, and science became a new basis for family policy. There was no tension between religion and science, however. Religion did not disappear with modernization, but was manifested in other social relations. The Danish Lutheran Church more or less accepted its new role. Marriage was still seen as a lifelong relationship, but even the church accepted divorce by referring to a passage in the New Testament (Matthew 19:8) in which Jesus himself accepts divorce: ‘Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives; but from the beginning it was not so’ (Andersen and Rosenbeck 2006). It is difficult to see the difference between divorce due to ‘hardness of heart’ and that due to incompatibility. Religious considerations had been transformed into ethical concerns. The secularism that underpinned these early family law reforms was consistent with the subsequent development of the welfare state. The new laws were based on the premise that the institution of marriage existed to serve spouses themselves as much as society. Under this legislation, the family was to secure support for its members, but now in cooperation with the welfare state. Marriage was no longer seen primarily as a religious but as a medical issue with eugenics, a new science introduced in Scandinavia around 1910, influencing the marriage reforms. For eugenic reasons the Act of 1922 forbade to a greater extent than previously the marriages of those defined as ‘idiots’ and ‘lunatics’. Similar considerations prompted a further rule forbidding people with epilepsy, or those with a venereal disease that could be transmitted to children, to marry unless the other party had been informed of the fact and both had been verbally instructed by a physician about the risk that would be incurred by cohabitation. Eugenics also promoted a concern for the health of the family. As early as in the 1913 report it was explicitly stated that science had provided a new foundation for protection of the health of the couple and their children (Udkast til lov 1913). This concern for health might also limit the freedom of individuals: regulation and control was legitimized in science. Social engineering was an important aspect of the marriage reforms and illustrates that the modernization of marriage was also meant to solve social problems and to create an orderly society. Supported by arguments based on heredity and genetics, the marriage laws had the important objective of preventing marriages that were understood as causing ‘degeneration’

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of the population. In this sense, the reform of the marriage laws signified the first phase of welfare legislation aimed at improving the health of the population, which became an increasingly important objective of social policy in the 1930s. The new marriage model fitted in well with the welfare state. Equality was seen not as a goal, but as a means to support the family. K.K. Steincke, an important Danish Social Democrat who became both Minister of Justice (1924–26, 1935– 39) and Minister of Social Affairs (1929–35), took a great interest in marriage in relation to social policy and eugenics. In 1918, he suggested that the state should help to relieve the burden of maintenance and he later developed his ideas in a book about poor relief (Steincke 1920). He was concerned about decreasing birth rates resulting in the two-child family and interested in promoting population growth and therefore in supporting the family, but without taking responsibility for children away from parents. Steincke also supported equality in order to promote marriage. He said explicitly that he wanted the misuse of power within marriage to be reduced and male dominance and male brutality to be eliminated. In his view, the patriarchal family should be replaced by a family in which both adults were equally responsible. The first paragraph of the Danish law of 1925 stated that ‘Man and wife shall support each other. They have joint responsibility to provide for the welfare of the family’ (Lov om Ægeskabets Retsvirkninger 1925, our translation). Steincke’s proposal was that state support for the welfare of the family should be through tax relief and direct subsidy to families: he was opposed to women working outside the family, which he considered to be ‘unnatural’. In the transition to state intervention in matters of the family, social policy and health policy became important for what was later called ‘a prophylactic social welfare policy’, aimed at preventing social problems rather than compensating for them. The concept of welfare was widened. Whereas early social policy had targeted the poor, it now targeted the whole population. Social policy became health policy, and the family, and in particular the wife, emerged as important actors. Gender equality in marriage and citizenship rights for married women became a means for bolstering the institution of marriage as the foundation of the emerging welfare state. Steincke thought that social policy and eugenics had to go hand in hand or society would be unable to afford to help the healthy poor. All available money would otherwise go to homes for those who, during this period, were defined as the ‘mentally deficient’. The best solution for the welfare state lay in what Steincke called rational social policy. He was opposed to positive eugenics and the procreation of ‘ideal man’, but supported negative eugenics, aimed at preventing the birth of children with ‘abnormalities’. Sterilization and the prohibition of marriage were seen as means to avoid the reproduction of ‘undesirable’ elements and learning disabilities. In Denmark a sterilization law was adopted in 1929, and in 1938 the Marriage Act of 1922 was revised to include greater consideration of eugenic policies. Steincke was one of the new professional administrators. He and most of the Danish followers of eugenics can be regarded as moderate or ‘reform’ eugenicists,

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because they stated openly that they disapproved of the more violent eugenics propaganda and of the early practice of sterilization in the USA (Hansen 1996, Koch 1996). However, Steincke accepted the eugenic premises completely, convinced that eugenics was important and necessary. He did not regard it as an alternative to social relief and social legislation, but as complementary to them. Society could afford to help the unfit, but eugenic measures should ensure that the unfit did not increase in number. Thus not all groups were included in the development of the welfare state. The poor, or those of the poor who could work, were potential citizens in the welfare state, whereas the unfit and so-called ‘feebleminded’ were totally excluded. Social policy could help the first group; sterilization, marriage counselling and the prohibition of marriage could be used to avoid the second. In this way, eugenic measures were introduced to prevent what was perceived to be a threatening ‘degeneration’ of the population and to increase the ‘quality’ of the Danish ‘people’. It can be seen that in Scandinavia eugenics was closely related to social policy in this early phase of the welfare state. There is, however, an element of continuity between eugenics and traditional social ideas. This can be identified, for instance, in the idea that marriage was not only an individual issue, but also of interest to society as a whole. In the 1820s, poverty became a barrier to marriage in Denmark while in earlier times certain forms of disability were also considered in Scandinavia to be impediments to marriage. What was new in the early 20th century, however, was that impediments to marriage, such as insanity, came to be justified by eugenic scientific arguments. There was also a close link between eugenics and the movement for social reforms. In particular, and as suggested above, eugenic sterilization was an integral part of the Nordic welfare state that emerged in the 1930s and 1940s. As Teresa Kulawik has pointed out, at that time population policy and the associated concept of social policy were complementary: both aimed at the promotion of the ‘capable’ and the prevention of the ‘unfit’. The boundaries between social policies and eugenics are therefore more fluid than hitherto assumed (Kulawik 2002). It is not possible to choose between a ‘good’ social policy and a ‘bad’ population policy: eugenics, social policy and welfare were intertwined in the first phase of the welfare state (Rosenbeck 2007, Koch 2004, Wecker 2003, Taylor 2000) and eugenics had an important function in the newly established Social Democratic welfare states where, even if the legislation followed the rules of democracy, both voluntary and compulsory means were brought into play. Integrating the Unmarried Mother At the turn of the 19th century it was of central importance, for the existence of a stable and healthy population, to secure economic support for women and children. Legislation governing marriage, with its focus on both equality and difference, was understood to be an answer to this challenge. Equality was presented as a positive and necessary value for a modern society, contributing to the solution to social

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problems. Through the introduction of equality, the mutual obligation to provide support, the liberalization of divorce law and the even distribution of matrimonial property after the dissolution of a marriage, the reform of the marriage laws contributed to women’s political subjectivity and citizenship rights – for example, public child allowances were given to the mother (in Norway and Sweden from 1946 and 1947 respectively, in Denmark from 1967) and not to the father as the head of the household as in other European countries. At the same time, reform both prepared the way for the individualization necessary for a welfare system based on universal and individual rights and created a gendered arrangement based on division, supporting women’s work in the family. The gendered division of work can be understood as being of vital importance to the solution to social and economic problems: in short, women’s caring and reproductive work in the family formed the basis of the welfare state. Unmarried mothers and fathers were also expected to take responsibility for the maintenance of their families. New family laws at the beginning of the 20th century included reference to children born out of wedlock. Since the latter part of the 18th century in all Scandinavian countries, the father had been duty bound to support the child. Secularism and egalitarianism were also principal considerations in the Law on Illegitimate Children, enacted in Norway in 1915, which gave a child born out of wedlock both the right to their father’s name and the right of inheritance. Religious opposition predicted immorality among young women, as the risks involved in extramarital sexual relations diminished, but the law was passed, against the wishes of most women’s groups except for women in the labour movement. The Norwegian model was adopted in Denmark in 1937, but Sweden was more cautious. Whereas in the early 20th century married women were encouraged to work in the home and not to join the labour market, unmarried women, including unmarried mothers, were expected to earn a living on their own and to provide for themselves and their children through paid work. This apparent contradiction in Danish family policies becomes comprehensible when taking into account the overall intention of the legislature, as well as women’s organizations, to promote the possibilities available for women to work for a living, be this inside or outside the family. From the beginning of the 20th century various organizations in Denmark offered assistance to unmarried mothers because assistance was regarded as a way of helping women to help themselves. These voluntary organizations insisted on neutrality but although they presented themselves as morally, religiously and politically neutral, they did have other norms. It was, for example, very important to keep the women out of poor relief; the policy was that unmarried mothers should retain their jobs. In this way, the unmarried mother had become a working mother and had been placed within a larger framework of social policy in the early welfare state. In the 1930s, when the mother came to play a major role in the struggle to improve the ‘quality’ of the population, unmarried mothers, who had traditionally been a marginal and outcast group, were integrated into society. They achieved the status of citizens by being accepted as responsible members of society through taking care of their children. The Nordic

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model of welfare, for all its generosity, is characterized especially by a strong work ethic, which might be the reason why the Scandinavian Family Commission was so eager to define housework as ‘proper’ work and why voluntary organizations set out to help unmarried mothers maintain their contact with the labour market. In most cases it was not possible for unmarried mothers to provide for themselves and their children from within the family alone. This was also the case for many working-class women whose husbands, for a variety of reasons (low pay, unemployment, sickness, alcoholism, for example), were unable to provide for the family on their own. In contrast to married women in most Western countries at the time, even if Danish women were discouraged from joining the labour market, they were free to do so. No factory laws prohibited them from working night shifts, and they did not need their husbands’ consent; on the contrary, the obligation to provide for the family on a par with their husbands meant that some married women had to engage in waged work. Achievements and Outcomes The goal of Nordic cooperation had been a uniform Scandinavian legislation on family relations, which proved a successful endeavour. The English lawyer David Bradley, in his book Family Law and Political Culture (1996), concluded that the Scandinavian family laws were indeed progressive (see also Bradley 2000).19 In the field of family law, many reforms were introduced in Scandinavia in the 1920s, much earlier than in Continental Europe, where similar reforms were not enacted until after the Second World War. Marriage legislation in most other Western countries gave the husband rights to disposal, enjoyment or control of communal property brought to the marriage by the wife (Craik 1991). The German Civil Code, for example, in force from 1900, was based on a bourgeois, conservative model of the family. The husband was the principal actor in relation to property (Gerhard 1990). Not until 1957 did married women gain independence in relation to property. Remnants of the traditional family model remained in the Civil Code until 1976. In France, the Napoleonic Code placed the husband at the head of the family. The authority of the husband was restricted in 1965, but the last traces of the subordination of married women were not eliminated until 1985. In England, the Married Women’s Property Act of 1882, which established a system of separate property, gave women formal independence when they married. However, there was no provision in the Married Women’s Property Act to intervene in property relations (Bradley 1996, Stone 1995). Equality between husband and wife in relation to property in marriage later became part of the law in Western countries, and acceptance of divorce for incompatibility is now common. Comprehensive

19 Family law includes regulations on illegitimate children, divorce, the status of husband and wife, homosexuality and abortion.

