The Welfare State and the Cultural Reproduction of Gender: Making Good Girls and Boys in the Job Corps

Abstract

In this paper we examine theoretical arguments about cultural reproduction and resistance in the context of the welfare state. We argue that the welfare state reproduces gender stratification structurally by replicating a gendered division of labor and culturally by inculcating an ideological framework that sustains that division of labor. We illustrate our arguments through an historical study of the War on Poverty, a key period in the history of the welfare state. The Job Corps, a core anti-poverty program, trained young men and women in basic skills and prepared them for jobs in the skilled trades. While job training for young, African-American women emphasized middle-class, homemaking skills, young men received training in the skilled trades. This training enabled men to challenge racial discrimination in the labor market but concentrated women's labor — paid and unpaid — in the realm of domestic status production and consumption.