This paper(1) argues that the JET Scheme, a jobs, education and training scheme for sole parent pensioners, is limited and insufficient to its tasks of preparing sole parents for entry into the workforce and minimising the state's financial burden. It argues that JET training programmes ascribe and regulate female identity and maintain the gendered subjugation of sole mothers, confirming rather than decreasing their dependence on welfare. The representation and language used to promote JET position sole mothers within a functionalist discourse of motherhood and the nuclear family. The paper explores the ramifications of such positioning for the women's prospects for entry into full time employment. It concludes that JET does not meet its goal of lessening the long term welfare burden of the state. Equally, policy which promotes low paid part time work, combined with partial' pension, may serve to entrench the very cycle of dependence it seeks to dismantle.
Introduction
Following the Department of Social Security Review (1986-9), the major strategy implemented in policy for sole parents was the JET (Jobs, Education & Training) Scheme. This clearly placed the focus on an expert-defined normative need, deemed to be economic. The state's answer to economic need is the preparation for, the provision and availability of paid work, and to promote paid work for sole mothers as the normative ideal. In line with the dominant discourse of maternal responsibility, ie: maternal primary care as normative throughout the child's formative years, the state's broad goal was entry into part-time employment. JET was to be the technique most likely to produce achievement of this goal. It, however, you have little experience of the workforce, employment may be neither the norm nor normative. My investigations indicate a level of resistance to this state initiative which call into question its efficacy.
If it is accepted that the immediate primary need of the sole parent is economic, it can be argued that accessing the Sole Parent Benefit and staying on it for longer than an immediate crisis period serves to disadvantage the recipient in many areas, including the economic. This paper attempts to explicate this possibility by focusing on the JET labour training programme. It suggests that compliance with this program, which aims to integrate the mothers into the part-time workforce, while retaining the role of primary caregiver and maintaining eligibility for partial pension, ensures an ongoing subsistence standard of living.
Social policy as normalising discourse
This analysis looks beneath the surface of the strategies that inhere in JET and questions the discourse and power relations which guide it, and are reflected in its language and content. The state's financial burden continues to increase with the rapid growth of numbers of sole parent pensioners, who remain predominantly female (see Evans, 1993, Lambert, 1994). JET aimed to provide a service that would both diminish dependence and address unmet needs in the area of gaps in the employment prospects of sole parents - as such needs are defined and interpreted by the expertise of the state.
Historically, labour organisation in Australia has explicitly worked to exclude women from many areas of the workforce, in the cause of male working class wages. This male-centric labour lobby has contributed to the structure of the Australian state (see O'Donnell & Hall, 1988, Ryan & Conlon, 1989). It has also contributed indirectly to the construction of a specific female identity and model of motherhood which the JET programme serves to entrench (Orloff, 1996:96). According to Orloff (1996:83), the stratifying effects of welfare states may create, maintain or strengthen class, status and or occupational differentiation. I argue that JET training courses strengthen gender differentiation while maintaining occupational differentiation by a focus on retail, hospitality and office work, traditional service sector occupations for women.
I further argue that JET ascribes and regulates female identity. It does not position the women involved as active members of an active society, but maintains the gendered subjugation of sole mothers, entrenching, rather than decreasing their dependence on welfare. Orloff (1996:81) posits that welfare states, by their very character, contribute to the formation and mobilisation of gendered identities and interests. I contend that the language used to promote this particular social policy positions sole mothers within a functionalist discourse of motherhood and the nuclear family. The sole mother's status places her outside this ideal-type model of the family but, as Watson (1995:165) has argued, the politics and language of welfare have been crucial in repositioning women over the last twenty years. I will explore the ramifications of such positioning for identity and for the women's current and future prospects for entry into the full-time labour market.
JET is an example of what Yeatman (1990:133) calls the government's active system approach to public income support programmes. This terminology relates to the OECD's (1988) definition of the `active society,' which recognised the changing nature of the workplace and of work in capitalist societies. These changes, including the reality of ongoing unemployment and the future probability of many people working part-time hours, require that individuals assume an alternative worldview. The OECD urged both governments and citizens to adopt changes in attitudes to leisure, personal development through ongoing education and a preparedness, to embrace the possibility of career changes. The psychological shift envisaged is that the citizen in need of some form of social security will perceive him/herself as `active' in the process of citizen-state interdependence, rather than as a `passive' client, who may become increasingly dependent upon the state (Dean, 1993).
