Court-era welfare made poor women’s dependence public rather than mediated by men

Evidence

By placing welfare benefits on a more secure footing and ridding them of punitive behavioral rules, the federal court decisions of this era had the effect of liberating women from the confines of private family dependence. The overall message conveyed by these rulings was that the welfare of poor women was a public responsibility on a par with that of standard male workers. Whatever their marital status, sexual history, or race, impoverished women were just as deserving of a social wage as any other citizen. At a time when middle-class women were entering the workforce in growing numbers and achieving some degree of economic independence from men, unmarried women on welfare also appeared to be in reach of a social wage that was no longer mediated through a “substitute husband.” — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 226

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Women’s independence from men, not state dependence, drove welfare backlash — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 227; The 1951 election mobilized middle-class women against the egalitarian welfare state — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 202; Privacy rights were deliberately withheld from impoverished women on welfare — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 223 (+2 more)