Beyond the Breadwinner: A History of Women and Welfare

Author: Jenelle Oppong Mensah

Field of Study: Business administration

Program Affiliation: Source Project Research Program

Faculty Mentors: Will Glovinsky

Easel: 65

Timeslot: Midday

Abstract: This research examines how women’s economic roles were understood and represented in mid-twentieth-century debates about welfare policy and basic income. If women have always been central to household survival, caregiving, and community welfare, then why were their economic contributions often overlooked in the design of early social safety net programs that focused on male employment? Scholars such as Susan Pedersen, Pat Thane, and Jane Lewis examine how British and American welfare systems reflected assumptions about gender and work, supporting men as the male breadwinner while subordinating women’s work as unpaid and uncounted in economic calculations. Examining policy debates, speeches, and writings from scholars and activists such as Eleanor F. Rathbone and Johnnie Tillmon, this podcast places women’s caregiving and domestic work at the center of the history of welfare and guaranteed income.