Rereading Titmuss: The Sexual Division of Welfare

ABSTRACT The new social policy demonstrates its theoretical concern with the relations between the welfare services, the economy and the state. This new found political economy of welfare leaves behind the micro-concerns of the Titmuss paradigm. Through a critical re-examination of Titmuss, the article, while welcoming the research programme of the new social policy, urges that the specific strength of the old (especially so far as women are concerned) is not prematurely abandoned. In a period of economic and political crisis, where the state is actively restructuring the provision of welfare, detailed and systematical analyses of the implications of this process for both class and gender are urgently required. The need for work on gender is underlined because of the sex blindness of influential Liberal and Left theoretical writings. It is not that such theorists are unfriendly to feminist work but rather that it stands ‘outside’ their explanation. The need to reconceptualize welfare as a service provided primarily by the paid and unpaid labour of women remains.