ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some of the ways in which women were agents as well as objects in the historical emergence of German state social-welfare policies and programs. It analyses the ways in which the emergence of social-scientific discourses and surveys, in which women were also special subjects of interest, at once informed and reflected the class and gender agendas of the state. The simultaneous development and spread of social-science tools and methods was hardly unique to Germany. Industrial capitalism was accompanied everywhere by growing attention to social research, including new methods of analysis, refined statistical categories, and greater reliability. The modern bureaucratic structures designed to meet newly uncovered needs for social services operated in a highly supportive political milieu at all the levels of organization. The impact of the law on the lives of rural householders forces careful assessment of behavior based on a sense of a "collective family interest."
