Welfare State Generation

Women born in Britain between the late 1930s and early 1950s grew up alongside the post-1945 welfare state. Eve Worth argues that the state shaped their lives so deeply, and that they in turn did so much to change it, that they deserve to be called the 'welfare state generation'. The book traces how the welfare state affected these women's life courses, including their opportunities and social experiences.

The expansion of the welfare state after the war was one of the most transformative political changes of the twentieth century. Yet little is known about how it worked in practice or what it meant in the long term for those who grew up within it. The study follows women from their births in the long 1940s through to retirement in the mid-2010s. It is built around thirty-six original life history interviews, set against social surveys and the Census for wider context.

The approach is cross-class. It goes beyond the university-educated women who often dominate gender and social studies and includes women who are usually overlooked. The book reconsiders what caused social mobility in post-war Britain, offers a new understanding of work, and proposes an updated periodisation of the welfare state's development.

In doing so it presents a fresh approach to the history of class and gender. Worth argues that historians should look beyond women's emotions and personal identity and consider their experiences of, and relationships with, the state as employer, educator and provider.