Muller v. Oregon, 208 U.S. 412 (1908), was a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court. Women were permitted by state mandate fewer working hours than those allotted to men. The posed question was whether women's liberty to negotiate a contract with an employer should be equal to a man's. The law did not recognize sex-based discrimination in 1908; it was unrecognized until the case of Reed v. Reed in 1971; here, the test was not under the equal protections clause, but a test based on the general police powers of the state to protect the welfare of women when it infringed on her fundamental right to negotiate contracts; inequality was not a deciding factor because the sexes were inherently different in their particular conditions and had completely different functions; usage of labor laws that were made to nurture women's welfare and for the "benefit of all" people was decided to be not a violation of the Constitution's Contract Clause.
A welfare state is a form of government in which the state protects and promotes the economic and social well-being of its citizens, based upon the principles of equal opportunity, equitable distribution of wealth, and public responsibility for citizens unable to avail themselves of the minimal provisions for a good life.
Welfare, or commonly social welfare, is a type of government support intended to ensure that members of a society can meet basic human needs such as food and shelter. Social security may either be synonymous with welfare, or refer specifically to social insurance programs which provide support only to those who have previously contributed, as opposed to social assistance programs which provide support on the basis of need alone. The International Labour Organization defines social security as covering support for those in old age, support for the maintenance of children, medical treatment, parental and sick leave, unemployment and disability benefits, and support for sufferers of occupational injury.
Parental leave, or family leave, is an employee benefit available in almost all countries. The term "parental leave" may include maternity, paternity, and adoption leave; or may be used distinctively from "maternity leave" and "paternity leave" to describe separate family leave available to either parent to care for their own children. In some countries and jurisdictions, "family leave" also includes leave provided to care for ill family members. Often, the minimum benefits and eligibility requirements are stipulated by law.
Julia Clifford Lathrop was an American social reformer in the area of education, social policy, and children's welfare. As director of the United States Children's Bureau from 1912 to 1922, she was the first woman ever to head a United States federal bureau.
Florence Moltrop Kelley was an American social and political reformer who coined the term wage abolitionism. Her work against sweatshops and for the minimum wage, eight-hour workdays, and children's rights is widely regarded today.
The New Freedom was Woodrow Wilson's campaign platform in the 1912 presidential election, and also refers to the progressive programs enacted by Wilson during his time as president. First expressed in his campaign speeches and promises, Wilson later wrote a 1913 book of the same name. After the 1918 midterm elections, Republicans took control of Congress and were mostly hostile to the New Freedom. As president, Wilson focused on various types of reform, such as the following:
- Tariff reform: This came through the passage of the Underwood Tariff Act of 1913, which lowered tariffs for the first time since 1857 and went against the protectionist lobby.
- Labor reform: This was achieved through measures such as the Eight Hour Law for Women of the District of Columbia, the Seaman’s Act, Workmen’s Compensation for Federal employees, the Federal Child Labor Bill, and the Adamson Act. During the 1912 campaign Wilson spoke in support of workers organizing into unions while endorsing "the betterment of men in this occupation and the other, the protection of women, the shielding of children, the bringing about of social justice.”
- Business reform: This was established through the passage of the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914, which established the Federal Trade Commission to investigate and halt unfair and illegal business practices by issuing "cease and desist" orders, and the Clayton Antitrust Act.
- Agricultural reform: This was achieved through measures such as the Cotton Futures and Smith-Lever Acts of 1914, the Grain Standards and Warehouse Acts of 1916, and the Smith-Hughes Act of 1917.
- Banking reform: This came in 1913 through the creation of the Federal Reserve System and in 1916 through the passage of the Federal Farm Loan Act, which set up Farm Loan Banks to support farmers.
Josephine Clara Goldmark was an advocate of labor law reform in the United States during the early 20th century. Her work against child labor and for wages-and-hours legislation was influential in the passage of the Keating–Owen Act in 1916 and the later Fair Labor Standards Act of 1937.
The United States Children's Bureau is a federal agency founded in 1912, organized under the United States Department of Health and Human Services' Administration for Children and Families. Today, the bureau's operations involve improving child abuse prevention, foster care, and adoption. Historically, its work was much broader, as shown by the 1912 act which created and funded it:
The said bureau shall investigate and report to [the Department of Commerce and Labor] upon all matters pertaining to the welfare of children and child life among all classes of our people, and shall especially investigate the questions of infant mortality, the birth-rate, orphanage, juvenile courts, desertion, dangerous occupations, accidents and diseases of children, employment, legislation affecting children in the several states and territories.
