Women played key role in evolution of modern welfare states

By Andrea Lynn

Even before they could vote, female reformers helped influence the policies
and institutions that shaped modern welfare states, argue the contributors
to a new book.

Formally outside the political pale, but spurred on by needs borne of
industrialization, Australian, British, French, German, Swedish and U.S.
women between 1880 and 1920 fought for a wide variety of maternal and child
health and welfare policies, write the editors of "Mothers of a New World:
Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States" (Routledge).

"During periods when state welfare structures and bureaucracies were still
rudimentary and fluid, female reformers, individually and through
organizations, exerted a powerful influence in defining the needs of
mothers and children and designing institutions and programs to address
them," write Seth Koven, a professor of European and women's history at
Villanova University, and Sonya Michel, a UI professor of history and of
women's studies, in their introduction to the book. Using "maternalist"
political debate and strategies, activist women "transformed motherhood
from women's primary private responsibility into public policy," the
editors write.

The book of essays by Michel, Koven and 10 other scholars demonstrates that
the visions of motherhood and of maternal roles varied greatly at the turn
of the century, as did reformers' success. U.S. maternal and child-welfare
legislation, for example, is the "least advanced" of the countries examined
in the book; the federal government still provides neither federal
maternity benefits nor medical care for mothers and children. France, by
contrast, has offered women free medical treatment, paid maternity leave
and a nursing bonus since 1911.

Because many modern feminists have rejected motherhood and maternalism as
incompatible with female emancipation, some historians have downplayed
maternalist politics and women's influence on the formation of welfare
states, Koven and Michel write. In addition, some feminist historians have
downplayed maternalism because some maternalist reforms have actually
limited women's opportunities, Michel argues in the book.

In her essay tracing the development of day-nursery and mothers' pension
movements, Michel writes that, from 1910 to 1930, publicly funded mothers'
pensions (the forerunners of today's Aid to Families with Dependent
Children program) succeeded "because they affirmed women's maternal role,
whereas child care - had it ever been put on the public agenda - would
have challenged it."

"Had the maternalist reformers who spearheaded the day-nursery movement
embraced a broader view of women, they might have been able to push at the
limits of public opinion and gain support for a panoply of policies that
allowed mothers a range of options," Michel writes.

"It was the limited vision of women's rights and responsibilities, not the
idea of child care as a public service to all, that became maternalism's
legacy to the American welfare system."