Women’s Voluntary Social Welfare Work in India: The Cultural Construction of Gender and Class
Author(s)
Caplan, Pat
Abstract
Recent work on the state in advanced capitalist societies suggests that it produces and reproduces the conditions for capital accumulation to occur. Gough characterizes the welfare state as the “use of state power to modify the reproduction of labour power and to maintain the non-working population in capitalist societies.” Ginsburg suggests that the social security system in such societies is concerned with reproducing a reserve army of labor, the patriarchal family, and the disciplining of the labor force. This is not a simple process: on the one hand, the welfare state is geared to the needs of capital; on the other hand, it is also a response to the pressures and struggles of the working class.
