No one can hope to understand the workings of the welfare state without first appreciating women's part in it. In the past decade, the significance of the gendering of welfare states has become widely accepted, extensively charted in research and more systematically theorized. Building on her earlier work, Social Policy: A Feminist Analysis, Gillian Pascall confronts the challenges and outlines the developments that have taken place during the eleven years since its first publication.

This new edition reflects extensive social changes in women's participation at work, educational achievement and security in marriage. It also reflects policy changes aimed at producing a mixed economy of welfare, increasing family responsibility in health, community care, housing, education and income security.

It examines the changing pattern of welfare provision, with increasing reliance on women's unpaid work, the gendered nature of UK welfare structures, the continuing dependence of women on men's incomes and on welfare benefits, the public-private divide, women's non-citizenship as carers for young and old, and the changing political climate of the 1980s and 1990s.