In Money In Their Own Name, Wendy McKeen examines the relationship between gender and social policy in Canada from the 1970s to the 1990s. She provides a detailed historical account of the shaping of feminist politics within the field of federal child benefits programs in Canada, and explores the critical issue of why feminists' vision of the 'social individual' failed to flourish.

Canadian social policy, as in most western welfare states, has established women's access to social benefits on the basis of their status as wives or mothers, not individuals in their own right. In...