Družboslovne razprave,Vol. XI (1995), No.19-20, pp.183-198
UDK: 364 .2(450+420):314 .6 :364.442
Between Family Ties and Family Teams :
Poor Families and Gender Issues in Social
Assistance Policies in Italy and Britain
SILVIA FERAZZI*
Social assistance schemes in various countries assume the family to be the
benefit unit. This means that public support is given to the poor family as a
whole, rather than to its individual members. The author compares policy
rationales in Italy and Britain., where social assistance schemes are based
on such a principle and examines how, despite this common approach, dif-
ferent definitions ofthe poor family have been put forward in the two coun-
tries, resulting in the different treatment ofpoor women, particularly of
poor wives . Special attention is paid to the impact of equal treatment in
social assistance, to family obligations and to the definition of married
women as family dependants. The author argues that married women's
access to minimal benefits is systematically hindered by family-centred ap-
proaches which provide a fictional picture of the household as an homoge-
neous unit focused on the (male) breadwinner Accordingly, the visibility of
the needs of the economically weakest members, including women, is re-
duced, whereas their dependence on private power relationships is strength-
ened. The feminist debate about social citizenship and social exclusion is
introduced in order to show that social assistance policies, particularly
measures concerning social minima., are still far from being implemented,
and even theoretically conceived, as is also the case with mainstream citip
zenship rights (that is, rights whichh refer to the individual rather than to
the family).
Keywords: family, worsen, poverty, social assistance, social citizenship
Introduction : Families and Individuals in Social Assistance
Poverty, social exclusion and measures to counteract them can be seen from the
perspective of the individual or the household, that is, by looking at the needs of
family members or of the family as a whole . This is clearly shown by the fact that
in official statistics from different countries the beneficiaries of social minimum
are counted as families or as individuals . 1 Individual entitlements to social assist-
ance are often affected by the condition of the family members . Figures recently
published by the Commission of the European Communities (CEC, 1994) show
* Dr. Silvia Ferazzi, Dipartimento di Scienze Sociali, Universita di Torino . The
authoress presently works at the United Nations Department of Humanitarian Af fairs/Inter-Agency Support Unit, 16 av. Jean Trembley, 1209 Geneva;e-mail:
silvia.ferazzi@dha .unicc .org
Silvia Ferazzi
that benefits paid to unemployed individuals with no contribution record are tak-
en away or reduced in most countries if they live with someone else earning a
wage (see Table 1 in the Appendix). In the case of unemployed couples, members
usually receive support as part of the family unit, rather than as individuals : the
amounts are added up, generally at a level lower than the sum of the ainounts
they would be entitled to as individuals living alone. 2 The level of benefits is not
the only feature affected by this policy . Dependency among ineinbers is also en-
couraged. The focus on the family means that just one member of the household,
more or less explicitly defined in regulations, has the right to claim income sup-
port on behalf of the whole unit, that is for all other members . 3 Gender relation-
ships are a complex aspect of the creation of dependency relationships. For example,
in Britain, when a couple is entitled to income support, the partners must decide
who the claimant will be, that is who will receive the benefits for himself or her-
self and for all other family members . Recent official figures published by the
Department of Social Security show that almost all British claimants of income
support are men in couples, whereas they forin a minority ainong single persons
(Table 2 in the Appendix) . This means that even in the assisted family where no
one is in work, it is the man who is expected to be the "breadwinner" .
A family-oriented approach, rather than one oriented towards the individual,
is based on a fictional picture of the family as an homogeneous unit organised
around the head of the household, thereby privileging the breadwinner as the
most visible family member . The needs of members who are weak from a financial
point of view, such as the elderly, children and women, risk being ignored and
managed through private arrangements based on power relations within the fam-
ily.
In this article I will explore how the image of poor families promoted by poli-
cies affects the condition of women, with particular reference to policies directed
towards active families. I will compare policy rationales in Italy and Britain, that
is in two countries, among many others, which base social assistance on the fam-
ily rather than on the individual . Britain resembles Italy in that benefits are giv-
en to the family as a whole, rather than to individuals, as families are expected to
"know" how to allocate resources among their members . However, Britain and
Italy have policy cultures which have proposed different definitions of the poor
family and influenced the access of women to minimal social benefits . I will focus
on the systems' principles and regulations, excluding other aspects, such as social
security practices and poor families' strategies of coping . These issues are impor-
tant, as they can greatly change the impact of policies on poor people's welfare .
Nevertheless, I believe that the image promoted in social assistance laws and
programmes is crucial to the social construction of poverty and is deserving of
attention itself.
I will first give a general comparison of social assistance in Italy and Britain,
giving special attention to a number of issues which have directly influenced the
"partnership" between the state and the poor family . I will then look at how the
state has defined the poor family and the role of women with reference to three
areas: equal treatment, family obligations and dependency relationships . Finally,
I will examine the consequences of the policy focus on the family in terms of the
recognition of women's social rights .
