Reshaping Australian Social Policy: alternatives to the breadwinner welfare state

Abstract

Over the past two decades, one of the leading areas of welfare state change has been in respect of women’s access and entitlement to a range of social policy programs and benefits. The debates which led to these changes have called into question many of the assumptions which underpin welfare state provision in Australia and have gradually shifted our institutional model of welfare state provision from being one which confers social citizenship on women via a male breadwinner towards a model which addresses social rights on an individual basis. Because the welfare state remains an important element in gender equality strategies, the incomplete nature of changes to the institutional structure of the Australian welfare state has created uncertainty about the basis of social policy and raises a several issues for future social policy development: * the need to consider the implications of adopting an individual rights model; * changing employment conditions which overturn the basis on which the Australian welfare state was premised; and * the possibility of finding alternative pathways - institutional designs - outside the breadwinner/individual dichotomy.