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reforms allowing divorce for incompatibility were not introduced in England until 1969 and in France until 1975. Tax Legislation20 While the marriage reforms of the 1920s emphasized the equality of the spouses and gave married women individuality and status as economic citizens vis-à-vis the emerging welfare state, Danish tax legislation until 1970 denied married women any citizenship status – indeed, according to the tax laws of the early 20th century, they were either considered to be non-persons (local tax law) or they were treated like children below the age of majority (state tax law).21 In this section we highlight this apparent inconsistency in Danish family policies in the period between 1920 and 1970, focusing on the post-war period when the tax law system came under increasing attack from women’s organizations across class boundaries. The first Danish state income and capital tax law of 1903 defined the husband as the head of the household, and the husband’s priority lingered on through a major tax reform in 1970, when his position was changed to ‘main person’ of the family, to be abolished only from 1983, when a law on fiscal equality between spouses came into force. A main principle of the tax law system from 1903 until 1970 was that spouses were taxed jointly, and that the husband would get all tax reliefs: for children (1903) and for an independently employed wife (a so-called ‘wife relief’ from 1912); in addition, from 1922 the husband received a marital tax relief (a ‘housewife bonus’). In contrast to the Marriage Act of 1925, the 1922 tax law defined the husband as the family provider (Lov om Indkomst- og Formueskat 1903, 1912, 1922, Lov om Kildeskat 1967, Lov om Skattemæssig ligestilling 1982). The gendered tax law system favoured the married man at the expense of all other taxpayers, and since taxes were progressive and the wife’s earnings would be added to her husband’s, the system worked as a disincentive for married women’s gainful employment. Middle-class, educated wives were the most affected by the joint taxation of spouses, but estimations show that by the 1930s it would also have a negative effect on working-class families with average incomes (Montanari 1999). Even so, the Social Democrats were among the most ardent defenders of the system, although joint taxation of spouses was upheld unanimously by all political parties as late as 1948 and 1950, when the reports of a Tax Law Commission working since 1937 were finally published (Betænkning 1948, Skattelovskommissionens Betænkning 1950). Paradoxically, 20 This section builds on the work of Ravn 2000a, 2000b, 2005, 2008. 21 Since the wife’s enfranchisement in local elections would be forfeited if her husband had not paid due taxes, this denial of individuality and personhood also had repercussions on married women’s political citizenship.

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one of the main arguments for preserving the gendered tax system was made as a result of the stipulation of the marriage Acts – that is, that husband and wife were mutually responsible for family maintenance. The family was therefore regarded as an economic unit and the only ‘possible and natural’ thing to do was to impose taxes in accordance with the economic ability of this unit. Moreover, the reports stated that joint taxation of spouses seemed to be the only ‘technically practicable way’, since ‘in a farming country like Denmark’ for a long time to come the overwhelming majority of married couples were likely to be typified by male-breadwinner/female-housewife or – ‘wife assistant’ – families. According to the marriage legislation of the 1920s, the wife could fulfil her obligation to provide for the family through housework, which in family business in particular was hardly distinguishable from production. When the reports of the Tax Law Commission were published in the immediate post-war period, housework was becoming a more distinct area of work. This is the probable reason why the commission reports discussed at some length the meaning of housework: was housework productive work in which case the ‘wife relief’ was justified, since the wife’s employment outside the home meant that the family would suffer economically from paying for household chores? Or was housework consumption in which case there was no justification for the ‘wife relief’? The commission obviously found it difficult to answer such questions. If housework was production, should not single people, and especially lone mothers, be subject to a similar relief? The 1948 report suggested the abolition of the ‘wife relief’, but in the report of 1950 the commissioners reintroduced it as a better alternative to an individual taxation system. The commissioners’ difficulty with the meaning of housework seems to mirror the declining importance of family production and changing consumption patterns, which made families more dependent on market purchases – with the result that the economic value of work in the family actually decreased. It became ever harder for a wife to fulfil her obligation to provide for the family by performing household chores, particularly when married women’s participation in the labour market started to increase rapidly as a result of the economic boom of the late 1950s and the expansion of the welfare state, which increased the demand for labour. It took another ten years, however, before the tax system took account of this new development. Challenges to the Gendered Tax System The Danish Women’s Society started to protest against the gendered tax law system in 1913 and until the early 1950s continuously agitated for separate taxation of spouses and tax relief for children only. According to the Society, adults, women as well as men, had to provide for themselves and should not be provided for economically by the state through special tax reliefs. The main arguments of the Society were, first, that it was irrational and humiliating that women who before marriage were full economic citizens would, after marriage, be treated like children; second, that it was an obvious injustice that a married woman should forfeit her

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right to vote in local elections in the case of her husband’s non-payment of taxes; and third, that joint taxation of spouses threatened the institution of marriage, which the state was supposed to protect and sustain. In 1945, the Society published a pamphlet (Dahlsgaard and Schmidt 1945) that added a fourth argument for the separate taxation of spouses, namely that the exemption of work in the household from taxation aggravated the tax system’s injustices towards married couples who were both gainfully employed. This argument rested on the premise that household chores still constituted an important source of family maintenance. However, the pamphlet gave rise to strong opposition within the Society, whose membership included many housewives, and even though the Social Democratic Women’s Clubs after 1945 were also in favour of separate taxation of spouses,22 nothing more happened before the beginning of the 1960s. In the early 1950s, the Danish Women’s Society for the first and only time since 1913 deviated from its principal tax policy and accepted the joint taxation system. The explicit reason given by leading members of the Society was that after an increase in the ‘wife relief’ in 1946, the existing law favoured the 85 per cent of tax-paying couples with the lowest incomes. The Society therefore accepted the notion of the family as a ‘natural’ economic unit and sacrificed gender equality for equality between family units of different classes. The 1950s was the only period during the 20th century when married women’s labour market participation decreased, relatively as well as in absolute figures (Borchorst 1980, Åmark 2006), and if a male-breadwinner/female-housewife family ever existed in Denmark, it would have been in these years around the middle of the century. But with the post-war economic boom from 1958, young women began to stay in the labour market even if they married and had children. The 1964 law on universal public day care institutions furthered this development (Borchorst 2002, 2005). The gendered tax law system did not change overnight, however. In 1961, a special Committee on Taxation of Spouses was appointed by the Minister of Finance who, for the first time ever, invited representatives of the women’s organizations to take part in official deliberations on tax issues. The Danish Women’s National Council23 was asked to recommend two members to the Committee and chose one woman to represent housewives and another to represent gainfully employed women. The second representative, who was also an active member of the Danish Women’s Society, together with the female secretary of the Federation of Tobacco Workers, recommended to the Committee by the Danish Federation of Trade Unions,24 gave 22 The stand taken by the Social Democratic Women’s Clubs was clearly voiced in their journal, Frie Kvinder, published between 1947 and 1973. 23 The Danish Women’s National Council (Danske Kvinders Nationalråd, DKN) was established in 1899 as an umbrella organization for various political, religious, agricultural, business and trade women’s associations. 24 The second Committee member recommended by the Danish Federation of Trade Unions (De samvirkende Fagforbund, DsF) joined the majority who did not take a stand on the issue of joint versus separate taxation of spouses. Internal documents of the DsF

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a minority statement in the Committee’s report published in 1963 (Betænkning 1973). The statement argued for separate taxation of spouses and a lighter taxation of the ‘wife assistant’, the abolition of all family tax reliefs, as well as a rise in child allowances. This position was in full accordance with the principal claims of the Danish Women’s Society since 1913; what was new, however, was the alliance between the Society and female Social Democratic trade unionists. Even if the other seven members of the Committee disagreed, women’s voices were distinct in the Committee’s common evaluation of the consequences of the existing tax legislation. In contrast to the reports of the Tax Law Commission of 1937, the Committee’s considerations in 1963 included distributive effects not only for family units (the so-called principle of economic ability), but also for married women as independent individuals (the principle of individuality). The main arguments for the minority statement were, first, that joint taxation of spouses was discriminating against married women and was ‘a penalty on marriage’, and, second, that separate taxation would encourage married women – especially well-educated women, but also women with more moderate earnings – to take up or increase their gainful employment. The principle of individuality emphasized that even if the economic consequences of the reform proposal might result in an increase in the tax burden of ordinary families – in other words, even if, as in the early 1950s, ordinary male-breadwinner/female-housewife families stood to lose from the reform – married women who worked outside the home would all benefit from it. The work of the Committee on Taxation of Spouses took place in a context of heated public debates about women’s proper place ‘outside or inside the home’. In the period between 1959 and 1965, Danish newspapers and magazines, including the periodical of the Danish Women’s Society, Kvinden og Samfundet, witnessed a clash between the interests of housewives on the one hand and wage-earning women on the other (Biza et al. 1982). It is remarkable, however, that the periodical of the Social Democratic Women’s Clubs, Frie Kvinder, unanimously supported the proposal for individual taxation of spouses. In Parliament, the few Social Liberal female MPs who had argued for separate taxation of spouses since the late 1940s were joined by a Conservative (in 1962) and – probably of considerable importance – by a Social Democratic female MP in 1963.25 And although the immediate reaction to the publication of the 1963 Committee report by the Social Democratic Minister of Finance was to vigorously defend the privileges of men and to argue for social justice as a matter of equality between married men of different classes, some six months later he reversed his attitude completely by suggesting separate taxation of spouses to be included in a reformed Pay-As-You-Go tax system. The reform, executive body show, however, that he advised the DsF to recommend the preservation of joint taxation. 25 Until 1966 women constituted less than 10 per cent of Danish MPs. For parliamentary debates on gender and tax legislation in Denmark after 1945 (see Ravn 2000b).

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which was passed in Parliament in 1967 and came into force from 1970, did include separate taxation of spouses, but only in regard to married women’s earned income. The law paid some tribute to the heterosexual family unit, and especially to the male-provider/female-housewife family, by preserving the transferability between spouses of personal allowances (a new kind of ‘housewife bonus’). The 1982 law on fiscal equality between spouses upheld this rule, also preserving joint taxation on capital, including the transferability between spouses of deficits and debts. In Sweden, separate taxation of spouses was enacted in 1970 and came into effect from 1971 (Bergström 2004, Florin 1999), whereas the Norwegian Parliament had already made separate taxation optional in 1959 (Blom 1999, Lønnå 1996); earlier than any other country in Europe. The early change to the gendered tax law system in Norway shows that a strong housewife norm, built on the premise of the gender equality and gender difference of the marriage Acts and which remained a dominant norm in Norway until around 1980, could be used as a platform for claiming gender equality. From a European perspective, gender-neutral tax legislation appeared early in the Scandinavian countries, and as in the case of marriage legislation, one obvious explanation is the cooperation between women’s organizations across national borders. In 1946, 1952 and 1960, the problems of joint taxation of spouses were on the agenda of Nordic Feminist Congresses. Contradictions and Consequences The Danish tax law system, from the beginning of the 20th century until 1970 and beyond to 1983, institutionalized gender inequality and denied married women the status of economic (civil) citizens, with negative consequences for their political and social citizenship. The system constituted an apparent contradiction to the marriage reforms of the 1920s, which institutionalized a modified dual-breadwinner model. It becomes easier to understand, however, when bearing in mind that the equality of the marriage laws rested on gender difference or complementarity. The inequalities built into the modified dual-breadwinner family model were strengthened through the economic stipulations of tax legislation, especially joint taxation of spouses and marital tax relief, the effect of which was to discourage married women’s labour market participation. Both marriage and tax legislation served to bolster the heterosexual family as the main producer of welfare and the key to reproduction of the population, and the gender inequality of the tax law system was defended by politicians of all political affiliations for 60–80 years, who referred to what they saw as a more important goal, namely that of equality between family units of different classes. When, from the late 1950s, family production was in decline and consumption patterns changed, married women could no longer fulfil their obligation to provide for the family through household chores. In a context of increased demands for labour supply and political pressure from women’s organizations across class boundaries,

