Chapter Writing everyday life into law

Overview & Synopsis

In 1977, a curious and short-lived social security benefit came into being. Housewife’s Non-Contributory Invalidity Pension (HNCIP) was assessed through a ‘household duties test’ which sought to determine whether a woman was capable of performing everyday activities. HNCIP’s very existence shows that assumptions were made about women’s lives, domestic labour, and the position of women within a nuclear family headed by a male breadwinner. It exposed fundamental tensions within the social security administration in the late 1970s. Authorities accepted the moral claims from disabled people’s organisations for welfare support but were mindful of the cost implications. A patchwork of benefits for various disability categories had emerged over the previous decade. HNCIP, however, did not fit existing models of ‘income replacement’ or ‘extra costs’ benefits. It provided for the household’s costs from a wife being unable to perform domestic labour based on a medical diagnosis. Yet it was also a ‘pension’, a category for people unable to secure paid work. Was domestic labour ‘work’? If so, why did it have financial value only when ill health took it away? This chapter considers the implications of the Department of Health and Social Security’s attempts to quantify the everyday life of domestic labour. Internal policy files from the National Archives about the ‘household duties test’ give us a window onto the interaction between the Beveridgean welfare state, gender, and disability. Further, tribunal documents give us a unique – if historiographically problematic – perspective on disabled women’s needs and expectations of the welfare state.