Explains not only how women are affected by changes in policy and programming, but how they can take an active role in shaping these changes.

Continuities and Discontinuities assesses the making of Canadian social and labour market policy in the context of two factors—globalization and neoconservatism. Specialists from a variety of fields and disciplines examine the relation between Canada's changing political economy and its social welfare and labour market policy. These essays analysing continuities and discontinuities in policy emerged from research that initially was presented at the 5th Conference on Social Welfare Policy held at Bishop's University in 1991, and that since then has been revised to reflect the situation of the mid-1990s. Part I introduces the three broad areas explored in the volume. Part II addresses new trends in Canadian political economy and their relation to public policy. Part III analyses social welfare policy. Of the essays included, several investigate the democratizing of the Canadian welfare state and controversies in the conception and definition of poverty. Others address the AIDS crisis, health policy, and social policy issues that primarily affect women, children, and native peoples. In Part IV recent Canadian labour market policies are investigated and appraised, and alternatives suggested or evaluated. One essay argues that employment security and high wages could generate high productivity and international competitiveness; another examines the impact of the growth in part-time employment on the welfare state; a third probes the relation of organized labour to a guaranteed annual income; others investigate the impact of neoconservatism on labour market policy-making in various provinces and regions. Globalization and neoconservatism continue to shape change and require constant evaluation. These thought-provoking and informative essays are an important contribution to the ongoing debate on social welfare and labour market policy in Canada.

During the tumultuous formative years of the Canadian welfare state, many women rose through the ranks of the federal civil service to oversee the massive recruitment of Canadian women to aid in the Second World War. Ironically, it became the task of these same female mandarins to encourage women to return to the household once the war was over. Pick One Intelligent Girl reveals the elaborate psychological, economic, and managerial techniques that were used to recruit and train women for wartime military and civilian jobs, and then, at war's end, to move women out of the labour force altogether. Negotiating the fluid boundaries of state, community, industry, and household, and drawing on a wide range of primary sources, Jennifer A. Stephen illustrates how women's relationships to home, work, and nation were profoundly altered during this period. She demonstrates how federal officials enlisted the help of a new generation of 'experts' to entrench a two-tiered training and employment system that would become an enduring feature of the Canadian state. This engaging study not only adds to the debates about the gendered origins of Canada's welfare state, it also makes an important contribution to Canadian social history, labour and gender studies, sociology, and political science.

The authors track the history of the welfare state from its establishment in the 1940s, through its development in the mid 1970s, to the complications of globalization and an increasingly diverse population in the 1990s.

The Politics of the Welfare State provides a thorough, comparative analysis of the welfare states in Canada, Sweden and the US detailing the emergence, growth, and recent unravelling of welfare states as well as the variation among them. Beginning with an overview of major welfare typologies and models and a detailed account of the welfare states in the three nations, the book moves on to cover the central theoretical approaches to welfare state analysis. The text concludes with a discussion of recent developments, which have transpired in the current era of globalization.

The feminization of poverty is increasingly recognized as a global phenomenon, affecting women not only in third world countries but also in the West. Taking globalization as its starting point, Western Welfare in Decline explores the plight of poor single mothers in five English-speaking nations that have implemented welfare restructuring: the United States, Canada, Britain, Australia, and Aotearoa/New Zealand. This restructuring is analyzed in relation to the emergence of neoliberalism, which valorizes the free market, individualism, and a circumscribed role for the state. Contributors to Western Welfare in Decline creatively combine theoretical and empirical analysis, emphasizing the economic and social goals of welfare reforms and the discourses of labor, gendered subjectivity, and the separation of public and private spheres. They document how the neoliberal project of welfare reform interacts with local cultures to create both similar and divergent new cultural formations and identify opportunities for asserting the social rights of poor single mothers who are being denied these rights at the level of the nation-state.

Social Policy and Practice in Canada: A History traces the history of social policy in Canada from the period of First Nations’ control to the present day, exploring the various ways in which residents of the area known today as Canada have organized themselves to deal with (or to ignore) the needs of the ill, the poor, the elderly, and the young. This book is the first synthesis on social policy in Canada to provide a critical perspective on the evolution of social policy in the country. While earlier work has treated each new social program as a major advance, and reacted with shock to neoliberalism’s attack on social programs, Alvin Finkel demonstrates that right-wing and left-wing forces have always battled to shape social policy in Canada. He argues that the notion of a welfare state consensus in the period after 1945 is misleading, and that the social programs developed before the neoliberal counteroffensive were far less radical than they are sometimes depicted. Social Policy and Practice in Canada: A History begins by exploring the non-state mechanisms employed by First Nations to insure the well-being of their members. It then deals with the role of the Church in New France and of voluntary organizations in British North America in helping the unfortunate. After examining why voluntary organizations gradually gave way to state-controlled programs, the book assesses the evolution of social policy in Canada in a variety of areas, including health care, treatment of the elderly, child care, housing, and poverty.

Gendering the State is a ground-breaking collection of studies that examines the efforts of women in countries all over the world to frame public policy debates on nationally critical issues in gendered terms. This is the latest volume in the Research Network on Gender and the State (RNGS) collaborative studies. Using the RNGS model of women's movement and women's policy actor strategies to influence public policy debates and state response, the book looks at data gathered from ten European countries (including Finland and Sweden), plus Japan, Australia, Canada, and the United States from the 1990s to today. The overall study is grouped into three distinct patterns of state change: state downsizing—particularly in social policy areas (Canada, Finland, the Netherlands, the United States, and Spain); expansion of state activities into previously less-regulated areas (Austria, France, Germany, and Sweden); and transformation—often constitutionally based—of representative structures (Australia, Belgium, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom). Examination of these patterns reveals the impact of the changes in state structures and national priorities on the effectiveness and ability of women's movement actors in achieving their goals.