Unstitching the New Zealand state: Its role in domesticity and its decline

Abstract

Studies of domesticity tend to take a simple view of the state's role. If the state made reforms, it was because some interest group forced it to do so. These studies risk a charge of functionalism by emphasizing that the state necessarily acted to further capitalist or patriarchal interests. In this paper I argue that the state's response to interests was neither as coherent nor as predictable as is suggested by these approaches. The state is a conflicting ensemble of institutions rather than a monolith. Various state agencies act independently, sometimes in conflicting ways, over domesticity. At the same time, overall, the state has relatively independent imperatives of its own too. Historically, domesticity has not been one of its high priorities. We can see that the New Zealand state undermined domesticity before second-wave feminism of the 19705. But state powers are circumscribed by its democratic context. Just as there were limits to the state's willingness or ability to impose domesticity, so too were there limits to its power to legislate for equality.