Women and the State

The Shifting Boundaries of Public and Private

Anne Showstack Sassoon

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429686337
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In the late 1980s, despite the fact that the vast majority of women now had a dual role – in paid work and in the domestic realm – the world of work, the welfare state, and the domestic sphere were all still organized as though women's place were primarily in the home. Though this contradiction most directly affected women, it had implications for the lives of both sexes, and in a much wider social context.

Women's changing role had paralleled a major restructuring of the economy but the importance of these changes was barely reflected in contemporary political discussions, or in political science or social policy literature.

In this title, originally published in 1987, articles from women in Italy, France, Denmark, Norway, the US and Britain bring the issues sharply into focus. Applying fresh perspectives, they widen and enrich the debate. This book marks a powerful contribution to a new and more realistic assessment of women's dual role in the state and the economy which should be read by all those concerned with the development of women's issues and with women's studies.

Part One

The Modern State and Contemporary Society – New Insights and New Contradications

1 Crazy quilts: rethinking the welfare state debate from a woman’s point of view

Laura Balbo

The current debate about the welfare state is inadequate and misleading because it has ignored women and their location in late capitalist society. If we examine women’s work and the everyday coping strategies which lie behind it, we gain a better understanding about how society functions as a whole. Yet the concept and analysis of women’s work today also needs to be rethought if we are to appreciate fully its relevance for the overall functioning of society. To attempt this double task, we are forced to coin new words or to give conventional words a new meaning, and we are led to look at both everyday phenomena and social organization in a new way. Feminism has often argued that women’s experience and women’s history can be the starting point for a new understanding of society, and it has often occurred to me that to describe living conditions in contemporary society¹ from a woman’s perspective, the images and words of patchwork quilting are most appropriate: the endless sorting out and putting together of available resources, the minute coping strategies, the overall aim of survival, and the imagination, ingenuity and amount of work that these require.

Patchwork quilts – a metaphor

The techniques of quilt-making developed, initially, from economic conditions of extreme scarcity. Although quilting was an activity common to women from all social and economic backgrounds, it is not those who were wealthy or leisured that I wish to consider here. For the immigrants to America, the overworked women in newly settled land, the black women in the South, the poor white women in the mountains of Appalachia, quilting was necessary work, not a hobby. Quilts were needed to make the bed comfortable – this most important and often only piece of furniture in the house.

Much has been written recently to recapture the lives of these American women, through oral history and the history of American folklore and art, and through exhibitions and television programmes. It is the material conditions of these women’s lives and the characteristics of their work – this particular and long-neglected aspect – that is so aptly described through the analogy of patchwork quilting; an analogy that is no less apt today to describe women’s work in contemporary society. The passages or quotes from books about the history and techniques of quilt-making throughout this chapter serve as illustrations, drawing parallels between the everyday lives, resources and coping strategies of the early quilters and of women today.

This form of presentation, among other things, forces me to move away from the more conventional language of the social scientist and to use new words, indeed new concepts, that I find extremely thought-provoking. Piece-bags, sorting out, piecing, patching and quilting, are all words which suggest parallels to concepts that have been used (by myself and by others) to describe women’s work in contemporary society: the servicing, the pooling and packaging of resources, the self-help activities, emotional work and survival networks; how women keep at their endless tasks, how they put their vision into the planning and design of their own and others’ lives whose responsibility they carry.

Quilt-making entails hard work, long hours, patience and repetition. As with the work that women carry out within their families, it is mostly individual and isolated, although at times it provides an opportunity for meeting others and sharing activity. Yet it is creative, reflecting women’s longing for beauty, and demonstrating their hidden and often unrecognized capacity for self-expression, communication and artistic endeavour.

Quilting was also practical. The quilters patiently preserved all materials left from the family sewing. They could not afford to waste any scraps or worn-out clothing. Out of an apparently immense variety of available fabrics they sorted and selected from what were, in fact, very limited options. They had freedom of design, but the patterns show repetition, regularity and constraints. Part of the work was boring and plain hard work: the lining and quilting, the endless stitching. Behind the beauty of the quilts we cannot fail to be aware of the long hours and the forgotten names: women’s work, indeed.

The earliest quilts were known as Crazy Quilts. Women sewed odd-shaped scraps of fabric together and the result tended to resemble a jigsaw puzzle. Whenever times were lean and fabric scarce, women made crazy quilts.²

Patching the pieces together: needs and resources

Today, many resources are available in our society, but few live in affluence. As a result of changing economic conditions, life has become difficult for many in the middle class, and although times were hard enough for the poor all through the ‘affluent years’, they are getting painfully harder. Except for some groups in the population, resources never seem to be adequate in a society which demands that people constantly improve their economic and social conditions. The pressure to meet new needs, to live up to continuously rising standards, has been a crucial aspect of life in western societies in the 1960s and early 1970s. More recently, it has meant coping with the impact of inflation, unemployment and cutbacks in government spending which affect the provision of welfare and public services. In their daily lives the majority are hard-pressed and, like the quilters, juggle a variety of resources in order to survive.

Quilts as they were first made in America were the product of necessity was well as tradition. Factory-made blankets were unavailable … fabric was scarce and expensive, and winters were cold. Women had to reuse every available scrap from worn out clothing in their quilts, lining them with worn out homespun blankets, wool, cotton or rags and backing them with muslin or homespun.³

Schematically, resources may be goods and services acquired in the market, on the basis of either earnings or cash welfare provisions, or both; and in a welfare system, social services delivered by a variety of public agencies or by firms, as ‘fringe benefits’, in such fields as housing, education, recreation and health. A number of tasks need to be performed by the family. In today’s society resources are channelled to individuals, or rather families, from a variety of external social institutions. They must choose from existing alternatives; ‘combine’ available resources from various agencies and institutions, whether public or private; ‘adjust’ them to the specific requirements of each family member, and provide services that are not available through other institutions. These tasks make a crucial contribution to both the quantity and efficient use of available resources and consequently, to the family’s standards of living. It is therefore relevant to consider the family as a producer, a processor and a consumer of resources, within the larger system.⁴

Let us pause briefly here, to address a difficult terminological and theoretical issue. The word ‘family’ is misleading in two ways: first, it is not true that ‘nuclear families’ – which is what is immediately implied if we use the term – are the ‘normal’ or even the most frequent arrangement in our society. Second, ‘family’ is a charged word, which suggests that there is an almost universal form of organization to which individuals belong or ought to belong. I do not intend to deal here with the enormous literature and debate about the family – its history, and its place in contemporary society. What is important is to stress that people live in a variety of arrangements: they are singles, couples, nuclear families, single parents. They are heterosexual and homosexual couples, they live in communes and in institutions. Possibly the most important eleme...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of contributors
• Introduction: the personal and the intellectual, fragments and order, international trends and national specificities
• Part One The Modern State and Contemporary Society – New Insights and New Contradictions
• 1 Crazy quilts: rethinking the welfare state debate from a woman’s point of view
• 2 Women and the welfare state: the transition from private to public dependence
• 3 Confusing concepts – confusing reality: a theoretical discussion of the patriarchal state
• 4 Women and the advanced welfare state – a new kind of patriarchal power?
• 5 Women’s new social role: contradictions of the welfare state
• Part Two Inside and Outside the Home: Women’s Experience and the Transformation of Public and Private
• 6 Division of family labour and gender identity
• 7 On the rationality of caring
• 8 The circular trap: women and part-time work
• 9 Between public and private: the birth of the professional housewife and the female consumer
• 10 Inside and outside the home: how our lives have changed through domestic automation
• Index