Book Review: SHELLEY GAVIGAN AND DOROTHY CHUNN (eds), The Legal Tender of Gender: Law, Welfare and the Regulation of Women’s Poverty. Oxford: Hart Publishing, Oñati International Series in Law & Society, 2010, 290 pp., ISBN 9781841133140, £45.00 (hbk), ISBN 9781841133157, £22.00 (pbk)
| Date | 01 June 2011 |
| DOI | 10.1177/09646639110200020704 |
| Published date | 01 June 2011 |
| Author | Jenny Smith |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
in the use of, and roles performed by, complaints procedures and ombudsmen. Patrick
Dunleavy, Simon Bastow, Jane Tinkler, Sophia Goldchluk and Ed Towers, then re-examine
and usefully update work undertaken for the National Audit Office. The chapter stresses the
scale of citizen redress – estimated to be an industry worth at least £1.6 billon (p. 449). It is,
however, an industry that fails to provide a level of service or value for money (pp. 446–449).
The main problems are analysed and some radical solutions offered.
Brian Thompson’sis the final chapter of the volume. Here he explains the stepstaken in
recent yearsto build the modern tribunal system in the UK. As this review is being written it
has just been announced that the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council is to be
abolished. It is thereforefitting that this final chapter (Thompson is a member of the AJTC)
provides an accountof the significant role played both by the AJTC and its predecessor, the
Council on Tribunals, in the creation and early development of the tribunal system.
This brief overview hopefully providessome sense of the richness and diversity of the
chapters brought together by Adler in this volume. Entering this period of austerity, and
given the perfunctory way in which the decision to abolish the Administrative Justice and
Tribunals Council wastaken, it is clear that the issues discussed in this book, concernedas
they are with fundamental questionsabout the nature and fairness of public services, have
never been more challenging or important.This is a valuable addition to the literature for
which Michael Adler is to be congratulated.
References
National Audit Office (2005) Citizen Redress: What Citizens Can Do if Things Go Wrong with
Public Services. London: National Audit Office.
Mashaw J (1983) Bureaucratic Justice: Managing Social Security Disability Claims. New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press.
Maurice Sunkin
University of Essex, UK
SHELLEY GAVIGAN AND DOROTHY CHUNN (eds), The Legal Tender of Gender: Law,
Welfare and the Regulation of Women’s Poverty. Oxford: Hart Publishing, On
˜ati Interna-
tional Series in Law & Society, 2010, 290 pp., ISBN 9781841133140, £45.00 (hbk), ISBN
9781841133157, £22.00 (pbk).
The origins of The Legal Tender of Gender lie in an International Institute of the Sociology
of Law workshop held in June 2007, which sought to historicize and theorize the gendered
nature of regulatory shifts in 20th-century welfare provision. The 10 socio-legal chapters
in this book fulfil this remit in diverse ways, examining different areas of welfare in
Canada, the United States and Israel. Reading this book at a time when it seems that barely
a day passes without the UK Government criticizing the ‘undeserving’ poor – the so-
called benefit fraudsters, workless welfare mothers, and those for whom welfare is a sup-
posed lifestyle choice – highlights the necessity of historically-informed feminist critique,
272 Social & Legal Studies 20(2)
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