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the tax law system was finally changed from joint to individual taxation of spouses. Equality between classes was substituted by gender equality as a main goal in Danish family policies, and women’s, especially young women’s, labour market participation soon came to equal that of men’s. The tax law reform signalled the victory of a staunch dual – or universal-breadwinner model and married women’s full individualization and economic citizenship, and, together with other reforms, especially the law on universal public day care enacted in Denmark in 1964, encouraged women’s de-familialization and bore witness to a rising commitment of the state to welfare responsibilities. In spite of the increasing involvement of welfare institutions, however, the family retained the main responsibility for the care of children. Since the 1960s, maternity leave has been successively prolonged and extended to all social groups, and from the 1970s the Scandinavian welfare states took the first steps towards a universal-caregiver model by passing legislation on parental leave that granted fathers a statutory right to leave. The process of ‘re-familialization’ of men has had limited success, however, and it has not fundamentally changed the fact that women remain the principal caregivers and that the Scandinavian labour markets are the most gender segregated in the Western world, to the detriment of women. Conclusion Why did Scandinavia take an early lead in adopting family reforms? Why did a modified dual-breadwinner family model become a norm in the 1920s? It is David Bradley’s opinion that the early 20th-century family reforms in Scandinavia were the product of cultures in which social democracy was to become the dominant force (Bradley 1996, 2000). It might be more relevant, however, to talk about a specific Nordic political culture (Christiansen et al. 2006, Melby et al. 2006a, Melby et al. 2006b), characterized by negotiation and compromise between political parties representing major social groups, including women’s organizations. The secularism and individualization of women that underpinned the marriage reforms were consistent with, and might be seen as a prerequisite for, the subsequent development of the welfare state in which women were to contribute to and work for society. A feature of the Nordic countries is that they are homogenously Lutheran. One could emphasize similarities between some principles of Lutheranism and the Nordic welfare states. Two central ideas in Lutheranism – daily work as the fulfilment of God’s vocation, and a priesthood of all believers – correspond to the principles of full employment and universal social security. The idea of daily work is important for the formation of gender relations and might have created a more tolerant atmosphere for women’s work, paid as well as unpaid (Markkola 2002). The Protestant Reformation had already opened up the way for divorce, and during the 19th century a liberal divorce practice developed. Protestantism moved more vigorously in favour of women’s equality than Catholicism, even though

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the Protestant ideology was far from woman friendly, actually advocating a quite restricted role for women, making it the mission of the Protestant woman to assist her husband and serve as his partner. In the marriage Acts the role of the woman was also that of a helpmate, although an educated and in some ways independent housewife (Bauberót 1993). The Nordic countries became industrialized very late. In Denmark in the late 19th century modernization was primarily of agriculture, middle-class farmers being the driving force. The agrarian household model, with the matron as its central figure, was thus to some extent reflected in the modern family law. The ‘Nordic model of marriage’ was basically a bourgeois family model, but interestingly it was not a bourgeois family in its classical liberal form, with strict polarization between private and public, state and family, husband and wife, but a modified model, allowing for equality and giving a strong status to the wife and mother (Melby et al. 2000). Comparing the gendered divisions of work and the very different welfare states of Sweden and New York State in the first half of the 20th century, Swedish historian Lena Sommestad has pointed to poverty and demographic changes as main factors behind the weak position of the male breadwinner in the Nordic countries. Sommestad argues that the weak Swedish breadwinner model grew from shared experiences of poverty and national backwardness, combined with considerable challenges to reproduction, in particular emigration and, later, declining fertility. Sweden could not afford a one-breadwinner model and this is why the state intervened in the private family sphere. Moreover, late and rapid modernization meant that a strong work ethic, especially for women, characteristic of agrarian society, was preserved in the new urban environments (Sommestad 1995, 1997). Other researchers, such as Diane Sainsbury, emphasize the influence of a strong women’s movement (Sainsbury 1999), and the cooperation between middle – and working-class women’s movements, mentioned above, is certainly a specific trait of the Nordic countries. Women are not a homogeneous group and Danish women’s organizations’ opinions on gender equality differed and shifted over time. But women’s voices were heard in the Nordic countries, and at specific moments, when their organizations joined forces over national and/or class boundaries, they were able to influence family policies. At these moments, however, gender equality was designed also to further other ends: the reforms of the 1920s served to bolster the institution of marriage as the foundation of the emerging welfare state, and the tax law reform of the 1960s was a means to secure labour supply and economic growth as the foundation of the mature welfare state. The two kinds of reform marked a fundamental change in family and gender policies: while the early marriage reform pursued the goal of gender equality within the family, the reform of tax legislation after 1945 involved married women’s ‘de-familialization’. We find the first pillars of what was later to become the welfare state from around 1900. In the 1930s concern over the decrease in the population was the reason for transforming population policy into a new social policy based on a health policy aimed at the whole population and with women working in the home as the

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main actors. Social policy is therefore an important but only partial element of the welfare state, which requires the integration of various policies: labour market policy, education policy, family policy, housing policy and a cultural policy. From this perspective, the classical welfare state did not come into being until after the Second World War, but important elements and their effects on family life had been established much earlier (Christiansen 2000). References Åmark, K. 2006. Women’s labour force participation in the Nordic countries during the 20th century, in The Nordic Model of Welfare: A Historical Reappraisal, edited by N.F. Christiansen et al. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 299–333. Andersen, M. and Rosenbeck, B. 2006. Ligestilling, ægteskab og religion. Kvinder, køn og forskning, No. 4, 17–31. Baubérot, J. 1993. The Protestant woman, in A History of Women in the West, Vol. IV, edited by G. Duby and M. Perrot. London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 198–212. Beretning fra det 2. Nordiske Kvindesagsmøde i København den 10. og 11. juni 1914. 1914. Copenhagen. Bergström, V. 2004. Gender and the Swedish Income Tax System in the Post-war Period, Paper presented at the European Social Science History Conference, Berlin, 24–27, March 2004. Betænkning om Beskatningen af Indkomst og Formue m.v. 1948. Afgivet af Skattelovskommissionen, I. Del, Copenhagen: J.H. Schultz A/S. Betænkning om Ægtefællers Beskatning. 1973. Betænkning nr. 327. Biza, L.C., Lange. B.K. and Lous, E.K. 1982. Ude eller hjemme, MA dissertation. Århus: Institut for Historie, Aarhus University. Blom, I. 1999. Brudd og kontinuitet. Fra 1950 mot årtusindskiftet, in Med kjønnsperspektiv på norsk historie, edited by I. Blom and S. Sogner. Oslo: Cappelen Akademisk Forlag, 299–344. Borchorst, A. 1980. Kvinder som arbejdskraftreserve – politisk floskel eller social realitet? Århus: A. Borshorst. Borchorst, A. 2002. Danish child care policy: continuity rather than radical change, in Child Care Policy at the Crossroads: Gender and Welfare State Restructuring, edited by S. Michel and R. Mahon. New York and London: Routledge, 267–85. Borchorst, A. 2005. Nøglen i de rigtige hænder. Lov om børne- og ungdomsforsorg 1964, in 13 reformer af den danske velfærdsstat, edited by J.H. Petersen and K. Petersen. Odense: Syddansk Universitetsforlag, 133–46. Bradley, D. 1996. Family Law and Political Culture: Scandinavian Laws in Comparative Perspective, London: Sweet & Maxwell.

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2–8. Available at: http://www.sdu.dk/~/media/Files/Om_SDU/Institutter/ Statskundskab/Velfaerd/Nyhedsbrev/nb21.ashx [accessed 11.09.2009]. Lading, A. 1939. Dansk Kvindesamfunds Arbejde gennem 25 Aar. Copenhagen: Udgivet af Dansk Kvindesamfund. Lemche, G. 1939. Dansk Kvindesamfunds Historie gennem 40 Aar. Med tillæg 1912–1918. Copenhagen: Udgivet af Dansk Kvindesamfund. Lewis, J. 1993. Women and Social Policies in Europe. Aldershot: Edward Elgar. Lewis, J. 1997. Gender and welfare regimes: further thoughts. Social Politics, 4(2), 160–77. Lister, R. 1997. Citizenship: Feminist Perspectives. Basingstoke: Macmillan Press. Lov om Indkomst – og Formueskat til Staten af 15. Maj 1903. Lov om Indkomst – og Formueskat til Staten af 8. Juni 1912. Lov om Indkomst – og Formueskat til Staten af 10. April 1922. Lov om Ægteskabs Indgaaelse og Opløsning af 30. Juni 1922. Lov om Ægteskabets Retsvirkninger af 18. Marts 1925. Lov om opkrævning af indkomst – og formueskat for personer m.v. (Kildeskat), 31. Marts 1967. Lov om ændring af forskellige skattelove (Skattemæssig ligestilling af ægtefæller), 26. Maj 1982. Lundqvist, Å. 2008. Family policy between science and politics, in Gender Equality and Welfare Politics in Scandinavia: The Limits of Political Ambition?, edited by K. Melby et al. Bristol: The Policy Press, 85–99. Lønnå, E. 1996. Stolthet og kvinnekamp. Norsk Kvinnesaksforenings historie fra 1913. Oslo: Gyldendal. Markkola, P. 2002. Women, Lutheranism and the Nordic model, in Frihed, lighed og tryghed. Velfærdspolitik i Norden, edited by H.R. Christensen et al. Århus: Skrifter udgivet af Jysk Selskab for Historie nr. 48, 236–60. Melby, K., Pylkkänen, A., Rosenbeck, B. and Wetterberg, C.C. (eds) 2000. The Nordic Model of Marriage and the Welfare State. Nord 2000:27. Copenhagen: The Nordic Council of Ministers. Melby, K., Pylkkänen, A., Rosenbeck, B. and Wetterberg, C.C. 2001. The Nordic model of marriage, in The Nordic Countries and Europe II. Social Sciences, edited by K. Ståhlberg. Nord 2001:23. Copenhagen: The Nordic Council of Ministers, 255–80. Melby, K., Pylkkänen, A., Rosenbeck, B. and Wetterberg, C.C. 2006a. ‘Inte ett ord om kärlek’ Äktenskap och politik i Norden ca. 1850–1930. Stockholm: Makadam. Melby, K., Pylkkänen, A., Rosenbeck, B. and Wetterberg, C.C. 2006b. The Nordic model of marriage. Women’s History Review, 15(4), 651–61. Montanari, I. 1999. Från familjestöd till hemmamakastöd och barnstöd: Ekonomiskt stöd till familjer 1950–1990 i 18 länder, in Välfärdsstat i brytningstid: Historisksamhällsvetenskapliga studier om genus och klass, ojämlikhet och fattigdom, edited by A. Berge et al. Sociologisk Forskning: Supplement, 218–52.

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Pateman, C. 1988. The Sexual Contract. Cambridge: Polity Press. Pateman, C. 1989. The Disorder of Women. Cambridge: Polity Press. Ravn, A.-B. 2000a. Gender, taxation and welfare state in Denmark 1903–63 (83), in The Nordic Model of Marriage and the Welfare State, edited by K. Melby et al. Nord 2000:27. Copenhagen: The Nordic Council of Ministers. Ravn, A.-B. 2000b. Gender, Modernity, and Taxation: Parliamentary Debates on Gender, Class, and Taxation in Denmark, 1945–83. Report, GEP International Conference 18–20 August 2000, 86–99. Ravn, A.-B. 2005. Hverken lighed eller anerkendelse? Kvinder, mænd og skattelovgivning i Danmark. Kvinder, Køn & Forskning, (4), 42–55. Ravn, A.-B. 2008. Married women’s right to pay taxes: debates on gender, economic citizenship, and tax law reform in Denmark, 1945–83, in Gender Equality and Welfare Politics in Scandinavia: The Limits of Political Ambition?, edited by K. Melby et al. Bristol: The Policy Press, 73–96. Richman, A. 1916. ‘Ensartet skandinavisk Familieret.’ Tale holdt ved Dansk Kvindesamfunds Fest for Familieretskommissionen. Kvinden og Samfundet, (1). Rosenbeck, B. 2000. Modernization of marriage in Scandinavia, in Women’s Politics and Women in Politics: In Honour of Ida Blom, edited by S. Sogner and G. Hagemann. Oslo/Bergen University: Cappelen Akademisk Forlag, 69–85. Rosenbeck, B. 2007. Gender and the history of the body, in Vänskap över gränser. En Festskrift til Eva Österberg, edited by K. Johansson et al. Pozkal: Poland, 187–202. Sainsbury, D. (ed.) 1999. Gender and Welfare State Regimes. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Skattelovskommissionens Betænkning 1950. II. Del. Copenhagen: J.H. Schultz A/S. Sommestad, L. 1995. Jordbrukets kvinnor i den svenska modellen. Historisk Tidskrift, No. 4, 508–27. Sommestad, L. 1997. Welfare state attitudes to the male breadwinning system: the United States and Sweden in comparative perspective. International Review of Social History, 42(5), 153–74. Stampe Feddersen, A. 1885. Særeje eller Sameje, Kvinden og Samfundet, No.1. Stampe Feddersen, A. 1888. Kan Kvindesagen og Sædelighedssagen skilles ad?. Copenhagen. Steincke, K.K. 1920. Fremtidens Forsørgelsesvæsen, I–II. Copenhagen. Stone, L. 1995. Road to Divorce: A History of the Making and Breaking of Marriage in England. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tamm, H. 1972. De nordiske juristmøder 1872–1972. Copenhagen: Nyt Nordisk Forlag/Arnold Busch. Taylor, A.A. 2000. Feminism and eugenics in Germany and Britain, 1900–1940: A Comparative Perspective. German Studies Review, No.23, October, 477–506.

