Abstract
The topic of gender and social policy makes sense only in relation to the historical project of the welfare state. It is time to re-evaluate this project not least because of how neoliberal policy settings have all but dis-established the welfare state. Even though the neoliberal political class has not successfully persuaded the public to abandon its historically acquired expectations of a welfare state, neoliberal governments at least in the USA, Australia, New Zealand and the UK have adopted a tri-pronged attack on the institutions of the welfare state: cut back and reduce the scope of welfare state services; stigmatize so-called welfare dependency, remove a rights-based conception of welfare benefits, and substitute publicly subsidized private decisions concerning the management of the vicissitudes of life for a collective system of social security; and take the core service institutions such as schooling, hospital and primary health care out of a public bureaucratic ethos and turn them over to market principles of business efficiency and consumer choice.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Handbook on Gender and Social Policy |
Editors | Sheila Shaver |
Place of Publication | U.K. |
Publisher | Edward Elgar Publishing |
Pages | 21-36 |
Number of pages | 16 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9781785367168 |
ISBN (Print) | 9781785367120 |
Publication status | Published - 2018 |
Keywords
- neoliberalism
- sex
- social policy
- welfare state