Widely praised as an outstanding contribution to social welfare and feminist scholarship, Regulating the Lives of Women (1988, 1996) was one of the first books to apply a race and gender lens to the U.S. welfare state. The first two editions successfully exposed how myths and stereotypes built into welfare state rules and regulations define women as "deserving" or "undeserving" of aid depending on their race, class, gender, and marital status. Based on considerable new research, the preface to this third edition explains the rise of Neoliberal policies in the mid-1970s, the strategies deployed since then to dismantle the welfare state, and the impact of this sea change on women and the welfare state after 1996. Published upon the twentieth anniversary of "welfare reform," Regulating the Lives of Women offers a timely reminder that public policy continues to punish poor women, especially single mothers-of-color for departing from prescribed wife and mother roles. The book will appeal to undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate students of social work, sociology, history, public policy, political science, and women, gender, and black studies – as well as today’s researchers and activists.

On female sexual morality

This important book looks at the changes in AFDC, Social Security, and Unemployment Insurance, and welfare "reform." This new edition reveals how welfare policy scapegoats women more than ever to justify widespread retrenchment and to divert the public's attention from the real causes of the nation's mounting economic woes.

Analyzing key examples of the sexual and familial regulation (through the law) of girls and women in twentieth-century Canada, this work explores the ways in which class, race, and gender shape the definition and punishment of criminality. It also examines the changing social and legal definitions of "normal" versus "criminal" sexual and family relationships, using case studies of incest, childhood sexual abuse, wife assault, prostitution, girls in conflict with the law, and Native women and the law.

This collection of original essays looks at a topic of growing interest and debate in feminist and historical circles: the social regulation of women through law during the 19th and 20th centuries, and the resistance which emerged in response. The collection refutes the notion of women oppressed during the 19th century, unable to act in opposition to the law. When issues of motherhood and women's sexuality became areas of public policy, women began to negotiate the law, as case studies from Europe and the USA show. This book should be of interest to students of women's studies, sociology of law, and social policy.

First Published in 2013. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

"Lynne Haney is already an important voice in the sociology of welfare but this book marks her debut as a major figure in the sociology of punishment and the study of governmentality. Offending Women is a fascinating work that combines rich ethnographic detail with a structural account of the changing contours of contemporary governance. Its original contributions to prison ethnography, women's studies, and the sociology of the penal-welfare state will make it a reference point in each of these disciplines."--David Garland, author of The Culture of Control "Offending Women is an exemplary piece of work. Haney's writing is engaging, crisp, and smart. She brilliantly assesses the various intentions of the state and incarcerated women and clarifies how these intentions are based on orientations toward punishment and 'healing' that demand fundamental rethinking."--Rickie Solinger, author of Pregnancy and Power and co-editor of Interrupted Life: Experiences of Incarcerated Women in the United States "Lynne Haney brings together her stupendous skills as an ethnographer and her theoretical insights into how states work to explain how the treatment of imprisoned women has changed over the past decade. An altogether brilliant book."--Myra Marx Ferree, University of Wisconsin

A number of women’s issues serve to create novel policy problems that require creative, and sometimes unique, regulatory and legal responses. This book embarks upon a comparative case study approach to explore UK policymaking in the areas of abortion, rape, prostitution and pornography in turn. Each chapter engages a different institutional perspective to explore the influence of a range of bodies such as the legal system, medical profession, civil society, police force and mass media. The analysis reveals a common thread that runs throughout decision-making in these areas; a constant balancing act between regulation that purports to protect women, and regulation that supposedly reflects female liberation, with a continual dance between the labels of ‘criminal’ and ‘victim’ being performed by policy actors. Largely reflective of a dogmatic approach to the status of women, it is argued that different institutions retain strongholds over policymaking in these domains, prohibiting a joined-up approach. This has served to perpetuate harmful and negative stereotyping of women’s issues and create countless conundrums when the activities of women fall into more than one policy category.

Jane Ussher takes a unique approach to the study of the material and discursive practices associated with the construction and regulation of the female body.

Examines the organized efforts to reshape the law relating to young women's sexuality in the United States.