The Provision of Women's Social Welfare Needs in Jordan: Why the State has failed

Abstract

This thesis answers the question as to how, and to what extent, women’s social welfare needs are provided for in Jordan. Using a liberal feminist approach to social welfare policy, and acknowledging the role played by the specific historical and political experiences of states in the developing world, the thesis examines the provision of Jordanian women’s social welfare needs by the state in the public arena, by the family in the private arena and by Civil Society Organisations which negotiate the space between the two arenas. The thesis demonstrates that the state has systematically failed to translate constitutional commitments to women as equitable citizens deserving of equitable social welfare provisions into reality. Its symbiotic relationship with traditional social forces has ensured that patriarchal social norms and practices have infused public social policy and created internal contradictions in the legal institutions and processes of implementation. These same patriarchal norms and practices continue to prevail within Jordanian family and tribal life, creating a situation in which women exchange the provision of their basic social needs by the family in return for subordinating themselves to a second-class status of dependency and vulnerability. Civil Society Organisations are similarly constrained by the patriarchal influences within the state, and have developed strategies which acknowledge that women’s social welfare provision in the long term is dependent on democratisation processes which build direct relations between the state and its citizens, unmediated by vested tribal interests and protected by the rule of law. The thesis concludes that liberal feminist understandings of women’s social welfare provisions as being located within the state-citizenship dichotomy enable us to identify the particular issues arising for developing states in meeting women’s needs.