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Udkast til Lov om Ægteskabets Indgaaelse og Opløsning. 1913. Copenhagen. Udkast til Lov om Ægteskabets Retsvirkninger. 1918. Copenhagen. Vinding Kruse, F. 1920. Ægteskabsloven. Ugeskrift for Retsvæsen, 129–38, 241–54, 257–78, 281–98. Wecker R. 2003. Vom Verbot Kinder zu haben, und dem Recht keine Kinder zu haben. Zu Geschichte und Gegenwart der Sterilization in Schweden, Deutschland und der Schweiz. Figurationen/Heft: Reproduktion, No.2, 111–19. Available at: http://www.figurationen.unizh.ch/ [accessed 12 September 2009]. Wikander, U., Kessler-Harris, A. and Lewis, J. (eds) 1995. Protecting Women: Labor Legislation in Europe, the United States, and Australia, 1880–1920. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

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Chapter 4

The Institutionalization of Family and Gender Equality Policies in the Swedish Welfare State Åsa Lundqvist and Christine Roman

Introduction Family policies have a long tradition in the Scandinavian countries, from early 20th century struggles for female suffrage to latter-day gender-neutral discourses and policies in which individual rights have become disconnected from the family to a greater degree than in many other welfare states (Melby et al. 2008, Esping-Anderson 1999). Thus, state intervention in family life is strong in the Nordic region and has contributed to major changes in the experiences of both women and men, including, for example, the high numbers of working women and their concomitant economic independence, the extended use of public childcare, and gender equality policies and guidelines in working life (Borchorst and Siim 2009, Ellingsæter and Leira 2006, Leira 2002). As a result, gender equality, in policy and ideology, is commonly seen as an integral part of the Scandinavian welfare state model, covering not only women’s participation in the labour market and their economic independence, but also the way in which family life, employment and childcare have been organized and negotiated. The main aim of this chapter is to analyse why and under what circumstances changes to perceptions of gender equality and family relations have emerged, with a focus on Swedish family politics from the 1930s to the turn of the millennium. Our analysis is based on the assumption that the development of Swedish family policy, and its ambitions for gender equality, has taken place through an interplay of scientific knowledge production and political regulation, as well as being closely linked to the modernization of Swedish society. The analysis of the family has, in other words, been closely connected to the Swedish welfare model and its modernization efforts, and has been developed in a close relationship between social science research on family and gender relations and experts employed by the government (Lundqvist and Roman 2008, Rueschemeyer and Skocpol 1996). Because the chapter examines the long and complex period between 1930 and 2000, our analysis is divided into two parts. The first begins with the 1930s and ends with the late 1960s and argues that these years were marked by early attempts to emphasize individual rights, resulting in gender-neutral ideals by the

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end of the period. The second part of our analysis, from the late 1960s to the turn of the millennium, suggests that Swedish family policy has strongly emphasized individualized marriages, autonomy and economic independence. Our analysis is theoretically inspired by Nancy Fraser’s view of ‘the politics of needs interpretation’ (Fraser 1989, 1997). We argue that needs are not definitive; rather, on the contrary, various groups compete to try to establish their interpretations of what are legitimate social needs and how these should be met. As a result, there is an ongoing struggle to establish needs as political, to define them and to determine whether the state, the market or the family will address them. In this politics of needs interpretation, needs discourses function as resources to make and challenge political demands (Fraser 1989). Like Fraser, we discern three main types of needs discourses in welfare states: oppositional, reprivatization and expert. Oppositional discourses occur when earlier privatized needs are politicized by social movements. This being so, the established boundaries between ‘the private’ and ‘the political’ are challenged. An example is the women’s liberation movement’s successful campaign to transform domestic violence against women from a ‘private’ issue into a social problem in the ‘public’ domain. Reprivatization discourses occur as reactions to oppositional discourses and maintain the established boundaries between ‘public’ and ‘private’. In doing so, they oppose the politicization of a certain need, such as addressing domestic violence. Expert discourses are closely linked to knowledge-producing/using institutions, such as universities and professional organizations. These can turn politicized needs into potential objects for state intervention. Sometimes, social movements succeed in taking over or creating their own critical expert discourses and in disseminating them to the public. An expert discourse can then become a ‘bridge discourse’, which functions as an intermediary between social movements and the state (Fraser 1989: 174). We work on the hypothesis that the social sciences have been instrumental in producing such bridge discourses in the Swedish political context. In other words, we will demonstrate that the development of Swedish family policy is the result of a combination of political ambitions, social reforms and policy proposals from social scientists who have served as experts on government commissions. The empirical data for our analysis consists, above all, of reports from government commissions, which play an important part in the Swedish political system. The close relationship between science and policy is a prominent feature of the Swedish welfare model. In other words, the idea that social policy will be based on scientific results, and that researchers will be actively involved in social reform work, has been very influential. In this context, the commission system is an important institution. Historically, the government commissions have been comprised of representatives of virtually all political parties, together with various interest groups, civil servants and academic experts. The system of special commissions has, therefore, been viewed as a key institution for consensus building in Swedish politics. It has also been pointed out that, apart from their role as a

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government-controlled, political planning tool, the government commissions have functioned as an important knowledge-producing institution (Johansson 1992). 1930–1970: Family Policy, Individual Rights and Gender-neutral Ideals The period between 1930 and 1970 – that is, the time when the Swedish model was realized and the Social Democrats dominated the political arena – has been described as ‘the heyday of the commission system’ (Johansson 1992: 246, our translation). With the economic crisis of the 1970s, the collapse of Keynesian economic policy, a higher degree of bureaucratization and growing tensions between the political parties, the commission system lost some of its earlier status. Government commissions, however, still play an important role in political discourse and in the legislation process. They are appointed by the government at an early stage in the political process, and analyses and proposals are published as public reports, which are referred to the parties concerned for consideration. The views collected then form the basis for a government bill. By explicitly or implicitly diagnosing social and political problems, the government commissions thus create discursive policy frameworks (Bacchi 1999). The government commissions that have been appointed to deal with family-related questions have often comprised sociologists and other social scientists. In this way, social scientists have, to a great extent, influenced the discourses that have shaped family policy. Family Crisis: Unemployment and Declining Birth Rates A more integrated Swedish family policy took shape during the 1930s. The first step in this direction was taken as early as 1933 with the Social Housing Commission, which in 1935 led to the government introducing loans for the building of houses for large families, at the same time as a family allowance was introduced for those who lived in these houses (Olsson 1992). During the same period, discussions intensified about the measures to be taken in order to improve the situation of families with children, especially after the publication of Alva Myrdal and Gunnar Myrdal’s renowned book Kris i befolkningsfrågan [Crisis in the Population Question] (Myrdal and Myrdal 1934). In light of the growing debate on the population question and the devastating consequences of unemployment for families with children, the Population Commission was appointed in 1935. Within this commission, 17 reports were written, in which experts in different fields presented their analyses of the reasons for and the consequences of the declining birth rates, at the same time as proposals were presented for ways in which this trend might be halted. The question thus posed concerned the measures that were required to improve the living conditions of many of the country’s families with children – and thereby also to increase the birth rate (Ohlander 1991, Hirdman 1989, Hatje 1974).

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With the theories of contemporary sociological thinkers, above all William Fielding Ogburns, Ernest W. Burgess and Robert Lynd, on the family’s changing status as a starting point, most of the reports of the period outlined how the functions of the family had changed between the pre-industrial period and the organization of modern capitalist society. In this historical writing, the family and its members were assumed to be going through a crisis: one which, consequently, resulted in declining birth rates (Lundqvist 2007, Roman 2004). A main reason for this crisis was, it was claimed, the new division of labour that separated men from the home, women and children. The previous ‘multi-breadwinner model’ (this term is used in several of the reports of the 1930s) was replaced by new ideals for how the household should be organized. Thus, in this era of family crisis, a completely new ideology materialized, in which the man became the breadwinner and ‘gradually people became accustomed to industrialism’s generally widespread system in which the burden of providing for the family was transferred to just one person, the father of the family’ (SOU 1938:47: 53, our translation). In the modern family, women were assigned the role of consumer and responsibility for taking care of the children. However, it was claimed that the changed gender relations resulted in increased tensions between men and women, which further contributed to declining birth rates (SOU 1938: 47). Thus, the terms of reference given to the investigators aimed at changing the existing social and economic conditions and creating a more equal society, which, in turn, would make it easier for young men and women to marry and settle down. To support this argument, the experts of the day stressed that it was crucial that the same conditions should exist for both women and men, in the family, in the home and in the labour market. Notions of a new society were developed, in which, according to a number of very influential architects, a ‘totally new type of family’ would appear (SOU 1936:59, Asplund et al. 1931). In this new family, women would be relieved of their caring duties, mainly by society taking over responsibility for childcare. However, even if visions of gender equality were key at this time, the commissions’ proposals were aimed principally at women. An important reason for this development was the analysis, current at the time, that industrialization, in itself, created a system of male family breadwinners and female caregivers. In this context, women’s future satisfaction as women, housewives and mothers was, the experts claimed, doubtful: the existing social conditions made it difficult for women to have families, mainly because men were not taking – or were unable to take – any responsibility in the home. Moreover, what was perhaps even more of an issue, most of the care work undertaken by mothers was regarded as substandard, because many of the women were forced to work outside the home in order to contribute to providing for the family. For these reasons, the commissions’ analyses concluded that the situation of women was problematic; as a result, it was women who were the focus of the social reforms (see, for example, SOU 1936:12, 1936:15, 1938:13, 1938: 47).

