BAKER, Maureen and David TIPPEN, <b>POVERTY, SOCIAL ASSISTANCE, AND THE EMPLOYABILITY OF MOTHERS: RESTRUCTURING WELFARE STATES</b>

BAKER, Maureen and David TIPPEN, POVERTY, SOCIAL ASSISTANCE, AND THE EMPLOYABILITY OF MOTHERS: RESTRUCTURING WELFARE STATES, Toronto, Ontario: University of Toronto Press, 1999, 316 pp., $24.95 softcover / $60.00 hardcover. Reviewed by: MELINDA MILLS The rhetoric of welfare state restructuring such as `reduction of the public debt', `cutting costs of social programs' or `getting people back to work' to `encourage independence' has crept into media, political, and policy debates in many industrialised countries. When searching for ways to cope with rising costs and structural changes that coincide with greater economic globalization, predominance of market capitalism and labour-market flexibility, governments have turned to the reduction of benefits of certain groups of individuals who are viewed as 'abusing' the welfare system, such as long term beneficiaries, which often include low income mothers with young children. The subsequent adoption of neo-liberal terminology signals a focus on efficiency, cost-effectiveness, lowering public expenditures and providing 'incentives' to work, with the state positioned as a residual player or `last resort', leaving responsibility to the individual and thus downplaying structural barriers to employment. The ability to sell unpalatable cuts and reforms to the public has meant a transformation of rhetoric via the introduction of seemingly positive phrases such as `employability enhancement incentives' or punitive and moralistic terms, like 'dependency'. Baker and Tippin take on this timely topic by focusing on the restructuring of social programs for low-income mothers in the four liberal welfare regimes of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, The first chapter sets the stage for the book followed by a gendered theoretical approach to welfare state restructuring in chapter 2. The next four chapters explore the process of reform in each country outlining a brief history of social program development for low-income mothers, justification of restructuring, and the interaction between social policies and programs with political structures, pressure group activities and economic and labour-market shifts. The final chapter provides a summary of welfare-state restructuring and the 'poverty of employability'. Baker and Tippin offer several new insights to this field of research, which are presented with both elegance and evidence. First, they successfully introduce a long overdue gendered approach to welfare state restructuring, which is a highly effective combination of feminist and political-economy perspectives that remains clearly rooted in the study of inequality. For instance, our attention is drawn to the striking absence of acknowledgement of women's diverse needs and circumstances in androcentfic documents. …

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