The naturalisation of dependence: the state, the new middle class and women workers 1830-1930

Abstract

This thesis challenges current neo-Marxist, feminist and neo-Weberian theories of the state which ignore or underestimate the role of state bureaucrats in the construction of state institutions and the formulation and implementation of state policies. Drawing on theories of the new middle class and intellectuals which emphasise the potential of educated workers for autonomous and united action, the thesis examines the role of public servants, doctors and lawyers in determining the form of the New South Wales state and some of its major institutions and policies between 1830 and 1930. The thesis focuses in particular on the influence of new middle class men on state labour market and family policies concerning women. Using the New South Wales public service as a case study, it explores aspects of the development of the new middle class during this period, and documents the strategies by which three groups within this class - male public servants, doctors and lawyers - attempted to extend and control their labour markets through the agency of the state, and the effect of those strategies on educated women workers. The study finds a contrast between an early period of relative tolerance of labour market competition from women and a later period of exclusion, domination and marginalisation in which women were confined to a secondary labour market. It relates these changes to variations in the labour market conditions and political power of new middle class men and women. Arguing that the economic and political conditions of the period after 1882 gave new middle class men the motivation and power to use the coercive and ideological resources of the state to protect their own labour market position, it shows, through a study of the interpretation of occupational statistics, public personnel policies, the infant welfare program and the arbitration system, how new middle class men contributed to the intensification of gender differentiation, the exclusion of women from the primary labour market, and to the institutionalisation of dependence as the natural status of women.