In JET we see a shift towards tying income support to participation in labour market programmes, training or education. Yeatman makes two telling points. The first is that in Australia there is no tradition of industry or employer commitment to the provision of ongoing employment after completion of training related work experience. Yeatman's second point is that this `active system' will likely contribute to the development of relatively unregulated and poorly unionised part-time casual labour markets (1990:133). Connell argues that the state is characterised by a gender regime which constitutes both men and women in idiosyncratic subject positions (Connell, 1990:253). Franzway et al. and Connell argue that there is a gender division of labour in state services, where women continue to dominate in some categories of human service state employment. Women continue to fill insecure, part-time, casual and unskilled jobs while men fill promotional, supervisory, upwardly mobile jobs (Franzway et al. 1989: 7-8; Connell, 1990: 523-527). The following description and critique of the JET Scheme indicates that the afore mentioned gender regime remains intact at the lower end of the labour market.
The JET scheme
JET, a jobs, education and training program, is jointly administered by the Commonwealth Departments of Social Security, Employment, Education and Training, and Human Services and Health. Its main objective is to help sole parent pensioners enter/re-enter the workforce by providing an integrated program of advice, access to education, training and employment opportunities, and assistance in accessing childcare while participating in labour training programs. The DSS has overall responsibility for the program, and has employed JET Advisers, who are the main client contact for a range of issues, including planning for the future.
JET is a voluntary program, open to all sole parent pensioners. However, the parents who are particularly targeted are those whose youngest child is fourteen years old, those who have been receiving the Supporting Parents Pension for more than twelve months and whose youngest child is six years old, and teenage sole parents.
Parents electing to participate in JET have a number of options, not all of which result in fast-tracked entry into the workforce. Many parents access the extra money available through JET to return to either full or part time study, at either TAFE or university. Some teenage parents may utilise the scheme as a means to completing their secondary education. This means an initial education entry payment of $200, plus an extra $30 a week on top of the pension. The alternative pathway is completion of one of many labour training programmes, focusing on the retail and hospitality industries or basic computer skills and office training. These training schemes are conducted by organisations such as Skillshare, throughout the suburbs, and by some highly credible non-government organisations, such as the Mamre Project in St Marys in Western Sydney. Over the last twelve months there has been massive defunding of many Skillshare projects, with much resultant public outrage, as the Federal government attempts to economically rationalise such schemes, in the name of efficiency.
The labour market training schemes may be up to three months in duration, offer organised child care and a short period of work experience at the end of the program. In tune with the implicit parenting discourse which grounds JET, the work experience is part time and any employment opportunities that may result are also of a casual or part time nature. It is these training schemes that are the focus of this paper.
State - defined priority: positioning identity
Posters promoting JET were distributed to various welfare agencies working with and supporting families. As a coordinator of such an agency, I was appalled at the prescriptive nature of the punch line to this poster and the accompanying brochure. As a feminist worker, committed to empowering women to make their own decisions as to their rights, obligations and priorities, I felt personally confronted. I regarded the language used as an attack on the way I had chosen, years before, to conduct both my mothering and my financial autonomy.
Now You Can Go Back To Work Without Neglecting Your Most Important Job (emphasis added)
This offensive and somehow non-negotiable statement-as-title would seem to infer that full-time working mothers are derelict in their primary duty. Further, this strategic use of language seems to me to be aiming to fix the identity of female sole parents. By locating sole parents in this one undebated position, the government ignores the multiple other places of performance and actions simultaneously occupied and undertaken by women as mothers (Gibson-Graham, 1995: 182). My argument is not whether or not parenting is the mother's most important job, but who has the right to decide this for her. Australian sole mothers are more dependent on public provisions than their American counterparts, with 57% American sole mothers in paid employment as against 35% in Australia. While there are clearly great differences between the two economies and two philosophies concerning social welfare it may well be argued that these differences reflect different models of motherhood, different beliefs about child care and of mothers working for pay(2). It is worth noting that in Australia 62% of sole mothers' household income comes from public sources, while the figure for sole fathers' income is only 23% (Orloff, 1996: 85).
