Do welfare states boost economic growth, or stunt it?

Women in politics are sometimes accused of consciously exploiting their femininity to get ahead in a male-dominated world. Frances Perkins did that, but in an unusual way: she tried to remind men of their mothers. She dressed in a plain, three-cornered hat, and she refined the way she acted, based on careful observation of what seemed to be most effective in persuading men to accept her ideas. Perhaps it's no coincidence that those ideas could reasonably be described as maternal or parental. Any parent wants to shield their children from serious harm, and Perkins believed governments should do the same for their citizens. She became President Franklin D Roosevelt's Secretary of Labour in 1933.