Most women and minorities were excluded from the benefits of unemployment insurance and old age pensions. Employment definitions reflected typical white male categories and patterns.<11> Job categories that were not covered by the act included workers in agricultural labor, domestic service, government employees, and many teachers, nurses, hospital employees, librarians, and social workers.<12> The act also denied coverage to individuals who worked intermittently.<13> These jobs were dominated by women and minorities. For example, women made up 90% of domestic labor in 1940 and two-thirds of all employed black women were in domestic service.<14> Exclusions exempted nearly half the working population.<13> Nearly two-thirds of all African Americans in the labor force, 70 to 80% in some areas in the South, and just over half of all women employed were not covered by Social Security.<15><16> At the time, the NAACP protested the Social Security Act, describing it as “a sieve with holes just big enough for the majority of Negroes to fall through.”<16>
Some have suggested that this discrimination resulted from the powerful position of Southern Democrats on two of the committees pivotal for the Act’s creation, the Senate Finance Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee.
Southern congressmen supported Social Security as a means to bring needed relief to areas in the South that were especially hurt by the Great Depression but wished to avoid legislation which might interfere with the racial status quo in the South. The solution to this dilemma was to pass a bill that both included exclusions and granted authority to the states rather than the national government (such as the states' power in Aid to Dependent Children). Others have argued that exclusions of job categories such as agriculture were frequently left out of new social security systems worldwide because of the administrative difficulties in covering these workers.<16>
Social Security reinforced traditional views of family life.<17> Women generally qualified for insurance only through their husband or their children.<17> Mothers’ pensions (Title IV) based entitlements on the presumption that mothers would be unemployed.<17>
Historical discrimination in the system can also be seen with regard to Aid to Dependent Children. Since this money was allocated to the states to distribute, some localities assessed black families as needing less money than white families. These low grant levels made it impossible for African American mothers to not work: one requirement of the program.<18> Some states also excluded children born out of wedlock, an exclusion which affected African American women more than white women.<19> One study determined that 14.4% of eligible white individuals received funding, but only 1.5% of eligible black individuals received these benefits.<16>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_(United_States)
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