Ordering the `conduct of conduct'
The concept of autonomy is a nebulous one for citizens of a liberal democracy, subject to modern governance. I accept that Foucault's concept of governmentality (1979) assumes a complex interdependent relationship between state and citizens, in which complete autonomy may never be possible. JET and its brochure are examples of techniques of government. In his paper on Social Security practices, Dean (1993:101), following Foucault, refers to them as `practices of the self'. Dean's comments on contemporary practices of income support are particularly pertinent to the discourse framing JET when he argues that these practices `... seek to define the proper and legitimate orientation and conduct of those who claim support' and that `... such practices seek to shape the desires, needs, aspirations, capacities, and attitudes, of the individuals who come within their ken' (1993:99).
Dean invokes the notion of state - citizen interdependence when he states that these governmental practices define needs `by working upon the relation of the individual to him or herself and demand the complicity of the individual in these practices of self-shaping' (1993:99). Incitement to participation in JET training calls up complex disparate practices, which Burchell (1993:268) refers to as `... techniques of the self, of arts or aesthetics of existence'. On the one hand, a decision to pursue job-skilling involves practices of the self which centre on concrete, practical economies of existence. On the other, a concomitant perceived obligation to engage in part-time employment involves practices of the self which may require changes to the woman's model of mothering, including her attitudes to external child care. Participation in JET demands disciplines which Foucault (1982) suggests affect the way in which individuals conduct themselves. As such, they represent practices of the self rather than techniques of government domination. If, however, the sole mother perceives herself as being coerced or called upon to act upon herself in an unfamiliar way, these two practices may not necessarily sit in harmony (Burchell, 1993:268-9). The response may well be one of resistance and contestation.
As a piece of state propaganda the JET publication clearly indicates that the state remains comfortable with a discourse of female identity that links femininity to maternity. The state's apparent assumption that this strategy will be compliantly received by its target subjects points to the power of both normative and `fraternal' discourses. Pringle & Watson argue that the state is not a structure of inequities, but the site of competing discourses and practices. In fraternal discourse, `women are treated as the objects or recipients of policy decisions rather than full participants in them' (1990:234). If such discourses are sites of gender construction, they are equally sites open to conflict and contestation by the subjects they seek to construct in prescribed subjectivities and gender relations (Pringle & Watson, 1990: 229-235). Both statistics and anecdotal evidence point to the fact that JET is subject to considerable resistance, providing the contestation of which Pringle and Watson speak.
A JET Facts Sheet (June 1994) states that 39,393 JET clients undertook further education (this includes sole parents, Widows B and Carer pensioners). It states that 45,702 jobs were taken up by JET clients (out of a total of 194,923 JET clients interviewed). While estimated savings on sole parent pension outlay are based on these, figures for JET clients registered with the CES and the 73,480 labour market program placements provided by DEET, there is no indication of follow-up research on how long the 45,702 pensioners remained employed and no indication of part time or full time status.(3)
A gender - specific discourse
The JET scheme was devised for sole parents of both genders. The photographic illustration on the cover of the JET booklet is that of a woman and child. Does this mean to suggest therefore that parenting is a female sole parent's most important job? Does the image preclude (sole) fathers, whose primary job has traditionally been that of breadwinner first, parent second'? Following the DSS Review, there has been considerable restructuring of income security provisions. Shaver and others (Orloff, 1996) have argued that there has been a gender shift from `difference' to `sameness' in conditions of provision. It can, however, be argued that different gender identities are underlined by the Australian system (Orloff, 1996: 89-90). While JET purports to target both fathers and mothers, I suggest its discourse aims to attract mothers with its appeal to a specific model of motherhood rather than parenthood, and strengthens differentiation in gendered identities in a way that is economically disempowering.
Ambiguity and contradictory ideology can be detected in JET as a strategy of social policy. The state offers encouragement and incentives to sole mothers to break the chain of public dependence on the one hand, while on the other it seems to remain embedded in a discourse of motherhood and the family that is of the era of the fifties. In 1950s Europe married women's work rates fell as the ideology of the family was strengthened - reversing the World War 2 discourse which had empowered women, albeit unintentionally, by inciting them to `work' in the cause of the war effort. Similarly, the role of mother and housewife was promoted and came to be regarded as the crucial element of female identity (Borchorst & Sim, 1987: 129).