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Between Family Ties and Family Teams: Poor Families and Gender Issues in Social Assistance . . .
1 Social Assistance and Anti-Exclusion Policies in Italy and Britain
The Italian and British systems of social assistance are different in a number of
ways . One relevant difference concerns centralism vs . localisin . In Britain, social
assistance is mainly defined at the national level, whereas in Italy it is based on
decisions made at a local, particularly a municipal, level (D'Apice, 1988) .
Another major difference concerns the role of social assistance laws and regu-
lations. The "legalist" British approach can be contrasted with the "rudimenta-
ry" Italian approach . In Britain, social assistance is an important part of social
security legislation, strongly regulated by "codes of instructions" and, since the
introduction of the 1980 Social Security Act, has been recognised as a legal right
(Deacon and Bradshaw, 1983) . This does not mean that discretion has no role to
play, but that it operates mainly in the spaces left within such a regulatory framework
.4The Italian approach is markedly different Apart from some principles
found in various pieces of legislation, from the Civil Code to financial laws, there
is no national law aimed at regulating social assistance, and all rules stem from
regional laws and local arrangements . At the moment, 15 out of 21 regions have
laws concerning social assistance, but most of them do not explicitly consider
social ininimums, which are left to municipal regulations and the discretion of
social workers .
Two other features, directly related to the treatment of families and women,
are important in order to understand the differences between the two systems :
state involvement in social assistance and the coverage of poor families .
As for state involvement, British interventionism contrasts with Italian sub-
sidiarity. In Italy, policies have been developed as an extreme example of the "last
resort" approach, based on a strong emphasis on the duty of the family to provide
its own social assistance for its members as far as possible (Saraceno, 1994) . In
Britain, despite the Conservative government's orientation towards privatisation
and familism, particularly relevant during the last decade (DHSS, 1985), the state
is still the main actor in the social assistance system, particularly in policies that
tackle poverty ; adults with no means of support are not expected to rely primarily
on their relatives .
A fourth feature which deserves attention is the coverage of poor families . In
Britain, targets are defined in a general and extensive way, the principle being to
intervene when minimal needs are not being met . Benefits are given according to
standardised criteria related to needs, although they are often outdated and in-
sufficient to guarantee a decent standard of living . Generally speaking, every per-
son in need is entitled to a social minimum, whereas additional needs (for example,
because of parenthood, disability or age) are considered in the form of additional
benefits on top of the basic amount . Additional support is the more changeable
part of the social minimum package and is subject to recurrent political redefini-
tion: as some authors point out, the "normalisation" of the poor family has been
a peculiar trait of Conservative policy in recent years, excluding "abnormal" tarp
get groups which were previously relevant (such as young people and large and
broken families) from generous benefits (Smart, 1991 ; Walker, 1994) . In Italy, the
situation is nearly the reverse : social assistance is "categorised", mostly limited
to situations "at risk" which are defined locally in regulations and by social workp
ers (Saraceno, 1992). In most cities, risks related to old age, disability, or, in the
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Silvia Ferazzi
case of families of an active age, to factors as prison attendance, drug dependence,
single-parent families and heavy family expenses, are essential in order to get
access to minimal social benefits,
2 The Condition of Women in the Institutionalisation of the Family
as Benefit Unit
As shown above, despite the fact that both systems rely on the family as the
benefit unit, the ideological and political principles upon which social assistance
is based, and which contribute to what has been called the "social engineering"
(Finch, 1989b) of the poor family, are different .
Historically, a mix of administrative, financial and ideological reasons led to
the selection of the family rather than the individual as the benefit unit in both
countries . The aim was to reduce public expenditure (as family benefits are usualp
ly at a lower level than that of individual benefits), to limit the administrative
workload, and show commitment to the traditional ideal of the family structured
around the breadwinning head . Women are often more or less explicitly consid-
ered "dependants", indirect beneficiaries of social assistance through their hus-
bands' entitlements . Within this pattern, differences can be found between Britain
and Italy concerning the way in which the dependence of women has been created
and strengthened. I will focus on three aspects : the influence of equal treatment
policies, the role of family obligations, and the position of women among dependp
ent family members .
2.1 Equal Treatment in Welfare Laws
In the past in both Italy and Britain, women were formally dependent on men in
social assistance .
Openly discriminatory rules in Britain, which originated in the Beveridge prop
gramme, prevented wives of able-bodied men from claiming social assistance ben-
efits . A key example of discrimination was the sopcalled "married women's option",
in operation until recently, according to which married women, even if entitled to
benefits as workers, could choose to derive their benefits through their husbands'
contributions. Furthermore, in cases of unemployment, working wives were not
given high compensatory benefits, as they were expected to be maintained by
their husbands. The different treatment of men and women was justified by exp
plicitly defining the family as a "team" in which men and women were specialised
in different tasks, the former as breadwinners, the latter as housewives and moth-
ers .
