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SOCIAL POLICY (Conflict view: Donzelot - Policing the family (Surveillance…
SOCIAL POLICY
Functionalist View
Functionalists see society as built on harmony & consensus, & free from conflicts. They see the state as acting in the interests of society and its social polices as being good for all.
Functionalists see policies as helping families to perform their functions more effectively, making life better for their members.
Ronald Fletcher (1966) argues that the introduction of health, education & housing policies has led to the development of a welfare state that supports the family in performing its functions more effectively.
The existence of the National Health Service (NHS) means that with the help of doctors, nurses, hospitals & medicines, the family today is able to take care of members when sick.
Criticisms:
- It assumes that all members of the family benefit equally from social policies, whereas Feminists argue that policies benefit men more than women.
- It assumes there's a 'march of progress' with social policies, a view that's criticised by Donzelot
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The New Right View
They see the traditional nuclear family with male breadwinner & female homemaker, as self-reliant & capable of caring for its members.
In their view, social policies should avoid doing anything that might undermine this natural self-reliant family.
The New Right argue that governments weaken the family's self-reliance by providing overly generous welfare benefits. These included providing council housing for unmarried teen mothers & payments to support lone-parent families.
Murray argues that these benefits offer 'perverse incentives' e..g rewarding irresponsible/anti-social behaviour. For example:
- if fathers see that the state will maintain their children, some may abandon their responsibilities to their family.
- providing council housing for teen mothers encourages young girls to become pregnant
- growth of lone-parent families encouraged by welfare benefits means more boys grow up without a male authority figure - leads to juvenile delinquency
The New Right supports following social policies:
- cuts in welfare benefits & tighter restrictions on who is eligible for benefits
- policies to support the traditional nuclear family e..g taxes which favour married couples
- the Child Support Agency - making absent fathers pay for children
Criticisms
- Feminists argue that policies are an attempt to justify a return to traditional nuclear family, which oppresses women
- cutting benefits may simply drive many into poverty, leading to further social problems
Feminist View
Liberal Feminists argue that changes such as equal pay act and better maternity leave/pay helps gender equality.
- 1969 Divorce Reform Act - gave women the right to divorce on an equal footing to men - leading to spike in divorce rate
- 1972 Equal Pay act - step towards women's independence from men. Generous maternity pay made it easier for women to have children & then return to work.
Radical Feminists argue that patriarchy is so entrenched in society that policy changes aren't enough to bring around gender equality & that sexism still exists
- Little evidence of the 'new man' who does share domestic chores. Women have a 'dual burden' of paid work/unpaid housework & the family remains patriarchal
- Some argue that generous maternity cover compared to paternity cover reinforces the idea that women should be the primary caregiver
- Dunscome & Marsden argue that women suffer from 'triple shift' - paid work, domestic work & emotional work (harder to assess as its harder to quantify emotion work)
- Working class mothers suffer more as they cant afford childcare
- Mirlees-Black points out that 1/4 of women experience domestic violence & many are reluctant to leave partner
Gender Regimes - Eileen Drew (liberal fem.)
Drew distinguishes between 2 types of family policies, each based on different 'gender regimes'
- Famillistic gender regimes - policies based on traditional gender roles with male instrumental & female expressive role, patriarchal policies e.g. Greece, Turkey
- Individualistic gender regimes - policies based on the notion that spouses should be equal, not on basis of their sex. type of gender regime that is becoming the norm in the West e.g. Sweden, France