The housework site is not a site that is peculiar to state mechanisms of discursive formation. The representation of women in the print and visual media, from the 1950s on, was one that was presumably perceived as conforming to the normative ideal-type of femininity and female identity. For decades women were portrayed as achieving self-actualisation primarily through perfection in attention to motherly and housewifely duties. The ambience of the JET illustration would seem to enforce this norm. Such media representation is essentialist and universalist in its assumption that there is an essence of woman rooted in the home and its obligations and that this inheres equally in all women. The visual media has the diffuse power both to reproduce and constitute, and to further entrench and encode discursive practices. For example, a Woolworths commercial portrays a wife and mother who works full time, but still knows it is her job to get the evening meal served on time for husband and children. In another commercial we are assured that today's young woman, while liberated and `flatting', still deserves congratulations for using Miracle margarine to make her own muffins. The JET illustration conforms to this model and confirms the power relations that inhere in the continued constitution of a male-defined normative female identity. In naming the mother's primary role, JET disallows the possibility of an equally valid plurality of subjectivity.
The homogeneous subject of policy
The state's discourse of sole parenting and, indeed, all parenting is similarly universalist, and it is here acknowledged that this may be pragmatically necessary to the planning of social policy. As Yeatman (1990:155) argues, politics involves the reduction of complexity by means of decisions and policies, but this in turn leaves the field of politics open to resistance and contestation by those subjects affected by the policy. The language and representation used in JET results in a policy assumption that all sole parents are the same, By considering sole parents as a homogeneous subject the state can be seen to be satisfying rights and needs with due regard for the common good. But it must be asked what is the common good in a nation which is considered to be the model of multiculturalism? Similarly, it is argued there is no common model of woman, or female sole parent, or female subjectivity.
Homogeneity underpins and is reflected in JET. Job and skill training schemes which focus on preparation for entry into work in retail, hospitality, and basic office work assume a homogeneous trait in sole parents. This is that sole parents, predominantly female, want to work part time in the lower paid end of the service sector, want to stay home for the major part of their active parenting lives, want a job rather than a career. The notion that part time work is ideal in `allowing' women to retain primary responsibility for children and home obscures an important mechanism which reproduces women's subordination (Smith, 1987: 251).
I have highlighted Yeatman's concern that certain techniques of the active society policy mix may result in an entrenched underclass of labour force participants. Harris expressed her fears for women in the `pink ghetto' of paid employment; she noted the continuance of the gender regime in the Australian work force and stated that `increasingly, more women are stuck in casual, low-paid work and insecure work where they are used to fill in at the busy times' (SMH, 30/10/95). This is the experience of many women I have spoken to, who have taken on part time work to increase their economic viability. But often it is about more than economics. After engaging in various job-skill programmes, including JET, the women seize the opportunity to assert aspects of their identity, other than that of `mother'. To conform to society's perception of `good mothers', in which at-home primary care of the young is the norm, they seek not full time, but part time work. If they lose this work when the employer's goal is met, the women perceive themselves as employees of little value. They may also be perceived, and perceive themselves, as not quite adequate as mothers for going out to work in the first place. Many women see casual, part time work as having its own form of inbuilt, if unintended, parental leave and this may be argued is a benefit that decommodifies labour, in Esping Anderson's sense. That is, they see themselves as freely `choosing', rather than being obliged, to work, and reaping an additional benefit through the occasional paid parental leave days. But such part time work may reduce a working woman's potential and capacity as continuous service with a single employer often carries the possibility of increased wages (Orloff, 1996:91).
Harris contends that members of this group have no voice and fear being seen as troublemakers if they find a voice and speak out. Like Yeatman, Harris raises the possibility of such women becoming `the industrial fodder of the 90s'. She argues that while there is a significant group of women who are successfully breaking through the `glass Ceiling', the Australian workforce remains largely organised along 1950s lines, with the women at the bottom unable to access adequate staff development or promotion. In this scenario, women's primary role is still to maintain the household or to look after men at work as handmaidens as Pringle noted in 1988. Orloff's statement confirms Harris' view:- `The implicit male standard for `worker' obscures power relations in the family and conditions under which people do domestic work and provide care for children' (1996:91). Women who become so positioned have little choice but to remain in low-paid casual positions. An employer told Harris that most of his supervisors were female and that `the rest of my ladies (over 1000) don't want careers' (SMH, 30/10/95). It may well be that many of the `ladies' targeted by JET also don't want careers, but surely this is an individual decision. The state, basing the JET initiative on interviews with three groups of women, appears to make the same assumptions as the supervisor quoted, and plan its programmes accordingly.
