Gender, Work and Social Control
A Century of Disability Benefits
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Beschreibung
This book uses previously unknown archive materials to explore the meaning of the term ‘incapable of work’ over a hundred years (1911–present). Nowadays, people claiming disability benefits must undergo medical tests to assess whether or not they are capable of work. Media reports and high profile campaigns highlight the problems with this system and question whether the process is fair. These debates are not new and, in this book, Jackie Gulland looks at similar questions about how to assess people’s capacity for work from the beginning of the welfare state in the early 20th century. Amongst many subject areas, she explores women’s roles in the domestic sphere and how these were used to consider their capacity for work in the labour market. The book concludes that incapacity benefit decision making is really about work: what work is, what it is not, who should do it, who should be compensated when work does not provide a sufficient income and who should be exempted from any requirement to look for it.
Winner of The Richard Titmuss Book Award 2020, awarded by The Social Policy Association Provides the historical context for the current debate on incapacity benefits and conditionality Offers new insights into the different forms that conditionality can take in benefit decision making Examines the gendered nature of decision making on incapacity benefits
Autor*in
Jackie Gulland
Themen in »Gender, Work and Social Control«
Welfare State Disability Rights Benefits Sociology History Gender gender, sexuality and law disability studies ethnicity, class, gender and crime
Stimmen zu »Gender, Work and Social Control«
“Gender, Work and Social Control: A Century of Disability Benefits is a carefully researched book that will be of interest to Critical Social Policy readers. Its strength lies in the extensive use of appeal hearing notes and decisions to bring to life the struggles over an extended period that sick and disabled people have had in accessing incapacity benefits. In doing so, it demonstrates various means through which the state and, under the National Insurance Act 1911 its proxies, have sought to limit the number of incapacity benefit claims by denying claimants were incapacitated for wage-labour, but, in contrast, were malingering, hiding their displeasure for wage-labour behind claims of sickness and disablement” (Critical Social Policy, Chris Grover, Lancaster University, UK)
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