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Gender and Disability in US State Temporary Disability Systems 1942–1949

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2023

ELIZABETH J. REMICK Open the ORCID record for ELIZABETH J. REMICK [Opens in a new window]
ELIZABETH J. REMICK*
Affiliation:
Tufts University
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Abstract

During the 1940s, four US states established a new form of social insurance, Temporary Disability Insurance (TDI), meant to provide wage replacement to breadwinners unable to work due to nonoccupational illness or injury. The first TDI state, Rhode Island, did not initially exclude coverage of pregnancy-related disabilities, threatening the health of the TDI trust fund. Administrators and lawmakers then sought to reduce or eliminate the pregnancy-related disability benefit on the grounds that pregnancy and related conditions were not “real” disabilities. Subsequently, Rhode Island administrators advised lawmakers in California, New Jersey, and New York to exclude pregnancy-related disabilities from coverage. The breadwinner gender ideology animating New Deal social welfare programs intersected with gendered ideas of disability, creating a form of social insurance that excluded or marginalized pregnancy-related disability and further circumscribed women’s social citizenship.

Keywords

pregnancy-related disabilitytemporary disability insuranceNew Dealsex discrimination
Type
Article
Information
Journal of Policy History , Volume 35 , Issue 3 , July 2023 , pp. 309 - 332
Copyright
© Donald Critchlow and Cambridge University Press, 2023

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Footnotes

I would like to thank Eitan Hersh, Natalie Masuoka, Julie Novkov, Deborah Schildkraut, Kumar Ramanathan, and the anonymous reviewers for their feedback on this paper, and this journal’s editorial team for their extraordinary patience during the pandemic.

References

NOTES

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