Participation in JET is voluntary and women are not pressured to become involved. Perhaps this voluntarist aspect serves to make the programme more seductive to women who feel they are otherwise controlled by a selectivity process characterised by many compulsory components. This diminishes its effectiveness in terms of government savings when one considers the vast number of sole mothers who, either as a strategy of resistance or from adherence to a common culture in which mothers have not gone to work, have no intention of pursuing paid employment until their pension eligibility runs out. When this time comes after years outside the labour market, many women have no chance of employment without months of reskilling at the state's expense - the cycle continues.
The new paternalism
Some have likened the state to the conjugal family in its construction of preference of family roles. The state constructs parenting as the mother's primary (your most important) job and then decides it would be good for her to earn some extra income through paid employment. The mother is thereby positioned as wanting to remain primarily dependent on her surrogate provider, the state, and can regard her earnings from part time work as `pin money', in much the same way as she would, in earlier times, have regarded a personal allowance from a middle class husband - as distinct from allotted housekeeping money. So, even when `working' the mother is located firmly in the private sphere and remains positioned, vis a vis the state, not as the possessive individual/purchasing consumer but as the negative of this as client, to use Fraser's (1989) terminology.
The notion of client does not have the resonance of social citizenship. The words `client' and `customer' may both convey the sense of someone who is empowered and pays another for service, rather than receiving service as a right of citizenship, but in the world of social welfare provision `client' has different connotations. Rather, it suggests a person who lacks or has failed and the sole parent family is implicitly regarded as a failed family, regardless of the cause of that status or of changing norms. This acts to entrench a functionalist discourse of both the state and the family. Further, motherhood statements and the language in which they are expressed, hint at the presence of a New Right ideal of the family. This was one of the ambiguities inherent in social policies of the former Labor government, a party which, ironically, spoke its abhorrence of neo-Conservatism.
We have a Federal Government whose every policy statement bespeaks a commitment to a philosophy of minimalist government and already there is evidence of a retreat to a pure model of residual welfare(4). So far pensions have been left alone. Training programmes for the long term unemployed, similar to JET, have already been targeted for de-funding. The irony is that, if it becomes more difficult to access extra benefits and schemes such as JET under the sole parent pension umbrella, some of the problems I highlight may cease to be an issue. Clearly, recent family policy initiatives appear to be underpinned by a New Right ideology of the family, in which a return to the patriarchal nuclear family of the 1950s is seen as desirable.
Where to after mothering?
The Sole Parent Pension cuts out when the youngest child turns sixteen. In our society career progression is increasingly contingent on youth. The areas in which both men and women can gain meaningful and financially rewarding employment once they have passed the age of forty are rapidly narrowing. This applies not only to blue collar jobs or those in the lower paid sectors of the white collar workforce, but to people with tertiary qualifications, professional expertise and an unbroken record of full time paid employment. Salary and career inequities that exist for women in professions such as law, medicine and teaching are well documented (see O'Donnell & Hall, 1988; Dawson & Radi, 1984). Getting stuck on the lower or middle rungs of the professional ladder is the price women have paid for electing to absent themselves from full time employment during their children's formative years. This may often be a philosophical decision but it may equally be the only `choice' open to some women. This is particularly the case for women parenting alone.
Changes in the economy and occupational structures of capitalist societies have led to the construction and growth of part time jobs that are gender specific. As a result, the choices women make about part time work reflect both the material and ideological constraints of our sex-gender system (Smith, 1987: 236). If sole mothers elect to live outside a partnered relationship, seeing themselves as financially independent of a man, they are often in a no-win situation. Having gone on the pension in the first place, most feel they cannot afford to get off it completely and thus lose their important non-cash benefits.
It is interesting to propose an imaginary future scenario for sole mothers who adhere to prescriptive policy guidelines, such as that implied in JET. The result may well be the female sole parent whose CV shows a minimal secondary education and a record of part time employment in poorly paid service sector jobs. The job record is rarely unbroken, but more often intermittent, showing little evidence of prized ambition or upward mobility. The female sole parent who allows her identity to be ascribed, who defers to the state's ideological prioritising as to what is her `most important' job, discovers once her pension eligibility has reached its use-by date (when her youngest child turns sixteen) that her surrogate provider is no longer about to sustain this role.