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In order to halt the declining birth rates and reduce social inequality, various social reforms were proposed, of which some were implemented in practical policy. For example, improvements were made to maternity and child health care, such as the introduction of maternity and child welfare centres in the 1930s. In 1935, a means-tested child benefit was introduced and, in 1948, a universal child benefit, which was paid directly to the mother (SOU 1936:12, 1936:15, 1938: 47, 1946:5, 1946:6, 1946:23; also Bergman 2003, Bergman and Hobson 2002, Frangeur 1998, Hirdman 1998, Ohlander 1991). An active social and family policy had, thus, begun to be developed, which was to be expanded in the coming years. The negative consequences of industrialization were to be limited by, among other things, an improved social policy, within which the so-called family care policy was also to be included. The declining birth rates were now to be halted and, as a way towards accomplishing this, the sexual habits of the population were surveyed. An example of such a survey was the publication of the Population Commission’s report on the issue of sexuality (SOU 1936:59; for a contemporary analysis, see Hirdman 1989: 131ff.). The social fields that were studied and investigated during the 1930s, which included the housing situation for the urbanized working class and the importance of motherhood for women, children and the economy, were also merged in the Population Commission’s report on the issue of sexuality with the question of Sweden’s birth rate. As a result, the initial social reforms included not only the housing situation of poor groups or poor women’s need for support during pregnancy and childbirth; they were to also include the most intimate sphere of all: sexuality. In order to encourage Swedish women and men to have more children, comprehensive sex education should, according to the investigators, be carried out by public authorities and institutions. However, the reports also suggested that certain groups should actually be prevented from having children. Eugenic and medical views were discussed, together with those on physical hygiene and aspects of family psychology and family economics. With the support of the latest psychological, medical and sociological findings, governmental experts argued that they could claim that certain groups should be excluded from forming families. For example, it was proposed that poor, large families should not be encouraged to have more children; rather, they should be encouraged to practise birth control. An effective way to achieve this goal was to introduce sex education for these families, to be taught by staff at schools and care institutions (SOU 1936:59). But it was not just poor women and men who would be encouraged to practise birth control. In the reports, it was also suggested that abortion should be legalized in certain cases. For instance, abortion should be considered for older women with many children and for women who had had problems during previous pregnancies. In addition the reports referred to sterilization as a method of birth control. In discussing the question of eugenics, again based on contemporary medical, psychological and sociological research, the experts claimed that women (and later men) who, among other things, suffered from psychological and neurological

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illnesses should be prevented from having children. From this, the idea of using sterilization as a method of birth control was introduced: an idea that would later come to be implemented in practical politics (Tydén 2002, Runcis 1998, Broberg and Roll-Hansen 1996; see also the Danish sterilization policy in Chapter 3, this volume). In many respects, the picture that was being outlined, of how the modern family would be created, was a problematic one. Not only were the investigators looking for a way to consign devastating venereal diseases, poverty and exhausted mothers to the past, but in their opinion the building of the modern society required the inclusion of only strong and healthy citizens. Post-war Families and Their Problems In the period following the Second World War, measures were put in place to achieve, simultaneously, full employment, high growth, low inflation and acceptable social conditions for all citizens in Sweden. In order to realize this ambition in the most beneficial way, a raft of policies was launched: in brief, a general market-regulatory economic policy was linked to a selective labour-market policy in order to increase labour-market mobility and accelerate structural changes in the economy (Schön 2000, Benner 1997, Olsson 1992). This ambitious reform programme also included political goals for social and family reforms. Such political reforms were seen as important to the achievement of the overall goal: that is, to increase economic growth and decrease unemployment. Nevertheless, in the early post-war analysis of the family, there appears to have been a shift in attempts to change the social and economic conditions. Family policy was no longer aimed only at the issue of population growth. Instead, social justice emerged as a dominant theme in family policy discourse, together with other social and political reasoning (Lundqvist 2007). Moreover, women’s work in both the home and the labour market became an even more dominant theme during the 1940s and 1950s. This debate, however, gave rise to ambivalence regarding the ideals that surrounded the family. How should the ideal of a housewife with a male breadwinner be combined with the aim to encourage women to take paid work outside the home? (Compare the discussions on the breadwinner ideal in Britain in Chapter 2.) Some commentators – for example, Brita Åkerman, a prominent Social Democrat and also a sociologist – argued for a social policy that supported family relations and at the same time made it easier for domestic working women to stay at home (Åkerman 1994). Married women were regarded as being responsible for the well-being of families. For example, in a government commission report from 1947 on ‘home and family issues’ (SOU 1947: 46), married women were considered to be responsible for practical duties in the home as well as for a ‘uniting link within the family and as a caretaker’ (SOU 1947:46, s. 13, our translation). Thus, the experts legitimized a division of labour in families, in which women were seen as the ‘caring heads’ and men as the income providers. Theoretically,

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those who adopted this perspective were influenced by contemporary psychology and sociological studies of raising children and of the relationship between women and men in marriage (Lundqvist and Roman 2008). Other influential experts, including the economist Karin Kock and the Social Democratic intellectual Alva Myrdal, called for more ambitious labour-market and social policies; for example, an expansion of public childcare in order to support women in their combined roles in the family and in their working life (Klein and Myrdal 1957, Hatje 1999, s. 233). Thus, government commission reports in the 1940s and 1950s combined analysis of structural aspects of society, such as urbanization and the beginnings of modern capitalism, with individual and interpersonal factors. Personal and individual issues, such as sexuality, the raising of children and the relationship between women and men, were related to labour-market conditions and macroeconomic demand management. However, the definition of the ‘personal’ was rather narrow, mainly covering married women’s everyday life – but not that of men. These women were singled out as those responsible for the well-being of the family. As in earlier years, the government commissions were influenced by sociological and psychological studies of the family and sociological research; a study conducted in 1949 by two Swedish sociologists Torgny Segerstedt and Agne Lundqvist, Människan i industrisamhället [Man in Industrial Society], is an example. Such studies were echoed in the reports of several government commissions in the 1950s (see, for example, SOU 1955:29, 1957:33). Segerstedt and Lundqvist’s study departed from a classical structural-functionalist perspective on social change, which was incorporated in mainstream scientific and political discourse: industrialization had led to the emergence of a society characterized by functional differentiation, but in which individuals became more and more dependent on one another. According to Segerstedt and Lundqvist’s analysis of the consequences of industrialization, technical change had created a more complicated individual who now had to take into consideration a growing number of different aspects of life, and this created considerable uncertainty among the population. At the same time, the family continued to be a key institution in people’s lives (Segerstedt and Lundqvist 1949). Even though the stability of the family might be threatened by an erosion of values that was understood to be a consequence of industrial society, the integrating function of the family remained important. In sociological analysis of social change typical of the period, industrialization – and the development of the modern industrial society – gave rise to an increasingly differentiated society. However, while work was differentiated, at the same time, paradoxically, a harmonization of patterns of behaviour occurred; that is, the more specialized work became, the more people became dependent on the work of others, regardless of, for example, geographical location or class affiliation. The same applied to the family as a unit: the ever-clearer boundaries between (paid) work and work within the home contributed to the strengthening of family ties and

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the feeling of wanting to be part of a family. Based on this interpretation, Segerstedt and Lundqvist therefore assumed that the central importance of the family would endure in modern society, and the investigators developed this notion further. In accordance with this analysis, it was claimed in the 1957 report on family counselling that a considerable problem for modern families was the clash between traditional family values and a more democratic family structure. In contrast to patriarchal family structures, the modern marriage was based on women’s and men’s (and children’s) autonomy. An effect of this was that both men and women became ambivalent in relation to their new roles. On the one hand, men’s emotional insecurity increased when they were no longer automatically head of the family. On the other hand, women were expected to be more active and autonomous within the family, despite the fact that the childhood of most women had been characterized by subordination within the traditional patriarchal family. This, analysts claimed, resulted in an ambivalent and uncertain identity (Klein and Myrdal 1957, SOU 1957:33). And since an increasing number of women were financially independent, they could use their new-found freedom to leave unhappy marriages (which was paradoxical since women’s financial independence was seen as a way of strengthening spousal ties). In this period, the contradiction between women’s two different roles – as mothers (and responsible for the home) and as employees – also quickly became an important question, and it came to be increasingly important during the 1960s. Overall, the 1957 commission assumed that industrialization had thrown the traditional family form into crisis, in which both women and men were alienated from their traditional roles and were forced to look for a new family structure. It was also claimed that the ‘incessant talk about divorce easily leads, when there are growing disputes, to the idea that a divorce is unavoidable’ (SOU 1957:33, 30, our translation). This discourse (the ‘incessant talk’) about divorce and family social problems was regarded as a serious problem and as something that had to be changed, mainly by offering professional family counselling for families in crisis. In other words, both emotional problems and material needs would be the subject of social reforms and government interventions: the development of a social insurance system and of social services in general would be supplemented by a state-run advisory service for emotional problems. Gender-role Research and Labour Shortage Alongside an increased academic interest in the intimate relationships between men and women, the number of studies on women’s lives in the home and in the labour market increased dramatically towards the end of the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s. This period also ushered in a new phase for the field of family policy, in which an ideological adaptation with various themes came to characterize both commissions and practical politics. The prevailing view of women as the family’s ‘head of care’ was contested, especially in the so-called gender-role debate. In its wake, the housewife–male

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breadwinner model came to be increasingly undermined, in that the ideological criticism was combined with structural demands for more labour, where housewives were regarded as a potential labour reserve (Lundqvist 2007, Klinth 2002). Moreover, the labour movement became radicalized towards the end of the 1960s and one aspect of this was the introduction of equality as a primary political objective. The long period of economic growth and increasing labour shortage during the 1960s also resulted in an increased demand for labour: married women and housewives became, together with immigrants, an increasingly important ‘reserve army’ in the labour market of the 1950s and 1960s. Women’s role in the labour market led to a heated debate about the issue of ‘equal pay’ for women and men: despite the labour shortage and a flourishing economy, women, on average, earned 30 per cent less than men, an extremely controversial issue within the labour movement (Hirdman 1998: 400). In this context, the woman’s ‘dual role’ as mother and worker was emphasized even more. The view of gender relations presented, for example, in Klein and Myrdal’s (1957) book would, however, come to be dramatically changed during the coming years. In 1961, Eva Moberg, one of the pioneers of the women’s movement, wrote ‘Kvinnans villkorliga frigivning’ [‘The conditional release of women’]. She claimed that the social framework for gender relations had to be changed if gender equality were to be achieved. Both men and women had important roles in this process, in their capacity not only as individuals but also as parents. The ability of women to bear children should not be mistaken for the ability to care: taking care of and bringing up children were tasks that would be shared by the father and the mother. If this was accomplished, men and women would be able to meet as equals in the labour market. In policy debates, it was claimed that economic growth was at risk because of the labour shortage, and young mothers were called on to enter the labour market. The debate further intensified with the publication of the anthology Kvinnors liv och arbete [Women’s Lives and Work] (Baude et al. 1962). This book signalled the beginning of the Scandinavian ‘gender-role research’. It had a considerable influence on the growing debate about gender roles. In the book, Swedish and Norwegian sociologists discussed the situation of women in the labour market and the education system. Researchers in the fields of education and psychology discussed the differences between women and men in the socialization process and the development of personality. The debate acted as an instigator of change in family policy and in the discourse on women and men, families and labour-market participation, the role of the state in regard to regulating family-related questions, and socialization patterns. It has, therefore, been claimed that the gender-role debate forced politicians and experts on the government commissions to incorporate the new ideas into the field of family policy (Dahlström 1992). Thus, the debate contributed to an ideological change in views on ‘the family’, especially regarding the gendered division of labour between family and working life (Florin 1999, Baude 1992, Backberger 1966, Moberg 1961).

