A long-tenn shift in Australian social security has been underway since the 1970s, redefining its basis from a logic of gender difference to one of gender equality in entitlement to benefits. This shift has come in association with more wide-ranging change in the relation between state and market in the lives of men and women. A slowly diminishing wage gap between men and women, together with an increase in women's participation in the labour market, have begun to reduce income inequality

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... n the sexes. A similar pattern is evident in increasing part-time employment among female sole parents. A new relation between state and market is emerging in which the family support functions of social security are less important than its role in providing a gender-neutral safety net. The shift to a logic of gender equality in social security means that redress for social and economic inequalities now depends more fully than in the past on changing gender relations in domestic life and paid employment. For many women these spheres remain the source of significantly unequal opportunity. The date is taken from Elizabeth Wilson's seminal Women and the Welfare State, published in 1977. Australia's own classic, the collection edited by Cora Baldock and Bettina Cass and titled Women, Social Welfare and the State in Australia, first appeared in 1983.