Conclusion
Writing of the changes in the development of policy provisions Shaver (1993) stated:- `... as it applies to the provision of basic income support, a gender-neutral model of citizen worker has largely overtaken earlier provisions framed in terms of gender difference and a distinctive role for women as dependent on a male breadwinner in Australian social security' (cited in Orloff, 1996: 94). This may be so in broad terms. However, I would argue that the patriarchal symbolic (Pringle, 1995) remains and is clearly reflected in JET discourse, which is implicitly gender specific, rather than gender neutral.
JET seems to confirm the view that participation in paid labour is appropriate so long as the mother retains the primary responsibility for the rearing of children and maintenance of the household. Sole mothers are desirable for part time work because employers are aware that mothers will accomodate themselves to limited, or intermittent temporary employment because of family restrictions. This undermines the women's long-term possibilities to develop the record and continuous skills required to establish credibility as a potential player in either the full time labour market or towards a career path.
I concede, like Smith (1987:249) that many mothers will, at certain points in their working experience, want these jobs as their only viable work option, complete with inbuilt inequities. In fairness it is noted that this and the age sixteen cut off point for pension eligibility is one of the driving agendas behind JET. It may also indicate recognition of the possibility that part time work may well be the way of the future for both genders in many sections of the Australian workplace. It does not, however, address the social and economic positioning which occurs when one's labour market activity shows a decade or more of transient, low-skilled work participation. To be so positioned accords a secondary status which, as Smith (1987:249) argues, reinforces the economic dependence of women on men, as well as women's primary work in household reproduction.
It may be seen that, as a policy strategy, JET does not meet its goal of lessening the long-term welfare burden of the state - despite the strategic proferring of statistics which indicate moderate success. Equally, policy which promotes low-paid, part-time work combined with partial pension may serve to entrench the very cycle of dependence it seeks to dismantle.
The language of the welfare state has been grounded in a foundationalist discourse of needs and rights which seems to reflect an arbitrary notion of fixed identity and meaning. Fraser (1989) and Yeatman (1990) have already attempted to move beyond this model with a discourse which more appropriately reflects the multi-faceted nature of people's desires. Interests and desires will depend on the social relationships with which women engage, and the power relations that attach to both relationships and women's positions in them. Pringle and Watson (1996) suggest that our engagement with the poststructuralist state should reflect the post-modern society in which we operate. We need to adopt a language shift which moves beyond the once useful needs/rights discourse that was more suited to the halcyon days of the welfare state. As we approach the new millenium, we need to recognise that women's interests both reflect and are constructed by the changed interests and desires of today's society. Johnson (1996) is right to suggest that our very identity as full citizens is contingent on such feminist engagement.
This paper has problematized one strategy of social policy, the JET Scheme, and has argued that JET discourse reflects a model of motherhood and female identity which is related to the history of labour organisation and state structure (Orloff, 1996: 96). Orloff (1996) argues that analyses of liberal regimes and social provisions that focus only on class, market and state are inadequate. By focusing on JET I have attempted to broaden the analysis and further the awareness raised by Connell (1987, 1990) and many others of the gender regime of the state. I have shown the gendered content and potentially disabling effect of one current welfare programme. JET's effectiveness as a technique of governance lies in its ability to coopt its target group by calling up a very Australian model of femininity and motherhood. Through such technologies women are more firmly positioned within models of normative identity, gendered subjugation and ongoing dependence.
Paper accepted for publication: November 1997
Endnotes
(1) This is a version of the paper given at the Australian Sociological Association Conference at Hobart in December, 1996. I am indebted to my anonymous reviewers for their constructive suggestions and encouraging comments on my work. I am grateful to Associate Professor Deborah Lupton for her ongoing support and critical skills whenever they are needed. I thank Dr Di Johnson for her friendship and her support in my endeavours.
(2) Orloff notes variations between the U.S. and Australia in the extent of the state's contribution to family incomes, in Australia, all types of families with children receive approximately twice the proportion of their income from public sources that their American counterparts do. Australian mothers are more likely to work part time than Americans, and are more likely to be totally dependent housewives. The work participation rate for American married mothers is 6% higher than in Australia (1996:85).
(3) This paper emerged, in part, from data from interviews with sole mother pensioners. The study is part of a wider research project investigating the subjectivity of sole mothers and their responses to policy initiatives. In my small-scale study there is no evidence of lasting employment resulting from JET training, but strong evidence of ongoing participation in job-skilling or education courses, while pensioner status is maintained and no employment results or is sought. This has also been my observation during four years of teaching at TAFE, where many of my students were sole mother pensioners, with an almost identical history of skilling and training via ongoing education courses. This, in itself, suggests a subtle form of resistance to policy initiatives.