Although the position of women in the family which relies on social assistance
was not explicitly discussed in the Beveridge report, the consideration of the hus-
band's benefit as a "team" benefit shifted implicitly from the contributory to the
non-contributory system and has become a basic principle of social assistance .
Until the mid-1980s, women could not claim social assistance benefits for their
husbands as dependants in the same way that men could do for their wives . Sigp
nificantly, even the introduction of the Sex Discrimination Act in the 1970s did
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not have any impact on the unequal treatment of women in social assistance, as
in most other social assistance provisions, since matters with financial implica-
tions were explicitly excluded froin the scope of the act .
Interestingly, women's movements counteracted women's dependency on hus-
bands in social assistance by claiming alternative gender rights based on repro-
ductive tasks . Feininist moveinents looked at the inothers' entitlement to parental
benefits as a way to counterbalance fathers' entitlements as breadwinners . Con-
servative women's associations also agreed that women should have control of
benefits targeted at children, with the aim of emphasising the social recognition
of the role of woinen as inothers . In the post-war period, as a consequence of this
debate, it was decided that family allowances, like other child benefits, would
usually be given to mothers (Macnicol, 1980) . From the point of view of women's
moveinents, this approach was aiined at facilitating the access of woinen to social
citizenship. Yet it provoked a consolidation of role differences between inen and
women in social assistance, identifying men as claimants as (actual or potential)
breadwinners and woinen as mothers .
In Italy, on the contrary, access to family allowances was originally reserved
for the male breadwinner. In the 1955 law, as under the previous fascist law, it
was stated that every "head of the family" was entitled to receive allowances for
his dependants, and that this was expected to be the man . Women were allowed to
claim benefits for children only if they were widowed, unmarried, separated or
deserted mothers or if they were married to a disabled person . With regard to
family allowances for the spouse, the woman was allowed to claim them only if
her husband was disabled .
The European Community Directive on equal treatment in social assistance,
introduced in 1979 and implemented in 1984, has presumably had an effect un
	
''
the change of principles in both systems, although following different patterns .
Interestingly, this directive concerns contributory benefits, whereas social assist-
ance is covered only as it is intended to replace or supplement contributory schemes .
Furthermore, family benefits paid to parents are explicitly excluded from the
scope of the directive (Atkins and Hoggett, 1984). However, as soine authors point
out (Walker, 1994 ; Sohrab, 1994), there are countries which have interpreted it in
an extensive way.
For example, anti-discriminatory rules were introduced in Britain explicitly at
the behest of the directive, and included social assistance in their scope . Under
the terms of the 1980 Social Security Act, the woman was allowed to be the claim-
ant of social assistance, as of other social security benefits, if she met certain
conditions, particularly when there were children . Since 1986, either the man or
the woman has been able to be the claimant in all circumstances .
Nevertheless, if we look at British figures, the change to formal equal treat-
ment seems not to have challenged consolidated power structures within famip
lies. As stated earlier, the majority of married claimants are men. The legal principle
of the equality of treatment has been undermined by the inequality of opportuni-
ty, particularly on the labour market, and by the strength of gender stereotypes
as they relate to work and care (McKee and Bell, 1985 ; Millar, 1989) . This has had
an impact on social assistance as well . For example, the rules which define entitle-
ment to social minimums and "passport" benefits in Britain state that claimants
must be out of work but available for work and actively seeking it . People must
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Silvia Ferazzi
"sign on" periodically at a job centre, accepting any job which is offered to them
and which "they can reasonably be expected to do" . This rule, which is the expres-
sion of the cultural value attributed to the maintenance of work incentives by the
state, applies in principle to both men and women, but it has a different impact on
family members. Since only the claimant of social benefits is required to conform
to the workfare rule, this suggests that the claimant will soinehow be expected to
be the breadwinner for the whole family and, due to the traditional division of
roles, that it will presumably be the man . Furthermore, men are assumed to get
jobs more easily, and to be able to get out of dependency on social assistance
sooner than women. They are therefore preferred by the state as claimants of
unemployment benefits . As registration at job centres allows people to get na-
tional insurance credits which entitle them to the basic state pension, wives are
prevented from getting access to social benefits through being unemployed . 5
In Italy, the change took place in a different way. According to the new family
code of 1975, when the notion of the head of the family disappeared, married and
cohabiting men and women were accorded the same rights and duties, and both
parents were made equally responsible for their children .
