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Women of the working class influenced by the current welfare structure in Britain

   The structure of the British workplace saw huge changes in the post war decades. Across the nation more and more women were taking up paid employment, many had started working in place of men who had gone off to fight in the war.

   They formed a “reserve army of labour” a term derived from the work of Marx which refers to a disadvantaged sector of the workforce who supply labour for a sudden expansion of production in times of economic boom and who can be disposed of easily in times of economic slump. (Hakim 1992)
These positions were often part time, poorly paid with poor working conditions and few opportunities to train or for promotion. There was also extra work created by the war, such as nursery and caring professions. It became commonplace for women to take paid employment and the numbers escalated (Rees 1992)

   From the outset however women were mainly concentrated in the low status jobs, this enabled them to maintain domestic duties but also kept them in the lower echelons of the workforce as part time workers who had fewer rights and entitlements like sick pay, holidays and material benefits. The poor pay coupled with the poor conditions meant that women were compelled to rely on men as the main breadwinners. (Hakim 1992)

   The 1942 Beveridge Report formed the basis of the modern welfare state and claimed to eliminate what Beveridge termed the five giant evils, want, squalor, idleness, ignorance and disease. Polices implemented in these areas created many jobs for women in teaching, nursing and administration.

   The welfare state has always provided strong economic and ideological pressure upon women through state institutions. (Chadwick and Little 1993)
Feminist theories of welfare describe the welfare state as something of a paradox, as on one hand it can provide women with opportunities and help to readdress existing social roles and status, whilst liberal feminists define the state as historically representing male interests, but believe it is open to infiltration by women once they are able to achieve an adequate level of representation.

   Radical feminists identify women and men as separate classes whose interests conflict, and see the welfare state as a bastion of male power, which reflects the patriarchal nature of society and functions to control women (Alcock, Payne and Sullivan 2000 page 128)
It was the assumption that women should leave employment and return to the home that was embodied in the Beveridge Report, which in turn set the agenda for British Policies and laid bare the foundation for much of it since.

   The work of John Bowlby who was commissioned by the World Health Organisation in 1951 to study ‘material deprivation’ was used to reinforce the ideology that women should be the natural carers and that their place was at home with the children. His findings had enormous influence in returning women to the home following their brief period in paid employment as part of the war effort. (Shaffer 1998)

   Despite this, the size of the labour force had to be maintained and was maintained by women. In 1947 an economic survey showed that the prospective labour force was substantially short; in order to reach national production orders, women were drafted in, but employers were encouraged to adopt conditions to enable women to carry out both domestic and economic duties. (Rees 1992)

   In 1950 the Factories Evening and Employment Order provided ‘twilight shifts’ for housewives so they could easily amalgamate their housework and paid work with family life (Rees 1992)
The 1970’s started to see a breakdown in consensus politics and saw the role and running costs of the state start to be called into question.

   The Conservatives winning lection campaign blamed the welfare state for the nation’s economic and moral decline and reducing it they believed would increase entrepreneurial drive, self-reliance and self-help. (King 1986 page 133)

   A return to family values was a Tory message that received much support; these family values were often founded on the view that the normal family comprised of a married couple bringing up their children.

   Within these families the natural destinies of woman were as nurturers and carers and men as breadwinners and protectors.
Other types of families such as stepfamilies or single parent families were portrayed as flawed, deviant or even a threat to ‘normal’ family life. (Jewson 1994)
Many changes in policy during this period caused damage to the interests of women, in a number of areas.

   Firstly the expansions of community care. This took place for two main reasons: Firstly as cost cutting plan, as the government believed it would be cheaper for people with additional needs to be supported at home than maintained in state institutions. This also fitted well with the New Right ideology of women as carers. The government questioned why it was, that the state had to care for people in institutions, when they could and the implication was should be cared for by the family.

   The assumption made by the policy pushed through in this area was that women would provide care in families.
Whilst actively contributing to their burden in the home. The demands of women’s movements for state childcare, a right to define sexuality or legal and financial independence went unacknowledged.

   Secondly this reduction by local authorities in reducing the home help, domestic nursing, staffing of residential care and similar services also damaged the employment prospects of many women who outnumbered men in these lower status jobs. (Moore 1993)

   The 1976 direction of equal pay was halted and Employment protection weakened the 1980 Employment Act.
The extension in community care added to the closure of pre school and day nursery provisions and made domestic labour more difficult to escape.