(4) See Bryson (1992) for an analysis of models of welfare provision. Bryson argues that Australia has always been only a `safety net' welfare state. Over the last few years, tightening of the criteria for all family payments has resulted in that safety net shrinking even further as the selectivity process is narrowed.
REFERENCES
Burchell, G. (1993), `Liberal Government and techniques of the self' in Economy and Society Vol. 22, No. 3, pp 267 - 282.
Connell, R.W. (1990), `The state, gender, and sexual politics' in Theory and Society, Volume 19, pp 507-544.
Dawson, M. & Radi, H. (eds) (1984), Against the Odds, Sydney, Hale & Ironmonger.
Dean, M. (1993) `Social Security Practices, Self-formation, and the Active Society' in Theory and Practice in Australian Social Policy: Rethinking the Fundamentals. Volume 2. Contributed papers. S.P.R.C. Reports and Proceedings No 112, Peter Saunders & Sheila Shaver (eds), University of New South Wales, Kensington.
Evans, P.M. (1993) `Work Incentives and Sole Mothers: Comparing Australian Policy' in Australian Journal Of Social Issues Vol. 28 No. 4, pp 317 - 333
Foucault, M. (1979) `Governmentality' in Ideology and Consciousness 6, pp 5-21
Foucault, M. (1982) `The Subject and Power' in Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, H.L. Dreyfus & P. Rabinow, New York, Harvester Wheatsheaf
Fraser, N. (1989) Unruly Practices, Minneapolis, University of Minneapolis Press.
Franzway, S. Court, D. & Connell, R.W. (1989) Staking a Claim: feminism, bureaucracy and the state, Sydney, Allen & Unwin.
Gibson - Graham, J.K. (1995) `Beyond patriarchy and capitalism: Reflections on political subjectivity' in Transitions: new Australian feminisms, Barbara Caine & Rosemary Pringle, (eds), Sydney, Allen & Unwin.
Harris, C. (1995) `Plight of women in the pink ghetto', Sydney Morning Herald, 30/10/95
Jobs, Education and Training (JET) Facts Sheet, June 1994, JET Section, Family Programs & Services Division, Department of Social Security.
Johnson, C. (1996) `Shaping the Future: Woman, Citizenship and Australian Political Discourse' in Gender, Politics & Citizenship In The 1990s, Barbara Sullivan & Gillian Whitehouse (eds), Sydney, University of New South Wales Press.
Lambert, S. (1994) `Sole Parent Income Support: Cause or Cure of Sole Parent Poverty?' in Australian Journal of Social Issues Vol. 29 No. 1 pp 75 - 97.
O'Donnell, C & Hall, P. (1988) Getting Equal, Sydney, Allen & Unwin Australia.
Orloff, A. S. (1996) `Gendering the Analysis of Welfare States' in Gender, Politics and Citizenship in the 1990s, Barbara Sullivan & Gillian Whitehouse (eds), Sydney, University of New South Wales Press.
Pringle, R. & Watson, S. (1990) `Fathers, Brothers, Mates: the Fraternal State in Australia' in Playing the State, Sophie Watson, (ed.), Sydney, Allen & Unwin.
Pringle, R. & Watson, S.(1995) `Feminist Theory and the State: Needs, Rights and Interests' in Gender, Politics & Citizenship In The 1990s, Barbara Sullivan & Gillian Whitehouse (eds), Sydney, University of New South Wales Press.
Pringle, R. (1988)Secretaries Talk. Sydney, Allen & Unwin.
Ryan, E. & Conlon, A. (1989) Gentle Invaders, Ringwood, Penguin.
Smith, V. (1987) `The circular trap: women and part-time work' in Women and the State, A. Showstack-Sassoon, (ed.), London, Hutchinson.
Watson, S. (1995) `Reclaiming social policy' in Transitions: new Australian feminisms. Barbara Caine & Rosemary Pringle, (eds), Sydney, Allen & Unwin.
Yeatman, A. (1990) Bureaucrats. Technocrats, Femocrats, Sydney, Allen & Unwin.
Ms. Jan Gardiner, 4 Red Gum Avenue, Hazelbrook, NSW 2779
Комментариев нет:
Отправить комментарий