The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) is a United States federal law passed by the 104th United States Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton. The bill implemented major changes to U.S. social welfare policy, replacing the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program with the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program.
The Brandeis brief was a pioneering legal brief that was the first in United States legal history to rely more on a compilation of scientific information and social science literature than on legal citations. It is named after then-litigator and eventual associate Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who presented it in his argument for the 1908 US Supreme Court case Muller v. Oregon. The brief was submitted in support of a state law restricting the amount of hours women were allowed to work. The Brandeis brief consisted of more than 100 pages, only two of which were devoted to legal argument. The rest of the document contained testimony by medics, social scientists, and male workers arguing that long hours had a negative effect on the "health, safety, morals, and general welfare of women."
Social feminism is a feminist movement that advocates for social rights and special accommodations for women. It was first used to describe members of the women's suffrage movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who were concerned with social problems that affected women and children. They saw obtaining the vote mainly as a means to achieve their reform goals rather than a primary goal in itself. After women gained the right to vote, social feminism continued in the form of labor feminists who advocated for protectionist legislation and special benefits for women. The term is widely used, although some historians have questioned its validity.
The Promotion of the Welfare and Hygiene of Maternity and Infancy Act, more commonly known as the Sheppard–Towner Act, was a 1921 U.S. Act of Congress that provided federal funding for maternity and childcare. It was sponsored by Senator Morris Sheppard (D) of Texas and Representative Horace Mann Towner (R) of Iowa and signed by President Warren G. Harding on November 23, 1921. It went out of effect in 1929.
Maternalism is the public expression of domestic values associated with motherhood. It centers on the language of motherhood to justify women's political activities, actions and validate state or public policies. Maternalism is an extension of "empowered motherhood." It defines itself as the extension of feminine moral values of nurturance and care and the home's social caring into a larger community. Under maternalism, the mother-child relationship is essential for maintaining a healthy society. All women are seen united and defined by their ability and shared responsibility to mother to all children. Using the foundations of motherhood, mothers within maternalism provide a service to the state or nation by raising "citizen-workers." 20th and 21st-century scholars have shed light on women activists in the context of maternalist politics focused on policies designed to benefit women and children, such as maternal and child health care programs, mother pensions like the ADC program and other various welfare programs. Some scholars consider maternalism to be part of feminist movements and ideologies. On the other hand, others consider it to be different from feminism due to some maternalists incorporating a shared characteristic that the male figure in the household should be the economic provider and that a woman's central role is as a mother.
Work–family balance in the United States differs significantly for families of different social class. This differs from work–life balance: while work–life balance may refer to the health and living issues that arise from work, work–family balance refers specifically to how work and families intersect and influence each other.
Surplus women is a phrase coined during the Industrial Revolution referring to a perceived excess of unmarried women in Britain.
Maternal feminism is the belief of many early feminists that women as mothers and caregivers had an important but distinctive role to play in society and in politics. It incorporates reform ideas from social feminism, and combines the concepts of maternalism and feminism. It was a widespread philosophy among well-to-do women in the British Empire, particularly Canada, from the late 19th century until after World War I (1914–18). The concept was attacked by later feminists as accepting the paternalist view of society and providing an excuse for inequality.
Childcare in Francoist Spain and the democratic transition was not about the needs of the mother, but about the needs of the state to educate children. While childcare centers had been provided by Republican aligned unions in the Spanish Civil Wars, with the start of the Franco period women were discouraged from participating in the workforce. Instead, they were expected to tend to their children in the home. The 1942 Ley de Sanidad Infantil y Maternal provided some assistance to working mothers, including maternity leave, economic incentives to breastfeed and infant childcare. By 1955, the Franco government offered educational programming for children aged three to five, but this was focused less on the needs of mothers for childcare and more on the desire to provide children with skills and abilities to succeed in later mandatory schooling. By 1970, children aged two to five were officially considered part of the educational system, even if attendance was not mandatory.
Sonya Michel is an American historian. She is Professor Emerita at the Department History, University of Maryland. She has also taught at Brandeis University, Brown University, Harvard University, Princeton University, University of Illinois at Chicago, and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Michel served as Director of United States Studies at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
Mothers' pensions, also referred to as mothers' aid or widows' aid, were cash payments distributed to impoverished single mothers in the United States during the first three decades of the 20th century. Introduced during the Progressive Era, they were among the earliest components of the modern American welfare state and were the first public cash assistance programs targeted to single mothers.
