ABSTRACT
The deep divisions between the two communities in Northern Ireland extend to their relations to state policy at every level. Social policy, as well as the more obvious and more researched areas such as policing and employment legislation, is shaped by sectarianism. Social policy structures the relation between paid and unpaid work, and is crucial to the organisation of gender relations. Northern Ireland’s social policy has been based on a conservative model, with the family and Church central to the provision of welfare. In the context of a society divided along religious lines, this has inevitably produced a ‘social apartheid’ in welfare, with each community largely servicing its own needs.