Nevertheless, it was only at the beginning of the 1980s that some sentences
stated that the open discriminatory parts of the 1955 law on family allowances
were against the Constitution, and that the entitlement recognised for the work-
ing father would consequently have to be recognised for the mother as well. In
the 1988 law on family allowances, the influence of the new principle of equal
treatment is not easily detectable, as allowances are defined as benefit for the
household (assegni per it nucleo familiare), rather than for the main breadwinner
(assegni familiari ai capifamiglia) . However, family allowances reserved for poor
families are still given through the main breadwinner's wage .
On the other hand, social minimums, left to local practices, have not been
strongly affected by these changes . "Head of the family" is still the term most
frequently used in regulations, inaking the man more likely to be the claimant of
social benefits for the family than the woinan, although for some categories of
claiinants special attention is paid to families headed by women (single parents,
widows, those separated from their husbands) .
2.2 Family Obligations and Pressures on Women
Social minimum policies usually include rules that prescribe the circumstances
under which poor individuals are entitled to public support and under which their
needs should be met with the help of relatives. Family obligations (the duty to
support poor relatives) are an important and sensitive aspect of welfare laws and
social assistance as they define the extent to which the state plays the role of
provider of social welfare. Italy and Britain show divergent patterns concerning
fainily obligations .
In the Italian system, family obligations are traditionally a cornerstone of so-
cial assistance . The main measures directed at poor families are the minimum
required to survive and the minimum required to buy food, both limited by scarce
local budgets and subject to local eligibility rules . Despite the variability of expe-
riences, the system is mainly organised around the principle, inherited from tra-
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Between Family Ties and Family Teams: Poor Families and Gender Issues in Social Assistance . ..
ditional practices and defined in the Civil Code, that the extended family should
be the first provider of support (obbligo alimentare) . According to this criterion,
relatives are obliged to give financial help to their family members in need, and
such an obligation is enforced by law when the poor person applies for social
support from the state . The range of relatives obliged to give support is wide,
including not only the spouse, parents and grandparents, children and their de-
scendants, step-parents and step-children, but also parents-in-law and children-
in-law, siblings and natural siblings. The level of maintenance is defined according
to the applicants' needs and to the financial situation of their relatives . These
extended family obligations are particularly constraining . Parents and children,
for example, are exempt from their duty in law only when the relatives who are
entitled to benefits remarry or when they and their children die . People obliged to
support a person who applies for social assistance can be intimidated by the police
into supporting their relatives, and if they do not fulfil their duty, they can be
called before the courts and the person entitled to support can get free legal aid .
The duty can be withdrawn by law only when the financial situation changes or
when the poor behaves in a "disruptive and mischievous way" (Civil Code, article
440) . As decision-making concerning social assistance is defined at the local level,
the principle of the duty to support receives more or less attention in different
contexts and at different times (for example, when there are budget pressures) .
This is the present situation in a northern city, as described by a social security
manager (Bosco, 1995) :
We are waiting to decide whether to remove or implement these municipal
decisions which oblige relatives to contribute . They are discussing it. This sit-
uation has lasted for about one year .
At the moment in Britain, entitlement to public support is based on the criterion
of the applicable amount, which is the minimal income, defined by law and re-
viewed every year, which people are considered to be able to live on . Accordingly,
the state is expected to top up incomes which fall below this threshold . The direct
involvement of the state in guaranteeing social assistance, strongly promoted in
the Beveridge programme, was probably one of the most important factors which
caused the concept of family obligations, legally unenforceable now (Finch, 1989a),
to be given up .
However, there are contradictory trends . Some measures recently introduced
by the Conservative government, such as the Social Fund, are based on the prinp
ciple, apparently similar to the Italian subsidiarity approach, that help from the
state can be limited according to the availability of resources from informal net-
works, including families (Becker and Silburn, 1990) . However, it should be stressed
that it is not a legal obligation. As a social security manager pointed out during an
interview:
We are required to check whether they can get any help from friends or relap
tives because we loan them the money, which they have to pay back, and may-
be it's just easier for them to borrow the money from their parents, their sons,
or whatever. . . But it's not a requirement, they don't have to . . . If they say, no,
my relative can't help, we don't pursue the matter.
The only situation in which family obligations are accepted in principle and can
be legally enforced in the British social assistance system is within the nuclear
family with children, particularly in the case of conjugal separation (Burgoyne
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Silvia Feražzi
Th
and Millar, 1994) . The Child Support Agency, which was introduced in 1991 under
the Child Support Act, is an interesting example of this approach . In Britain, the
role of the courts in the separation procedure is "lax" (Toynbee, 1994), allowing
fathers to give limited lump sums and to offset every kind of expense, and refus-
ing to pursue thein if they do not fulfil their maintenance duties . Furthermore,
most women are traditionally stuck in insecure and low-paid jobs . As few single
mothers earn enough to reach the minimal level deemed necessary for survival,
they are often supported by the state . The main reason, then, behind the creation
of this institution was the need to cope with the problem of an increasing number
of single mothers, divorced or unmarried, who were receiving social assistance .
The agency was set up as part of the social security system, to oblige fathers to
pay maintenance for the child and reduce the financial involvement of the state
(Garnham and Knights, 1994) . But the agency was unsuccessful in strengthening
family obligations, both because of the case overload (the high number of separat-
ed couples with children and of fathers ignoring their duties) and because of the
lack of collaboration between fathers and mothers . Fathers protested against what
they saw as an unfair intrusion into private matters . Some mothers, mainly from
the poorest groups, complained that the maintenance collected from fathers was
almost completely deducted from the social assistance payments given to them .
i s meant that they did not gain financially and, conversely, had to face the
hardship of dealing with often hostile ex-partners .
What is interesting in the political debate about Child Support is how family
obligations within the nuclear family have been placed in opposition to the right
to public support . According to the Agency, partners, although separated, are lep
gally expected to contribute to their children's welfare, whereas the state is supp
posed to intervene simply in order to supervise the regular performance of this
arrangement. Public intervention is therefore reduced when family obligations
work well, and the policy tends to shift to a "last resort" approach . The main
problem is that in the case of poor families, it is not always possible to extract
maintenance payments from fathers which adequately cover the needs of chilp
dren (and they are not intended to cover the needs of wives) . For these reasons,
the debate is now inoving on to a less radical approach to family-state relations :
according to some recent proposals, sums deducted from poor mothers' benefits
because of the maintenance allowance should be guaranteed to them . This means
that women could be entitled to social assistance in a way which is partially inde-
pendent from their partners' contribution to maintenance, smoothing the con-
flict between obligations and the right to social security .
The unsuccessful outcome of the child support policy is a clear example of the
problems of enforcing family obligations in British society, and, generally speak-
ing, in social contexts in which family breakdown is not an unusual phenomenon .
In fact, the main purpose of family obligations in social assistance is to limit acp
cess to public support, and to state an ideological reliance on the performance of
family networks . Family obligations in their original form, as they developed in
the Italian system, are the expression of a patriarchal society in which the main
form of household was the extended family with strong mutual ties between a
wide range of relatives, in which marital breakdown was a rare event and mobil-
ity limited. In this traditional model, legal obligations are supposed to impose
widespread family practices, in which women play a crucial but ambivalent role .
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On the one hand, they are expected to strengthen relationships within large fam-
ilies through their abilities in social relations and caring ; on the other hand, be-
cause of the focus on their role as care providers, and consequently of their limited
economic autonomy, they are also very dependent on the functioning of such net-
works. However, the reliance on family obligations now seems increasingly inca-
pable of tackling the probleins of poor families in contemporary society because of
the inability of this approach to deal with family changes and with the issue of
social citizenship, which assumes legal and direct entitlements to social rights
and public provisions .
In the mainstream British model, focused on state intervention rather than
on family obligations, social assistance policies have set people free from personal
dependency and established a neat scope for the recognition of minimal social
rights. But even if family obligations are not legally enforced, they are somehow
presumed, at least within the nuclear family, since the system, by stating that the
family is a benefit unit, assumes that partners will feel obliged to share fairly the
resources between themselves and with their children, both during the marriage
and after separation . Nevertheless, the fair allocation of resources cannot be tak-
en for granted. As various studies have shown (for example, Okin Moller, 1989
and Pahl, 1989), it is not infrequent for family resources to be distributed asym-
metrically between generations and between men and women . This puts the eco-
nomically weaker family members, often women, in jeopardy in a way which
becoines particularly evident when the family breaks up. What I am arguing here
is that the problem of women's independence is not necessarily overcome by abanp
doning family obligations if personal entitlements are not recognised and if polip
cies aimed at poor families do not enhance a strong "pact" between the individual
and the state .
2.3 Family Dependency and Women
As seen earlier, the treatinent of family obligations in social assistance schemes
defines the division of tasks between the state and the family in providing wel-
fare. On the other hand, the distinction between claimants and dependants de-
fines more clearly the power relations between individuals within the poor family .
This has a clear impact on how independent citizenship rights are recognised .
The British pattern has been subject to several transformations in this re-
spect. The most important one has probably been the change from the household
to the "family team" approach in the assessment of needs and benefits . According
to this principle, which was introduced by Beveridge, the relationship between
claimant and dependants is restricted to the "team" made up of the conjugal coup
ple and young children . Autonomous eligibility for social assistance is recognised
for the other cohabiting members, adult children and elderly parents included .
Family benefit is based, as we have seen, on the idea of a team made up of a
claimant, who is intended to play the role of "breadwinner", and of "dependants"
(the partner and children) . 6 This is expressed in rules concerning income support,
which state that the income from elderly parents or adult children living with the
family does not have to be taken into account when assessing that family's eligi-
bility. Gender dependency is strongly encouraged since, in the poor family, mar-
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Silvia Feražži
tied women are the only cohabiting adults legally dependent on other people's
entitlement to social assistance .
In Italy, the dependence of family members on the "head of the family" (al-
though this notion forinally disappeared under the new fainily code in 1975) 7 is
usually extended from the unit made up of the couple and the children to various
relatives living with them . This complex dependency structure is defined in the
laws on family allowances, which have identified family members for whom the
claimant can receive social benefits : children, dependent spouse, parents, siblings
and nephews under 18 or disabled members . Furthermore, this extended depend-
ency relationship has been promoted in other welfare laws concerning poor fami-
lies . For example, in a 1989 decree on exemptions from contributions to the
National Health Service because of low income, the range of family members
entitled to free healthcare was larger than that based on the parents-children
relationship, according to the principle of the so-called "cohabiting family-like
household" (nucleo di convivenza di tipo familiare) . At the moment, exemptions
are defined at the local level where, in most cases, the household is defined as the
group made up of cohabiting family members registered by municipalities, in-
cluding relatives from the extended family living together .
The situation of wives is clearly affected by the definition of the relationship
between claimants and dependants both in the Italian and British systems, as
they usually get access to social benefits only indirectly through their husbands'
entitlements . However, in Britain gender discrimination is explicitly encouraged
by the ideology of the sexual division of roles which, since the publication of the
Beveridge report, has defined wives as naturally dependent on husbands . In Italy,
gender dependency is less evident, as the condition of women is part of a larger
context of family dependency which includes all "weak" members, both from the
nuclear (adult unemployed children) and the extended families (elderly parents
and other relatives), who are not entitled to benefits independently. This does not
mean that gender discrimination in access to minimal benefits is not significant
in Italy but that dependency on the breadwinner is a structural feature of the
Italian system of social assistance, whereas in Britain it is a peculiar gender trait
which specifically characterises the situation of married women .
3 Conclusions : Women, Social Exclusion and Citizenship
In this article I have examined how women's situation within the poor family is
depicted in social assistance principles in Italy and Britain . I have drawn particu-
lar attention to the fact that the poor family is intended as an homogeneous unit
organised around a main claimant who is conceived as the family breadwinner.
Despite such common features, political cultures in the two countries have his-
torically defined the poor family in different ways, influencing the impact of so-
cial assistance on women's access to minimal resources. In particular, the
introduction of equal treatment, the role of family obligations and the position of
women as dependants are crucial aspects in the construction of the poor family in
social assistance policies. Nevertheless, I pointed out that mere changes in rules
are not sufficient to overcome gender discrimination : for example, individual acp
cess to social rights is not granted by the decline of legal obligations if it is pre-
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tied women are the only cohabiting adults legally dependent on other people's
entitlement to social assistance .
In Italy, the dependence of family members on the "head of the fainily" (al-
though this notion forinally disappeared under the new family code in 1975) 7 is
usually extended from the unit made up of the couple and the children to various
relatives living with them . This complex dependency structure is defined in the
laws on family allowances, which have identified family members for whom the
claimant can receive social benefits : children, dependent spouse, parents, siblings
and nephews under 18 or disabled members . Furthermore, this extended depend-
ency relationship has been promoted in other welfare laws concerning poor famip
lies. For example, in a 1989 decree on exemptions from contributions to the
National Health Service because of low income, the range of family members
entitled to free healthcare was larger than that based on the parents-children
relationship, according to the principle of the so-called "cohabiting family-like
household" (nucleo di convivenza di tipo familiare) . At the moment, exemptions
are defined at the local level where, in most cases, the household is defined as the
group made up of cohabiting family members registered by municipalities, in-
cluding relatives from the extended family living together .
The situation of wives is clearly affected by the definition of the relationship
between claimants and dependants both in the Italian and British systems, as
they usually get access to social benefits only indirectly through their husbands'
entitlements . However, in Britain gender discrimination is explicitly encouraged
by the ideology of the sexual division of roles which, since the publication of the
Beveridge report, has defined wives as naturally dependent on husbands, In Italy,
gender dependency is less evident, as the condition of women is part of a larger
context of family dependency which includes all "weak" members, both from the
nuclear (adult unemployed children) and the extended families (elderly parents
and other relatives), who are not entitled to benefits independently. This does not
mean that gender discrimination in access to minimal benefits is not significant
in Italy but that dependency on the breadwinner is a structural feature of the
Italian system of social assistance, whereas in Britain it is a peculiar gender trait
which specifically characterises the situation of married women .
3 Conclusions : Women, Social Exclusion and Citizenship
In this article I have examined how women's situation within the poor family is
depicted in social assistance principles in Italy and Britain . I have drawn particu-
lar attention to the fact that the poor family is intended as an homogeneous unit
organised around a main claimant who is conceived as the family breadwinner .