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Towards a Gender-neutral Family Legislation It would, however, take until the end of the 1960s before a more gender-neutral discourse and political practice replaced traditional family policy. At that time, issues concerning women’s paid work also became important reform objectives. The guiding principle was to create both incentives for women to start earning a wage and institutional conditions to make this possible. Several major reforms, based on the principle of gender neutrality, were launched during the following decade. The 1970s have, therefore, been described as the decade when Swedish equality was institutionalized (Hirdman 1998). In the 1960s, marriage and family legislation still assumed a clear gendered division of labour, with the man as the family breadwinner and the woman as responsible for the children and the home. The increased female employment rate, the increase in divorces and the extension of social rights and benefits had, however, given rise to a growing gap between legislation and actual family patterns. Tailoring family legislation to the changed family patterns was, therefore, identified as an important political issue. Consequently, a government commission was appointed with the task of proposing changes to the provisions that regulated the relationship between married couples, divorced couples and parents and children (both before and after divorce). The terms of reference for this government commission stipulated that the amended family legislation should be based on the principle of equality. To be more precise, they decreed that spouses should be regarded as independent, autonomous people within the marriage; that marriage should be seen as a voluntary form of cohabitation between independent people; that the question of blame should be irrelevant in the case of any divorce; that unmarried fathers should be guaranteed joint custody of their children; and that the rules should, as far as possible, be neutral in relation to different types of family. Moreover, it was prescribed that the new rules would act as an instrument of reform in order to create a society in which adult women and men could take care of themselves without being dependent on relatives, and where gender equality was a reality (SOU 1972:41: 58, Romanus 1992: 30). The government commission took ten years and proposed several changes with a view to creating gender-neutral and individualized rules for marriage. It was a somewhat strange mixture of sociological structural-functionalist theory of family change and gender-role research that guided the government commission’s analyses. Consequently, a whole chapter in the main report was devoted to describing and analysing the family’s ‘function loss’ during industrialization. In the chapter, the (then) well-known account of the transition from a ‘multifunctional’ family to a companionate family based on emotional   Individualized tax system (1971); divorce became easier (1974); parental insurance (1974); the right to abortion on demand (1975); every municipality was duty bound to put in place a plan for the expansion of public childcare (1976); the right to reduced working hours for parents with small children (1979).

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ties was repeated. The investigators were also influenced by gender-role theories that stressed the importance of equality, female labour-market participation, and economic independence. It can, in fact, be said that the gender-role researchers of the 1960s laid a theoretical foundation for the political efforts to construct a new type of gender-neutral and egalitarian family. 1970–2000: Family Policy, the Politicization of Childcare and Gender Power Relations Few children had a public childcare place at the end of the 1960s. During the 1970s, childcare was therefore also identified as a key political issue (Karlsson 1996: 288). Unlike previously, when childcare was seen as a ‘women’s issue’ (Lindvert 2002: 122), it now came to be regarded as an issue that affected both men and women. In other words, the new message was that both fathers and mothers were responsible for looking after their children. Interpretation of needs was also changed. Whereas in the 1950s and early 1960s childcare had been discussed mainly in terms of the needs of the labour market, in subsequent reports great importance was also attached to the needs of the child, to educational aspects and to equality. A key argument was that it was in the interest of children to expand public childcare. To be more precise, the experts and politicians called into question whether families in which the mother was a ‘housewife’ were particularly beneficial to children’s development (SOU 1979: 57, 1975: 30). In this way, the earlier dominant view that small children should have their mothers at home was rejected. In a number of reports, this ‘truth’ was turned completely upside down. Experts argued that the child’s psychological development could suffer as a result of spending too much time at home with an isolated mother. The concept of ‘quality time’ was introduced to demonstrate that what was most important was not the number of hours the child and mother spent together, but the quality of their time together. Moreover, public childcare was discussed in terms of a ‘love resource’ for children. The argument was that children, by receiving care and love from well-trained nursery school teachers, would not be completely dependent on their parents. Furthermore, public childcare was regarded as having the potential to create more democratic individuals, as well as to develop every individual child’s potential. To support their arguments,   It is interesting, when reflecting on the interplay between policy and the social sciences, that this introductory chapter is almost identical to a chapter in a Swedish university textbook on family sociology from 1965. This latter chapter is written by the sociologist Jan Trost (1965), who was also appointed as an expert on the above-mentioned commission. The sociological ‘theory of the family’s function loss’ was a guide for descriptions of the changed family patterns at the end of the 1970s.   A further argument put forward in the 1960s was that public childcare counteracts social differences between children (Jonson 2004: 101).

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the commissions’ experts referred, time and again, to sociological and socialpsychological research. Their supposition that a strict gender-role division would stunt the child’s psychological development was, they claimed, based on ‘new scientific findings’ and ‘gender-role research’ (SOU 1981:25: 16, 1979:57). The new experts thus wanted to show that the previously dominant view that mothers were absolutely vital to their children was a myth. The expansion of public childcare was regarded as a necessary, but insufficient, measure. To make it easier for parents to combine their work with bringing up their children, it was proposed that the existing maternity allowance should be expanded in the form of a gender-neutral parental insurance. A main argument was that parents had to be able to be at home with their children when children were very small and when they were ill. At the same time, it was stressed in the report that such a government subsidy had to be designed so that it did not place obstacles in the way of women working. Much space was devoted to discussing how an extended parental insurance could be compatible with equality. The authors were careful to point out that the rules would not prevent fathers from staying at home with their children. Shared parental leave was regarded as both a basis for the realization of equality and the best solution from the children’s point of view (SOU 1972:34: 224). Facilitating close relationships between fathers and their children was, therefore, viewed as important. Here, the experts referred again to sociological gender-role research, indicating that too great a maternal influence was to the detriment of the child. Just a few years earlier, political discussions had been about compensation for the mother (Karlsson 1996: 267–8). The commission’s proposal to place fathers and mothers on an equal footing, therefore, signified an important change in Swedish family policy. Ever since then, the conflict between work and family life has officially been regarded as a problem that affects men and women alike. The emphasis on children needing their fathers also indicated an important shift in the ideological construction of fatherhood. Thus, the commission decided to design a gender-neutral parental insurance. Yet, at the same time, it anticipated the risk that, for a long period into the future, it would be women who took parental leave. The commission’s solution was to limit the extension of parental insurance. Seven months was regarded as a reasonable period that would not hamper women’s chances of finding work in the labour market (SOU 1972:34).  In 1976, a law was passed that made every municipality duty bound to have a plan for the expansion of public childcare. The requirements were to have been met ten years later (SOU 1979:57). Despite this goal not being achieved, the expansion of public childcare accelerated in the 1980s and continued to do so in the 1990s (Jonson 2004: 101). Towards the end of the 1990s, after the economic recession, which hit families with children hard, the government established that public childcare would be in the child’s best interest. The conclusion was that every child had the right to a public childcare place and that nobody should be excluded due to excessive fees or because the child’s parents were unemployed or on parental leave (Proposition 1999/2000: 129).

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Just a few years later the difficulties parents had combining paid work with childcare came to be identified as an acute problem. One solution proposed by the commission at the time was to extend parental insurance. Another was to make it possible for parents with small children to reduce their working hours. The argument was that parents needed to spend more time with their children and that children must not spend too many hours at nursery school (SOU 1975:62: 12; see also SOU 1978:39: 74). These arguments could be interpreted as a strategy to privatize childcare once again (from public institutions to the family). The commission, however, suggested that the proposed extension to parental insurance should be given quotas with mothers not being allowed to use up more than seven of the total number of months. This idea was never realized because of opposition from the ruling Social Democratic Party although the Social Democratic Women’s Association supported it (Karlsson 1996: 292–3). Instead, during the years that followed, parental insurance was extended several times without any quotas being introduced. From Gender Neutrality to Gender Power Gender-role research played an important part in shaping the Swedish equality discourse. With the help of this, previously privatized needs, as well as childcare, were transformed into legitimate political questions. As a result, established boundaries between ‘the private’ and ‘the political’ were challenged. However, the needs were, to a large extent, gender neutrally formulated in terms of ‘the child’s need’, ‘the parents’ need’ or ‘everybody’s need’ for equality (Florin and Nilsson 2000). The differences in men’s and women’s living conditions largely took a back seat but, over the coming decades, this gender-neutral discourse was fiercely challenged. A commission appointed to identify the equality situation in Sweden drew attention to this discursive break (SOU 1979:89, 1982:18). The commission’s reports contained critical assessments of the equality policy pursued during the 1970s. The reason for this was that the commission had revealed that women still shouldered responsibility for the home and the family to the detriment of their position in working life and their life situation in general. The investigators   To end gender segregation in the labour market was identified by the commission as the most important political task, and the measures proposed were almost exclusively aimed at working life (SOU 1982:18). This demonstrates a change in Swedish equality policy. During the 1980s, focus shifted from gender relations in the family to gender relations in working life. Hence, several government commissions were appointed to analyse gender divisions in working life during this decade, while gender relations in the family were largely neglected. This trend corresponded to the path taken by Swedish gender research, in which earlier focus on family relationships shifted to a focus on gender relations in the labour market. The previously mentioned discursive shift was also observed in the government commissions that focused on gender relations in working life.

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summarized that, seen from a woman’s perspective, the equality policy had not succeeded particularly well. They also criticized the gender-neutral laws and regulations that had come into force, because these did not take into consideration that actual negative discrimination resulted in women’s means of support and influence being considerably less than men’s (SOU 1982:18). The commission’s relatively limited confidence in the equality policy can, partly, be explained by the changed historical context. The commissions appointed in the 1960s had proposed reforms to turn single-earner families into dual-earner families. This was, to a large extent, realized 15 years later. Now it was time to analyse under which conditions the changes had been carried out and to what extent equality had really been achieved. Moreover, there was a women’s movement, and increasing research into gender, which turned the spotlight on gender power relations and emphasized that women’s and men’s interests are not always the same. That feminist perspectives on the gender division in society quickly made a mark on the political discourse is clear in both the above-mentioned reports. Not only did the investigators make the needs of women the focus. For the first time, men’s responsibility for the existing inequality was brought to the fore. Consequently, the commission pointed out that, by shirking their responsibility for the home and the child, men had contributed to the lack of equality. Women’s confinement to child care and inferior status in working life, the commission summarized, stemmed, to a considerable extent, from men’s lack of involvement in the family chores (SOU 1979:89: 31). At the same time, the economic and social value of women’s unpaid work in the home was strongly emphasized. Such interpretations were also very much in line with ongoing feminist discussions on the importance of housework (Molyneux 1979, Oakley 1974). Thus, men as a group were now held responsible for women’s inferior position in the labour market. It was because men had not been actively involved in childcare and housework that women had not achieved equality with them. In the 1980s, another public report coined the term ‘the in-principle man’ to describe the discrepancy between the attitudes of Swedish men and their actions. Despite many men having a positive – in principle – attitude towards parental leave, there were, still, only a few who took advantage of the opportunity to stay at home with their children. The government commission’s prediction in 1972 (SOU 1972:34) had therefore come true: it was predominantly women who took parental leave. Men’s lack of involvement in housework and with children also had as a consequence that politicians were criticized for paying lip service to the goal of equality in the home. In reality, they had not, the critics felt, done particularly much to persuade men to stay at home with their children. The wording of the parental insurance was used as an example. Although this certainly made it formally possible for men to stay at home with their children, it had, in practice, helped to reproduce gender differences in the lives of men and women (Åström 1992, Landby Eduards 1986, Widerberg 1981, 1986).

