The National Childcare Strategy: the social regulation of lone mothers as a gendered reserve army of labour.

Grover, Chris G. (2005) The National Childcare Strategy: the social regulation of lone mothers as a gendered reserve army of labour. Capital and Class, Spring (85). pp. 63-90. ISSN 0309-8168

Abstract

The National Childcare Strategy is examined through the idea of workfarism, and a new evaluation of the ‘women as reserve army’ thesis. The Strategy is shown to benefit capital by regulating a gendered reserve army of labour, and by constraining costs through the socialisation of reproduction and the subsidisation of childcare markets.