Welfare's End

Gwendolyn Mink is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is the author of Old Labor and New Immigrants in American Political Development: Union, Party, and State, 1875-1920 and The Wages of Motherhood: Inequality in the Welfare State, 1917-1942, both from Cornell.

This is, without a doubt, the most important book I have read in the last five years. I do not make that claim lightly. It is a must read for anyone interested in social policy reform... Mink's call for welfare justice is controversial and timely and should provoke everyone to rethink their position on welfare reform. I encourage everyone to read it and then passit on to a friend and/or colleague.(Canadian Journal of Political Science) A highly informative book.... Welfare's End gives us much food for thought. It shifts the focus away from behavior modification for poor women and toward a public policy that protects and enhances the rights of all women. This slim but provocative book should be read by anyone seeking alternatives to the current conservative policy agenda and anyone interested in broader social change.(The Progressive) At last—a serious counterthrust against the popular self-interested praise for welfare reform. Mink... goes beyond questioning myths, exposing hypocrisy, and offering sympathy; she offers a positive argument for welfare as a fundamental right.... Mink argues that we have gone beyond heartlessness and denied poor, single mothers a necessary element of citizenship.(Kirkus Reviews) In her solid history of the struggle over welfare, Mink... takes aim at politicians who target poor women. Mink's essential point is that welfare is a guarantee of women's equality. It's vital, she says, not only for women's human rights but also for the strength of democracy to view welfare not as a subsidy for dependence (which it largely is not) or as an income substitution for the loss of a breadwinner (which it was first intended to be) but as an income owed to those who work inside the home by raising children. Mink's arguments counter the myths of welfare dependency and she is able to make a compelling case for positions that are far out of the mainstream of current politics. This is a well-reasoned and eye-opening book.... Anyone interested in these topics should be intrigued.(Publishers Weekly) In her survey of the three-decade battle against welfare, Mink exposes the 'undeserving poor' roots of hostility toward those who receive government help and the racial, class, and gender biases of liberals and conservative alike, who could view middle-class moms' caregiving as uncompensated work, while poor mothers' caregiving isn't work at all. Welfare's End is a penetrating critique of 'reform' assumptions.(Booklist) The feminist movement has been much criticized, from within and without, for its failure to take up the issues and win the hearts of poor and minority women. In Welfare's End, Gwendolyn Mink, a political science professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz, deepens that critique and offers a path toward remedy.... Welfare's End contributes to the welfare of the social movements Mink critiques, as well as to the welfare recipients for whom she is such a convincing spokeswoman.(San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle)