WOMEN AS ‘ANOMALIES’: THE ANOMALIES REGULATIONS OF 1931, THEIR BACKGROUND AND IMPLICATIONS

Abstract

In 1931, the fraught government discussion over the unemployment insurance scheme resulted in the introduction of a set of Anomalies Regulations which greatly restricted the nights of certain categories of workers to claim unemployment benefit. The group most affected by these Regulations were married women, 320000 of whom had been downed benefit under these Regulations by the end of 1936, out of a total of 650 000 insured married women.Recently (Benjamin and Kochin 1979) this measure has been cited in the revived arguments about the effects of unemployment benefit on the level of unemployment. Important as this issue is, the Anomalies Regulations are also of much broader interest in that they open up the whole question of the place of women in the unemployment insurance system.This article is divided into four sections. The first outlines the position of women in the unemployment insurance system prior to 1931. The second looks at the immediate circumstances of the Regulations enactment. The third looks at their immediate consequences. The fourth looks more broadly at the problems of women and the unemployment insurance system.