IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jscscx/v6y2017i2p48-d98599.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Class and Gender Relations in the Welfare State: The Contradictory Dictates of the Norm of Female Autonomy

Author

Listed:
  • Delphine Serre

    (Sorbonne Paris Cité, Paris Descartes University, CERLIS, 45 rue des Saints Pères, 75006 Paris, France)

Abstract

One debate among feminist scholars of the welfare state is whether it supports women’s subordination or emancipation. Since the 1980s, the French state apparatus has been experiencing a conflict of values, between feminism and familialism. The research presented here probed how these distinct institutional-level conceptions of gender might be manifest at the interactional level. Analysis is based on ethnographic research in four social service offices in France. The article explores the childrearing and behavioral norms that female social workers promote for mothers in regular contact with social services. It first shows how central the norm of female autonomy is in these social workers’ thinking, which in turn reveals their gendered expectations of the women they see, beyond their role of mother. It then demonstrates that this conception of female autonomy is closely tied to a class position, as it is a model from the middle classes. The article lastly examines how this unequal situation in terms of social class, but not of gender domination, influences professional practices relative to the working classes. Combining gender and class dimensions in analyzing interactions with the welfare state bureaucracy helps to identify the contradictions in the job of social worker, caught between the goal of emancipation and the mandate of social control.

Suggested Citation

  • Delphine Serre, 2017. "Class and Gender Relations in the Welfare State: The Contradictory Dictates of the Norm of Female Autonomy," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 6(2), pages 1-10, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:6:y:2017:i:2:p:48-:d:98599
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/6/2/48/pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/6/2/48/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Magali Mazuy, 2002. "Situations familiales et fécondité selon le milieu social. Résultats à partir de l'enquête EHF de 1999," Working Papers 114, Institut National d'Études Démographiques (INED).
    2. Clara Champagne & Ariane Pailhé & Anne Solaz, 2015. "Le temps domestique et parental des hommes et des femmes : quels facteurs d'évolutions en 25 ans ?," Économie et Statistique, Programme National Persée, vol. 478(1), pages 209-242.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mikyoung Lee & Marko Majer & Boyoung Kim, 2019. "The Social Welfare Service Delivery System to Reinforce Sustainable Social Participation," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 8(9), pages 1-13, September.
    2. Wonjin Song & Boyoung Kim, 2019. "Culture and Art Education to Promote Cultural Welfare in Civil Society," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 8(12), pages 1-13, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lamia Kandil & Hélène Perivier, 2017. "La division sexuée du travail dans les couples selon le statut marital en France - une étude à partir des enquêtes emploi du temps de 1985-1986, 1998-1999, et 2009-2010," Documents de Travail de l'OFCE 2017-03, Observatoire Francais des Conjonctures Economiques (OFCE).
    2. Catherine Sofer & Claire Thibout, 2019. "Women’s investment in career and the household division of labour," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 51(60), pages 6535-6557, December.
    3. Lamia Kandil & Hélène Périvier, 2017. "La division sexuée du travail dans les couples selon le statut marital en France," Working Papers hal-03457505, HAL.
    4. Tubaro, Paola & Coville, Marion & Le Ludec, Clément & Casilli, Antonio A., 2022. "Hidden inequalities: The gendered labour of women on micro-tasking platforms," Internet Policy Review: Journal on Internet Regulation, Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG), Berlin, vol. 11(1), pages 1-26.
    5. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/56j05jth3g9eoq20p24hjbt2um is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Thomas Amossé & Joanie Cayouette-Remblière, 2022. "A New Nomenclature for French Statistics: The Household PCS [Une nouvelle nomenclature, la PCS Ménage]," Post-Print hal-03770348, HAL.
    7. Marta Pasqualini & Marta Dominguez Folgueras & Emanuele Ferragina & Olivier Godechot & Ettore Recchi & Mirna Safi, 2022. "Who took care of what? The gender division of unpaid work during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic in France," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-03677747, HAL.
    8. Henri Martin & Hélène Périvier, 2018. "Les échelles d'équivalence à l'épreuve des nouvelles configurations familiales," Post-Print hal-03604392, HAL.
    9. Henri Martin & Hélène Périvier, 2018. "Les échelles d'équivalence à l'épreuve des nouvelles configurations familiales," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-03604392, HAL.
    10. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/56j05jth3g9eoq20p24hjbt2um is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Gregor Bouville, 2019. "Choisir ses horaires et en payer le prix. Les horaires flexibles et la conciliation travail-famille des femmes salariées," Post-Print hal-03227072, HAL.
    12. Lamia Kandil & Hélène Périvier, 2017. "La division sexuée du travail dans les couples selon le statut marital en France," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-03457505, HAL.
    13. Fiona Ottaviani, 2018. "Time in the Development of Indicators on Sustainable Wellbeing: A Local Experiment in Developing Alternative Indicators," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 135(1), pages 53-73, January.
    14. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/445bs70a2o9ufavlerqnopsvg1 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/445bs70a2o9ufavlerqnopsvg1 is not listed on IDEAS

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:6:y:2017:i:2:p:48-:d:98599. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.