Despite such common features, political cultures in the two countries have his-
torically defined the poor family in different ways, influencing the impact of so-
cial assistance on women's access to minimal resources . In particular, the
introduction of equal treatment, the role of family obligations and the position of
women as dependants are crucial aspects in the construction of the poor family in
social assistance policies. Nevertheless, I pointed out that mere changes in rules
are not sufficient to overcome gender discrimination : for example, individual acp
cess to social rights is not granted by the decline of legal obligations if it is pre-
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suined that fainilies guarantee a fair allocation of resources through private ar-
rangeinents ; accordingly, equal treatment policies have proved to be severely un-
dermined by unequal opportunities on the labour market and in policy practice .
Generally speaking, figures suggest that the traditional focus on the family
strengthens the dependence between family members, particularly among those
who are economically weak, a group that includes women . I will conclude by ex-
amining the role of social minimums in citizenship rights and the implications of
the discourse on the family in the treatment of issues concerning poverty and
social exclusion . I will argue that, on the one hand, the concept of poverty does
not grasp the problem of individual hardship and that, on the other, the positive
function of informal networks, including the family, tends to be emphasised in the
debate about social exclusion, whereas the negative effects of dependency encour-
aged within the family tend to be ignored .
First, it could be argued that grounding social assistance on the family is in
contrast to the established recognition of individual rights in other spheres of
citizenship (Marshall, 1950), and that this affects gender relationships . Advances
towards the individualisation of rights are visible in several areas . Political and
civil citizenship (the right to vote, the right to conclude contracts) is based on the
individual. Married women's access to pensions and to unemploymentt benefits,
on the other hand, are recent social security measures which will change gender
relationships in women's favour. The same applies to taxation, which is available
now on an individual basis in most countries . On the contrary, the individualisa-
tion of rights is still an issue of debate in social assistance . As pointed out by
Pascall (1986), Marshall's theory of social citizenship did not deal explicitly with
the problem of the recognition of women's rights within the family . Furthermore,
Marshall himself, claiming that "welfare work is most effective if based upon the
family unit" (1975: 51), overlooked the fact that power relations within the house-
hold could undermine women's access to welfare and social rights . As a matter of
fact, policies concerning social welfare, particularly social minimum policies, are
still far froin being treated, or even theoretically conceived, as is the case with
mainstream citizenship rights . The focus on the family, rather than on the indi-
vidual, is certainly one of the main factors hindering such recognition .
The political and ideological resistance to a shift from families to individuals is
also found in the notions upon which policies are based : poverty and, increasingly,
social exclusion . In fact, both concepts focus on the family and informal networks,
rather than on the individual .
The link between family and poverty is complex . The family is often seen as a
factor preventing poverty, as it is presumed that people with families can rely on
mutual trust, family care and inforinal relationships to help thein avoid the proc-
ess of impoverishment . From a social policy point of view, the family is charged
with the responsibility to protect its meinbers . On the other hand, poverty is seen
as a family characteristic rather than an individual one, as people are character-
ised as poor or non-poor depending on the economic situation of the family in
which they live. But this perspective can turn out to be paradoxical if taken to its
extreme consequences . A recent comparative study on the poverty gap between
men and women, based on cross-sectional figures from eight countries, stated
that women are wellpoff in some countries, such as Italy, "because they marry and
stay married" (Casper, MacLanahan and Garfinkel, 1994) . This conclusion drew
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Silvia Ferazzi
on the assumption that "if all men and women were married, there would not be
gender difference in poverty" .
The problem with this perspective is that it does not take into account the
extent to which individual family inembers can suffer from different degrees of
disadvantage, if not poverty, even within families .
First, the incidence of poverty can sharply affect access to economic independ-
ence. High unemployment rates, for instance, can provoke the exclusion from the
labour market of the weakest brackets of the labour force, including women . This
means that opportunities can be distributed unequally in families, affecting some
members more than others .
Moreover, economic resources can be allocated asymmetrically, and this possi-
bility is more than hypothetical, as various studies on economic decisions among
couples have shown (Pahl, 1988 and 1989) .
Finally, policies which promote gender discrimination or which, less explicitly,
deny individual entitlements, are particularly detrimental to people who are weak-
est economically and weakest within the power structure of the family . People
who are invisible to policies are more likely to suffer from social exclusion and, in
the long term, from poverty. As for gender issues, these dynamics help to explain
why some stressful events, such as birth, death, marital break-up and ageing,
play such different roles in the impoverishment of men and women. Accordingly,
poverty among elderly people, particularly women, can be seen as the final stage
of a process of economic decline based on power relations, between generations
and between sexes, within the household .
