Submission to the Department of Social and Family Affairs to the Technical Review of the Social Welf

Published: Thursday, January 31, 2008

Reforming the social welfare system and ending the unequal treatment of women in the system has been a central goal of the NWCI. In our report 'A Woman's Model for Social Welfare Reform' (2003), and our subsequent campaign, the NWCI clearly highlights the discrimination that women face in the social welfare system. The structural inequalities which currently exist in the Irish Social welfare system are based on patriarchal values that underpin gender roles in society with regard to work, family and domestic responsibilities. Despite changes in language from 'adult dependant' to 'qualified adult' or from 'unmarried mother' or 'prisoners wives' to 'one parent family payment' the concept of male breadwinner persists in Irish social policy. While equal treatment may have ruled out direct discrimination there remains a very definite gendered legacy of indirect indiscrimination of women in the social welfare system (Cousins and Whyte, 2006).

Download file:Submission to the Department of Social and Family Affairs to the Technical Review of the Social Welf