   The added strain and responsibility that these policies placed on women was one of the factors identified as contributing to their ill health. (Graham 1987)
The health care experiences of women are different from those of men, both in patterns of mortality and morbidity, as well as in the provision of health and social care. These differences primarily reflect gender roles relating to the social, cultural and economical circumstances of women’s lives.

   A recent and comprehensive register of the nation’s health was the 1992 updated edition of Margaret Whiteheads ‘ The Health Divide’ which confirmed and enlarged many findings of the 1980 Black Report which had revealed alarming disparities between occupational classes.

   As well as showing major class differences in regard to health it highlights differences by gender. These suggested that although men are twice as likely to suffer an earlier death across all social classes, women could expect to suffer more ill health. Evidence also suggests that women suffer poorer psychosocial health, and are more frequently prescribed anti-depressants. (www.doh.gov.uk.2002)

   When occupational class and gender are combined, it is women married to men at the bottom end of the class hierarchy who report poorer emotional health (Blaxter 1990).
Government response to the Black Report was largely to ignore all its main recommendations. Its findings were rejected. Instead it was claimed that individuals’ health was their own responsibility.

   Government social policy, therefore during the 1980’s and 1990’s was focused almost exclusively on what was regarded as negligent behaviour by individuals through ‘public health promotion’. This included public evaluation policy consistent with the ‘New Right’ ideology of the Conservative party mainly chastising those who had failed to adopt the healthier lifestyles being promoted (Cole – Hamilton 1992).

   By 1990 class differences in mortality were widening and social class divides had been shown to exist for patterns of health as well as for early death, even though the conservative government of 1987 claimed that Britain had become a ‘classless society’ and had argued that the time had come to abandon the practice of presenting official data in class terms. (Scott 1998)

   The welfare state was originally intended as a ‘safety net’ below which no one could slip. Conservative social policy welfare cut backs, and changes in benefit payment systems helped to increase the underclass escaping the net of welfare authorities, individuals chance of joining the underclass escalated drastically if they belonged to certain groups, like class race and gender. (Cusuk 1993)
In 1997 New Labour commissioned chief medical officer Donald Acheson to examine the extent of health inequalities, the report was published in 1998 and found that massive inequalities still existed.

   In regards to women its main recommendations were; that social benefits for women of childbearing age, expectant mothers and the elderly should be increased, as should benefits to narrow the gap between average living standards by providing greater funding for child care facilities which serve the lower occupational classes.
Measures to reduce unwanted pregnancy, measures to promote breast-feeding, and measures to reduce smoking before and during pregnancy and also improve health and nutrition should all be introduced.

   On the whole the recommendations were aimed at reducing poverty in families with children by promoting the material support of parents, by removing barriers to work, with the provision of affordable high quality day care and further to reduce poverty in women specifically by increasing benefits and the uptake of them.

   The report concluded by saying that “gender, like socio-economic status, shapes individual opportunities and experiences during life. The report identifies particular areas where gender interacts with social inequalities in ill health.”

   In women these were psychological ill health in disadvantaged women with young children and high levels of disability in older women. (www.doh.gov.uk.2002)
The report also emphasised the importance of the social environment and good social networks.

   Other policies in these areas were aimed at giving a sense of belonging to society, to aid the reduction of feelings of exclusion and isolation and also to lesson incidents of crime, violence and self-harm. (www.doh.gov.uk.2002)
Acheson also made recommendations in relation to employment. He described it as “the glue that keeps society together” and pointed out the links between unemployment and poor health, poverty, social exclusion and hardship. The recommendations in these areas included policies to reduce unemployment, increased investment into training and the promotion of psychosocial health in the workplace. (www.doh.gov.uk.2002).

   The whole inquiry was set up to examine the inequalities in health that persist and primarily addressed socio-economic factors. Over the last 20 years mortality rates across social classes have continually widened in both sexes. (www.doh.gov.uk.2002)
The most widely used indicator of class in such official and sociological studies has been occupational. (Scott 1998).

   Although in a general sense it describes the economic and social groupings emerging out of the dominant social structures of property ownership, production and exchange together with associated patterns of identities and interests (Crompton 1998) none of these classifications has treated women properly. Married women, even if they are in employment have been allocated to the occupational categories of their husbands.
Married women working at home as full time house workers have then, been treated as mere dependants of their husbands or male partners. (Scott 1998)

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