Looking at poor families from the perspective of social exclusion can be useful
in order to highlight the hidden disadvantages of different family members . But
even if we move to a perspective of social exclusion, the interpretation of gender
issues can be problematic . Generally speaking, social exclusion is a term used in
research and policy when the term poverty is considered unsatisfactory for dealp
ing with dynamic and non-economic aspects . It is widely recognised, particularly
in the French tradition of poverty studies, that the position of individuals in so-
cial networks, including family networks, is crucial: people tend to be seen as
excluded when they cannot rely on informal social networks, when they lose their
family and so on . But networks can also prevent people from being included as
citizens . For instance, according to the subsidiarity principle prevalent in several
countries, people who are assumed to be protected by family networks are often
seen as ineligible for, or less deserving of, social services and benefits . This is
crucial, for example, in the case of the Italian approach to social assistance . I
argue that the family is problematically linked to social exclusion, as it certainly
constitutes a form of social support against isolation and alienation, on the one
hand, but also a reason for exclusion from public support and from access to indi-
vidual citizenship rights on the other. This aspect has been highlighted by femi-
nist academics who have shown that the family is a context in which social
dependency is more likely to take place and to cause the exclusion of women from
the broad social context of citizenship (Lister, 1990 and 1994) . Economic depend-
ency is a disadvantage particularly evident in private family arrangements,
strengthening male partners' power over the resources at women's disposal and
even over women's perception of the fair use of resources (Pahl, 1988) . Although
the relationship with the welfare state can also be seen as a form of dependence
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Between Family Ties and Family Teams : Poor Families and Gender Issues in Social Assistance . . .
(Singly, 1994), the most dangerous form of exclusion from social citizenship, ac-
cording to these feminist authors, is women's private dependency on men, since
the reliance on public benefits can be politically redesigned in terms of "welfare"
,and "rights". As Lister (1990 : 452-453) points out, "the ineaning of public de-
pendency on social security depends partly on what the alternative is . . . at least
the relationship between the state and the woinan claimant is a more iinpersonal
one and provides some enforceable rights" . From this perspective, the abandon-
ment of the family-centred approach to social security and social assistance in
favour of an individual-centred one can be seen as the most effective way to deal
with gender issues in the field of welfare rights, promoting the individual entitle-
ment to benefits as a chance to enhance women's opportunities and capabilities
in the shift from social dependence to social citizenship .
Notes
1 . Such a way of defining the poor population can be aimed at providing a less dra-
matic picture of the extent of poverty (poor families are fewer than poor individu-
als) for administrative purposes . This seems to have been the reason behind the
criteria used to define poverty in the ancient poor laws in Britain (Deacon and
Bradshaw, 1983) .
2. This is the case in Britain, where a poor single person aged 25, who is considered a
one-person household, can get £46 per week (as at April 1994), whereas a couple
will get £72 in income support .
3. Passport benefits, such as the right to free healthcare, are also usually given by
using the same criteria, that is by entitling one member to be the claimant and all
other members dependants on the claimant .
4. For example, discretion is important in decisions concerning backdating and spe-
cial housing needs . Recent measures aimed at meeting exceptional needs are based
on local decision-making and are another crucial exception to British "legalism" .
5. Women usually get credits to the basic retirement pension through their status as
mothers, as claimants of family credit (given to mothers of children in low-income
working families) and child benefit (given to all families with children) .
6. As shown in Table 3 in the Appendix, dependent partners are common among re-
cipients of income support in Britain, especially within the large group of recipi-
ents recorded as unemployed .
7. Variations to this pattern in the field of social security come from social workers,
who can decide, for example, to choose children rather than parents, or mothers
rather than fathers, as target groups .
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Appendix
Table 1 . Benefits payable to an 18 year-old unemployed person with no contribution
record (percentage of average earnings) .
Living alone
	
Living with cohabitant
Belgium 47 0
Denmark 35 35
Germany 39 variable ace. to circumstances
Greece 0 0
Spain 0 0
France 0 0
Ireland 32 16
Italy 0 0
Luxembourg 45 45
Netherlands 34 0
Portugal 44 44
UK 18 0
EC average 25 12
Source : Commission of European Communities, 1994 .
Table 2. income Support Recipients (thousands in May 1993) .
Men Women Total
Single 1,774 2,853 4,627
(,38) (62)
Married 952 63 1,015
(,94) (06)
Source: Department of Social Security, 1994 .
198 DR, VoL .XI(1995)19-20
BetweenFamily Ties and Family Teams : Poor Families and Gender Issues in Social Assistance . . .
Table 3 . Recipients and dependants by type of recipients of Income Support (thou-
sands in May 1993).
All Income Aged 60 and Disabled Single Unemployed Others
Support
	
over parents
Persons
provided for 9,822 2,044 904 2,829 3,315 730
Claimants 5,642 1,736 527 1,013 1,920 446
Partners and
dependants 4,180 307 377 1,816 1,395 284
Partners 1,016 269 135 512 100
Source : Department of Social Security, 1994 .
DR., Vol.XI(1995)19-20 199