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An overall conclusion is that the optimism that characterized previous commissions increasingly turned to distrust during the 1980s. In The Study of Power and Democracy in Sweden (SOU 1990:44), the equality policy was subjected to further criticism. In one of the chapters in the main report, the historian Yvonne Hirdman presented her theory of the gender system, according to which gender inequality is reproduced by two inherent ‘logics’ in that system: the male norm and gender segregation (SOU 1990:44). Hirdman’s critical evaluation was that the equality policy of the 1970s had helped to reproduce the gender system by moving women from the home to a female-dominated public sector, where they were subordinated to a male norm and male control (SOU 1990:44: 93). Her theory of the gender system and its two inherent logics would soon have an important influence in political circles. Further criticism was presented by a commission appointed to describe and analyse the distribution of economic power and resources between women and men (SOU 1998:6). This so-called Commission of Women’s Power analysed the gender distribution of economic resources and power in the labour market, the family and the welfare state. The studies carried out by the researchers showed that Sweden, at the turn of the millennium, was still a society in which women earned and owned less than men, had a lower status and less power and took much greater responsibility for childcare and housework. In summary, it can be said that earlier focus on gender roles had been replaced by a perspective that observed power relations between men and women. This gender power perspective was introduced by feminist researchers in a way reminiscent of the way in which sociologists previously developed and highlighted gender-role theory (Klinth 2002). Whereas the gender-role theory had functioned as a bridge discourse in the 1970s, certain versions of feminist theory were given that role during the following two decades. Research into men’s violence against women also played this bridging role. Prior to the 1990s, assaulting women was a relatively marginalized question in Swedish equality policy, but it was put onto the political agenda when the new commission was appointed at the beginning of the 1990s (SOU 1995:60: 3). Feminist discourse was clearly reflected in political discussions when the issue of men’s violence against women was formulated in terms of gender and power (Wendt Höjer 2002). The commission established that men’s violence against women was closely linked to issues of equality and that it could be explained by the historically unequal power relations between men and women. With reference to feminist research, the commission interpreted this violence as a manifestation of a male sexuality that was focused on conquest and domination and on proving its own masculinity. Commissions and their Transformations An important transformation in the government commissions must be highlighted. The 1970s was the decade when equality was institutionalized in Sweden; that is, during this time the government commissions laid the foundations for a number

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of costly welfare reforms. This was partly due to the decline in economic growth and the increasing budget deficit, neither of which was a feature of the coming decades. In fact, the commissions appointed during the 1980s and 1990s proposed few measures to increase equality within families. In this way, the relationship between policy and academic discourse was altered. Instead of acting as ‘social engineers’, social scientists came, if anything, to assume the role of ‘critical voices’. This transformation does not mean that academic discourses lost their influence over policy. Gender research clearly helped to change political perspectives on equality. For example, a written communication from the Social Democratic Government at the end of the 1990s stated that equality is about destroying the existing social structure, wherein men are the norm and women the exception, that men are superior and women inferior, and men have considerable power and women little (written communication from the Government 1999/2000:24: 5, Regeringens skrivelse). The approach was obviously inspired by Hirdman’s gender system theory, which was also described as an important tool in the equality policy of the 1990s (Jämt och ständigt [Always and Constantly] 2003). Thus Swedish family policy became more interventionist in that two months of parental insurance were earmarked for the father, the so-called ‘months of paternity leave’. When the first month of paternity leave was introduced in 1994, the minister responsible argued that the gendered division of labour was a part of a gender system that was based on men’s structural and symbolic superiority (Klinth 2002: 332). In other words, he referred to feminist theory to support the position that the decision of parents to take parental leave could not be seen as totally a private issue. The aim of promoting equality was also a main argument when the second month of paternity leave was introduced in 2002 (Proposition 2000/01:44: 25). Discourses other than the feminist have also influenced the equality policy. For example, as in other countries, a men’s movement called for a greater right for men to have custody of their children after divorce. The so-called Fathers’ Group, which, in 1995, published a public report that caused considerable debate, can be seen as an expression of this (Ds 1995: 2). At the heart of the report was the argument that, as fathers, men were discriminated against, a claim that was substantiated by the fact that mothers were often given custody of the children in cases of dispute (Hobson 2004). In the mid-1990s, a government commission, appointed to examine questions of custody and relationships between parents and children, published its report (SOU 1995:79). This report stressed that fathers have a central role to play in the development of children. In light of the principle of ‘the child’s best interest’, the commission came to the conclusion that joint custody after a divorce should be  Another argument was that the child should be helped to create a close relationship with both its parents.

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employed as often as possible. It proposed that the court should have the authority to award joint custody in the event of a dispute, as well as being able to decide whether the child should live with the father or the mother. At the same time as feminist perspectives on equality have influenced political discourse, biological fathers have been given new rights as a result of the ideology that children, after divorce, need their fathers, and the emphasis placed on joint custody by the courts. Changing ideologies of motherhood and fatherhood, and of gender relations more broadly, thus continue to shape family policy in complex and contradictory ways. Conclusion The argument, as presented by experts and later by politicians, concerning the way in which the economic and social situation of families is to be transformed has, as we have discussed, changed over time. One attempt to interpret this development includes many interacting aspects, such as the development of the labour market, social and political reforms and the interplay between social organizations and the state, as well as social science studies. Establishing a driving force in this complex pattern is, however, complicated. It can be claimed that the changing assumptions within social theory largely follow the development of the labour market. Nevertheless, there is one aspect that seems to stand out more clearly than others: that politicians’ belief in science as an ‘objective force’ was a key factor in the formulation of early Swedish family policy. As a consequence, a coalition between the state and the government-appointed experts appears to have been an important factor in the shaping of new family ideals as well as gender and class relations. Since the late 1970s, researchers appear to have lost their role as ‘social engineers’ in family policy. Nevertheless, in their new role as ‘critical voices’ they continue to influence political discourse; that is, the social sciences still function as bridge discourses between social movements and the state. References Åkerman, B. 1994. 88 år på 1900 – talet. Bland vänner och idéer. Stockholm: T. Fischer & Co. Asplund, G., Gahn, W., Markelius, S., Paulsson, G., Sundahl, E., Åhrén, U. 1931. Acceptera. Stockholm: Tiden. Åström, G. 1992. Fasta förbindelser – Om välfärdsreformer och kvinnors välfärd, in Kontrakt i kris, edited by G. Åström and Y. Hirdman. Stockholm: Carlsson. Bacchi, C. 1999. Women, Policy and Politics: The Construction of Policy Problems. London: Sage. Backberger, B. 1966. Det förkrympta kvinnoide alet. Stockholm: Albert Bonniers förlag.

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Regeringens skrivelse 2002/03:140. Jämt och ständigt – Regeringens jämställdhetspolitik med handlingsplan för mandatperioden. Roman, C. 2004. Familjen i det moderna. Sociologiska sanningar och feministisk kritik. Malmö: Liber. Romanus, G. 1992. Ett nätverk för jämställdhet, in Visionen om jämställdhet, edited by A. Baude, Stockholm: SNS Förlag, 24–39. Rueschemeyer, D. and Skocpol, T. (eds) 1996. States, Social Knowledge, and the Origins of Modern Social Policies. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Runcis, M. 1998. Steriliseringar I folkhemmet. Stockholm: Ordfront Förlag. Schön, L. 2000. En modern svensk ekonomisk historia. Tillväxt och omvandling under två sekel. Stockholm: SNS Förlag. Segerstedt, T. and Lundqvist, A. 1949. Människan i industrisamhället. Arbetslivet. Stockholm: SNS Förlag. SOU 1936:12. Betänkande angående förlossningsvården och barnmorskeväsendet samt förebyggande mödra – och barnavård. Avgivet av befolkningskommittén. SOU 1936:15. Betänkande angående moderskapspenning och mödrahjälp. SOU 1936:59. Betänkande i sexualfrågan. Avgivet av befolkningskommittén. SOU 1938:13. Betänkande angående förvärvsarbetande kvinnors rättsliga ställning vid äktenskap och barnsbörd. Avgivet av befolkningskommittén. SOU 1938:47. Betänkande ang. gift kvinnas förvärvsarbete mm. avgivet av kvinnoarbetskommitténs betänkande. SOU 1946:5. Betänkande om barnkostnadernas fördelning med förslag angående allmänna barnbidrag m.m.. Avgivet av 1941 års befolkningsutredning. SOU 1946:6. Betänkande om barnkostnadernas fördelning med förslag angående allmänna barnbidrag m.m.. Avgivet av 1941 års befolkningsutredning. Bilagor. SOU 1946:23. Socialvårdskommitténs betänkande XII: Utredning och förslag angående moderskapsbidrag. SOU 1947:46. Betänkande angående familjeliv och hemarbete. Avgivet av utredningen för hem – och familjefrågor. SOU 1951:15. Daghem och förskolor. Betänkande om barnstugor och barntillsyn. SOU 1952:38. Hemhjälp. Bostadskollektiva kommitténs betänkande. SOU 1955:29. Samhället och barnfamiljerna. 1954 års familjeutredning. SOU 1957:33. Allmän familjerådgivning. SOU 1972:34. Familjestöd. Betänkande avgivet av Familjepolitiska kommittén. SOU 1972:41. Familj och äktenskap 1. Betänkande avgivet av Familjesakkunniga. SOU 1975:30. Barnens livsmiljö. Del 1. SOU 1975:62. Förkortad arbetstid för småbarnsföräldrar. Betänkande avgivet av Familjestödsutredningen. SOU 1978:39. Föräldraförsäkring. Betänkande avgivet av Familjestödsutredningen. SOU 1979:57. Barnomsorg – behov, efterfråga, planeringsunderlag. Betänkande avgivet av Planeringsgruppen för barnomsorg.

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SOU 1979:89. Kvinnors arbete. Om hemarbetande kvinnors situation, kvinnor försörjning, barns omsorg och mäns delaktighet i det oavlönade hemarbetet. En rapport från Jämställdhetskommittén. SOU 1981:25. Bra daghem för små barn. SOU 1982:18. Förvärvsarbete och föräldraskap. Åtgärdsförslag från Jämställdhetskommittén. Betänkande avgivet av Jämställdhetskommittén. SOU 1990:44. Demokrati och makt i Sverige. Maktutredningens huvudrapport. Betänkande avgivet av Maktutredningen. SOU 1995:60. Kvinnofrid. Huvudbetänkande avgivet av Kvinnovåldskommissionen. SOU 1995:79. Vårdnad, boende och umgänge. Betänkande avgivet av Vårdnadstvistutredningen. SOU 1998:6. Ty makten är din … Myten om det rationella arbetslivet och det jämställda Sverige. Betänkande avgivet av Kvinnomaktutredningen. Trost, J. 1965. Allmänt om familjen, in Familjen i samhället, edited by G. Karlsson and J. Trost. Stockholm: Svenska Bokförlaget/Norstedts. Tydén, M. 2002. Från politik till praktik. De svenska steriliseringslagarna 1935– 1975. Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis, Stockholm Studies in History 63. Wendt Höjer, M. 2002. Rädslans politik. Våld och sexualitet i den svenska demokratin. Malmö: Liber. Widerberg, K. 1981. Sverige – gammalt patriarkat i ny förklädnad. Kvinnovetenskaplig tidskrift, 2(3), 6–25. Widerberg, K. 1986. Har kvinnoforskning med jämställdhetspolitik att göra? Kvinnovetenskaplig tidskrift, 6(3), 36–47.

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Chapter 5

Paradoxes of Gender and Marital Status in mid-20th Century British Welfare Janet Fink and Katherine Holden

Introduction This chapter considers the significance of marital status for exploring the relationship between family, gender and social policy in Britain through the first half of the 20th century. It takes as its starting point the ways in which family life and the meanings of familial relationships were understood in 20th century legislation and policy making through the breadwinner husband, dependent wife and children. The strength of the male breadwinner model in the gendered constitution and allocation of family responsibilities in British law, policy and practice is, therefore, a core feature of our discussion. However our primary concern is with the effects of such gendered understandings of family responsibilities for single women whose ties of intimacy and affection were located outside the nuclear family unit and whose caring and financial obligations were not embedded in the marital contract (Davidoff et al. 1999, Fink and Holden 1999). Here it is important to note that singleness is a large and diverse category, comprising individuals with multiple identities and constituting different personal and professional relationships to the nuclear family (Holden 2007). Single childless women were, for example, often employed in the interwar years as childcare experts, working with married and unmarried mothers and their children as well as influencing the state’s development of child care policy and practice. Such women could also have financial obligations, as daughters, towards elderly parents in the same way that single men who remained in the family home had to their parents as sons. Single men and women, as brothers and sisters, might establish quite particular caring or financial responsibilities towards each other or towards married siblings and their children. Single women with children born outside marriage would have to balance childcare responsibilities as mothers with those of being the sole breadwinner in their family unit. Conversely men in Britain who fathered children outside marriage had few or no legal responsibilities towards their illegitimate child and often successfully avoided making any financial contribution to their care. As we will illustrate the male breadwinner model was not only central to political debates and policy making around work, welfare and family life through this period but its influence intensified and impacted more sharply upon single

