Book Review: Gender, Work and Social Control: A Century of Disability Benefits
| DOI | 10.1177/0964663920978254 |
| Author | Ciara Fitzpatrick |
| Date | 01 June 2021 |
| Published date | 01 June 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
Book Reviews
Book Reviews
JACKIE GULLAND, Gender, Work and Social Control: A Century of Disability Benefits. London:
Palgrave Macmillan Press, 2019, pp. 240, ISBN 978-1-137-60564-1, £79.00 (hbk).
The development of the contemporary social security system has seen support to those
who are sick and disabled greatly rationalised. Claimants are required to go through,
what has often been termed a ‘humiliating’ medical examination and complicated
bureaucratic process in order to evidence entitlement to benefit. Gulland’s text provides
a critical historic context for the architecture of current system which is premised on
‘using mechanisms of social control to regulate the lives of claimants’ (2019: 2).
Gulland competently examines the definition of incapacity for work through a socio-
logical lens using legislation and case law as an analytical framework to understand the
trajectory of benefit provision for those individuals who ‘fail’ to remain in work due to a
period of incapacity (2019: 7). In addition, the author provides an important contribution
to the limited existing scholarship through the critical focus on the intersection between
gender and disability. Through forensic archival research and subsequent detailed anal-
ysis of tribunal case law, Gulland asserts that gendered assumptions about women’s role
in society was deeply embroiled into incapacity benefit decision making. The author
effectively paints a picture of women’s experience by concentrating on the central tenet
played by domestic work and it’s propensity to exclude women from entitlement (spe-
cifically in chapter 6).
The book provides a thematic view of the last 100 years. The use of specific appeal
cases, coupled with background material in policy maker’s records and correspondence
acts as compelling anchor points for the authors legal and sociological arguments;
effectively drawing the reader deeply into the socio-political periods under discussion.
Chapter 1, provides an introduction to the text, providing a theoretical grounding for the
key terms and concepts that are referred to throughout the book. The author argues that
the structure and indeed the premise of incapacity benefits is unsuited to the social model
of disability because ‘they imply that individual capacity can be identified’. This is the
case across the UK system of social security whereby provision is individualised and
generally fails to consider the what barriers exist in the workplace and in society more
generally which make it difficult for a person or group of person(s) to make a living
(2019: 7). The author explains that the uncomfortable outcome of this inevitable nexus is
that policymakers have been inclined to design a cost effective way to separate the
genuine from the malingerers. Th e main method which has been relied upo n, from
the inception of income replacement for the sick has been medical examination. The
Social & Legal Studies
2021, Vol. 30(3) 489–497
ªThe Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0964663920978254
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