Nancy Fraser

Unruly Practices Chapter 7.

1. The problem of welfare state is two-fold for feminists: First, there is the structural dimension, where the nature of the problem is such that elimination or reduction of the welfare state leads to "private patriarchy", yet the defense of it leads to the consolidation of "public patriarchy". Second, there is the ideological dimension of the politics of needs dimension - instead of taking how "needs" are characterized in the welfare state for granted, feminists must attempt to reveal the political processes and the discourse in which these needs are interpreted and given meanings. Then, what we need is a framework that could deal with both of these problems simultaneously, bridging the gap between the underlying norms and values of the structure and the politics of needs interpretaion.

2. The interpretation of welfare state as being fundamentally based on the assumption of households containing a male breadwinner and a female houseworker who at most works in the market only to supplement the male earnings.

3. Subsequent asymmetry in accorded social meanings for welfare state programs primarily identified as being concerned with women (e.g., AFDC, medicaid, food stamps) and those programs identified as being concerned with men (e.g., unemployment insurance). In the former, the recipients are regarded as clients and not as right-bearers, subjected to surveillance as well as even stigmatization, humility, and harassment. In contrast, in the latter the recipients are regarded as right-bearers, "possessive individuals" who act as social citizens, and are not subjected to severe surveillance. This system works against women raising children without a male breadwinner in the double sense, for it fails to offer women a needed job training or the complete system of day care, thereby giving them the status of "mothers" but not that of the worker, yet the welfare state stigmatizes and humiliates them for their status instead of honoring their very status as mothers.

(While this analysis basically seems to be to the point, notice that Fraser may be inferring too much of interpretations at the meanings level from statistical facts).

4. The concept of social welfare system as a "juridical-administrative-therapeutic state apparatus". The function of this system is to reify what is actually a problem of the political discourse as sets of taken-for-granted facts by placing them in the spheres of jurisdiction, bureaucratic administration, and treating welfare recipients as in need of individual therapeutic measures (instead of seeing the problem as structural).

5. The concept of the field of "social" - as meaning a site of discourse about problematic needs. Of particularly important consideration here is that the JAT needs to be perceived of as merely a contestant in this "social" field, rather than as an undisputed and absolute master. In this sense, feminists are no different in the sense that they too are the contestants in this field of the "social" - as such, Fraser ends the paper by suggesting several strategies feminists might adopt in search of the successful struggle in the "social".