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women and unmarried mothers during times of social and economic stress and hardship. We consider, therefore, the ways in which welfare policy and practice shape understanding and experience of familial responsibilities outside marriage through four key moments in the 20th century where marital status and the public legitimization of family practices, sexual relations and gendered norms of employment were the subject of particular tensions and ambiguities. This case study approach has also been adopted because it ensures that the very specific economic, political and demographic contexts which shape policy and practice can be afforded appropriate levels of analysis. Moreover such an approach provides the opportunity to bring together a range of empirical evidence through which to examine how the binaries of married and single women were constructed in the evolution of the British welfare state during the first half of the 20th century. The sharp economic slump in the years following the First World War resulted in extensive unemployment amongst both insured and uninsured workers and forced the government to provide welfare benefits for families on an unprecedented scale. This is the context for the first strand of our discussion, which focuses upon the contested nature of pay and welfare benefits in the 1920s. The fact that welfare benefits were targeted principally at men and frequently refused to women was not unconnected with the First World War and the return of a generation of men, in many cases shell-shocked and disabled, expecting to be restored to their homes, families and employment. The popular perception that women had pushed men off to fight and then stepped into their jobs shaped a political determination to (re)assert the status of the male breadwinner through policies and practices which discouraged women’s employment and which ensured husbands and fathers received high enough wages or benefits to maintain their wives and children. In such ways women who had no husbands to support them were disadvantaged, both in the workplace and by the welfare system, and there emerged what some historians have identified as a crisis in gender relations during the 1920s, manifested in part through the vigorous defence of the male breadwinner across all levels of society. Our second strand in this chapter focuses on the Spinsters’ Pension Campaign, within the context of the Depression in 1930s’ Britain, which witnessed widespread anxieties about the effects of poverty on the nuclear family and a perceived challenge to the status of the male breadwinner because of growing unemployment. The Depression particularly affected families living in areas of traditional heavy industries in the North of England, Wales and Scotland and it was as a result of such high levels of male unemployment in these areas, together with a determination to keep men in work by employers, trade unions and government alike, that working women were increasingly discriminated against. The status and authority of men rested heavily on being able to support a family and there was a reluctance to support measures that either gave women a degree of financial independence or acknowledged that they might have family responsibilities to support or care for dependants. This assumption was particularly problematic for older single women who, in this period of severe economic depression, were losing

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89

the right to a contributory pension because of unemployment, illness or giving up paid work to look after elderly parents. Through these two strands we illustrate how, following the carnage of the First World War, a generation of women, many of whom remained single (see Table 5.1), were particularly vulnerable to the inequities of both gender and marital status in Britain’s welfare system. The Second World War and the years that immediately followed it are the context for the third and fourth strands of our discussion. Through these we examine how the moral norms and values attached to marital status and the nuclear family Table 5.1

Single (unmarried) women and men in the population by age in thousands, 1911–1951*



1911

Age

Men

Women

20–24

1502

25–34

1921

Single Single men women

Men

1673

1288

1266

1448

1703

1191

1237

1822

3125

1091

1109

1621

3140

894

1058

35–44

2336

2509

394

493

2496

2850

375

548

45–54

2073

1834

205

290

2133

2287

256

375

55–64

1085

1213

107

160

1383

1530

143

234

65+

849

1070

65

127

980

1311

84

180



1931

Women Single men

Single women

1951

Age

Men

Women Single Single men women

Men

Women Single men

Single women

20–24

1699

1795

1463

1322

1427

1500

1088

777

25–34

3062

3350

1079

1105

3140

3219

854

587

35–44

2512

2954

315

573

3291

3397

397

467

45–54

2303

2633

250

431

2874

3123

266

471

55–64

1766

1960

181

306

2028

2538

158

394

65+

1272

1690

110

261

1972

2853

162

453

* These figures have been collated from the Census of 1911, 1921, 1931 and 1951.

Changing Relations of Welfare

90

in policy making were as significant for single women as assumptions about the gendered nature of employment and family responsibilities. The Second World War was considered by church leaders, politicians and the media to have provoked a crisis in marital relations and family life. Figures show that illegitimate births soared during the war years (see Table 5.2) with, it was estimated, at least half of all illegitimate children being born to married women in some towns. The increase in venereal disease among both the armed services and the civilian population also increased alarmingly (Haste 1992). And within ten years, the number of divorce petitions rose from 5,750 in 1937 to 48,501 in 1947, with 71 per cent of divorces being granted during 1947 on the grounds of adultery (Philips 1991, McGregor 1957). Moreover there were growing fears about the country’s falling birth rate and a Royal Commission was set up in 1944 to report on the country’s population. Its findings were not published, however, until 1949 when anxieties about the birth rate had been somewhat assuaged by the post-war baby boom. Post-war society and policy making were marked, therefore, by a determination to restore the moral, emotional and material stability of the nuclear family and, as a result of these aims, the Beveridge Report of 1942 with its focus on the married couple – a ‘team’ of breadwinner husband and dependent housewife – was enormously influential. The centrality of marriage in the definition and regulation of rights to welfare benefits was thus deeply embedded in Britain’s Table 5.2

Illegitimate live births (1940–1947) England and Wales* No. of illegitimate births

Per 1,000 single and widowed women

6 yrs 1934–1939

153,075

5.5

1940

25,633

5.9

1941

31,058

7.4

1942

36,467

9.0

1943

43,709

10.9

1944

55,173

13.8

1945

63,240

16.1

1946

53,919

14.0

1947

46,603

12.5

255,460

10.4

6yrs 1940–1945

* Registrar General’s Statistical Review of England and Wales for the Year 1949, Tables, Part II, Civil (pp. 7–8). As statistics for Scotland were collected differently, these figures do not represent the total number of illegitimate births in Britain.

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post-war welfare state. Married mothers were afforded not only statutory welfare benefits through policy reforms but also, from wider society, a moral superiority over mothers who were bringing up children alone. This did not mean that married women were supported by the state with resources to help them balance their roles as wife and worker. It was rather that married men continued to be aided by the state in the maintenance of their families, through the tax and welfare systems (see Chapter 2). Tax allowances, benefit rates and the organization of the national insurance scheme operated to support the nuclear family through the male breadwinner with the result that women, and especially single women and unmarried mothers, had few resources and little support with which to reconcile the competing responsibilities of work and home through the first half of the 20th century. Single Women, Employment and the Equal Pay Debates of the 1920s The struggles to have single women’s responsibilities towards their family recognized by the state can be traced in research conducted during the interwar years and in debates about equal pay. Despite the high numbers of never-married women (see Table 5.1), this was a period when women were assumed to be married and dependent upon a male breadwinner and, thereby, not in paid work or needing access to unemployment benefits. Such assumptions were expressed in 1921 when, in a post-war climate of rising unemployment, social reformers, Seebohm Rowntree and Frank Stuart, published their report The Responsibility of Women Workers for Dependants. This had been commissioned to answer a report by the Fabian Women’s Group which claimed that, since just over half of working women were responsible for the maintenance of dependants, they should have equal pay with men. The aim of Rowntree and Stuart’s research was to discover on a ‘scientific basis’ whether in fixing women’s wages any allowance should be made for dependants. Their estimate that only 12 per cent of working women really had any degree of family responsibility challenged the reliability of the Fabian Women’s research but this had dealt with a different social group; of the 2,830 cases they investigated 1,600 were professional women, including 1,295 teachers. However, despite their claims to objectivity, Rowntree and Stuart’s own research criteria are structured by a priori assumptions about gender and marital status. They ‘regarded a person as dependent, or partially dependent, on a worker, if the latter’s wage, whether large or small, had to be shared between two, but no equivalent service was demanded from the former’. Thus, for example, they maintained that a widowed mother whose daughters jointly contributed to her upkeep should not be regarded as dependent on them because they ‘would really be employing her as their housekeeper’. This ignored the fact that a married man who demanded housekeeping services of his wife was fully justified in claiming her as his dependant. Equally a woman who paid her family more than the market

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price for her board and lodging would not be regarded as having dependants ‘if the income of the chief wage earner is sufficiently high to render such action on her part unnecessary’ (Rowntree and Stuart 1921: 7–9). This assumed that the chief wage earner in a household would necessarily share all his wage with his wife and dependent family, whilst a daughter would be expected to support only herself. Yet economic relationships within working-class families were not so clear-cut. Families might depend on a daughter or other female relative’s earnings in the notinfrequent cases where the father or ‘chief [male] wage earner’ kept a substantial portion of his earnings for his own use, or was unemployed, ill or absent (see also Glucksmann 1995, Pahl 1989). These situations were ignored and obscured by Rowntree and Stuart’s research criteria. One reason for the large discrepancy between the figures of Rowntree and Stuart’s research and those of the Fabian Women’s Group was the much higher average age (34) of the latter’s women informants. Rowntree and Stuart admitted that their own survey also showed a dramatic rise in the number of women with dependants in the 30 to 40 age cohort. Since the great majority (87 per cent) of their respondents were single, and more than two thirds of those who were designated as having dependants gained them through the death or illness of a father, it is likely that a substantial number of these cases were of single women supporting their mothers. Since it was married men aged between 30 and 40 who might be expected to have the largest number of dependant children, a case for a greater degree of equivalency of wages between married men and older single women could have been made. Nevertheless Rowntree and Stuart’s recommendation was that the older single woman’s responsibility for dependant relatives could be adequately dealt with by improving widows’ pensions and increasing grants paid under the national health insurance scheme to chronic invalids. This dispute illustrates the way in which expectations relating to gender and marital status shaped men’s and women’s relationship to work. The division of the category ‘woman’ into either childless worker without dependants or dependent non-working mother was achieved in the interwar years by using the institution of marriage as gate-keeper. And this division was never successfully challenged by a feminist movement, fragmented after the war over issues of equality and difference (Smith 1990, Riley 1988). Eleanor Rathbone, leader of the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship, saw equality for men and women in the labour market as contingent upon enabling married women to gain independence from their husbands through a system of allowances which would pay them directly for their family responsibilities. In The Disinherited Family (1924) she was critical particularly of bachelors who occupied ‘a vantage point for bargaining which is not open to women’ and were indistinguishably lumped together with men with dependent families enabling them to ‘fight the battle of high wages from behind the petticoats of their comrades’ wives and children’ (Rathbone 1924: 136). Yet her own position as a woman of independent means suggests that she too did not sufficiently recognize the difficulties which the equation of marriage and family responsibilities posed for the working-class single woman living with her family.

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Like Rowntree and Stuart she assumed that insurance benefits for the old and infirm should be sufficient to remove any familial burdens taken on by them and had little sympathy for the Fabians’ cause. In her analysis, women were polarized into single ‘workers’ and married ‘mothers’. The latter as ‘mothers’ had needs and social responsibilities which entitled them to different treatment as women. The former should she believed be given equal treatment with single men and, like them, regarded as having no family responsibilities. The anomalous position of the single woman worker proved to be of considerable value to the State in 1919 when the Ministry of Labour attempted to prevent women whom it believed had no real intention of working, from claiming unemployment benefit on the basis that they had paid insurance contributions as munitions or other workers during the war. Belief that any woman seeking work should accept a job in domestic service led to accusations in the press that if women refused employment ‘because it was not exactly to their taste, they ought not to be paid out of the public purse and so enabled to live a life of idleness’ (cited in Lewis 1983, see also Braybon 1981). Historians have used this as an example of injustice to married women which prevented them claiming dole, pointing out that such accusations had no basis in fact (Lewis 1983, Thane 1982, Deacon 1976). Yet its effect was equally if not more damaging to single women, many of whom were ejected from relatively well paid war work and denied the possibility of claiming benefit (Braybon 1981). Further restrictions to claims for unemployment benefit came in 1922 when the rising tide of unemployment led the government to introduce a means test. Single people living with relatives were excluded from claiming unless they could prove that they were entirely self-supporting when in work and could not reasonably look to their relatives for support when unemployed. This involved proof of a regular payment equivalent to board and lodging a