Poverty and Women

Most Americans are insulated from the poor; it's hard to imagine the challenges of poverty, the daily fears of crime and victimization, the frustration of not being able to provide for a child. Instead, we are often exposed to the rhetoric and hyperbole about the excesses of the American welfare system. These messages color our perception of the welfare problem in the United States and they close the American mind to a full understanding of the complexity of family poverty. But who are these poor families? What do we know about how they arrived in such desperate straits? Is poverty their fate for a lifetime or for only a brief period? In Faces of Poverty, Jill Duerr Berrick answers these questions as she dispels the misconceptions and myths about welfare and the welfare population that have clouded the true picture of poverty in America. Over the course of a year, Berrick spent numerous hours as a participant-observer with five women and their families, documenting their daily activities, thoughts, and fears as they managed the strains of poverty. We meet Ana, Sandy, Rebecca, Darlene, and Cora, all of whom, at some point, have turned to welfare for support. Each represents a wider segment of the welfare population--ranging from Ana (who lost a business, injured her back, and temporarily lost her job, all in a short period of time) to Cora (who was raised in poverty, spent ten years in an abusive relationship, and now struggles to raise six children in a drug-infested neighborhood). And as Berrick documents these women's experiences, she also debunks many of the myths about welfare: she reveals that welfare is not generous (welfare families remain below the poverty line even with government assistance); that the majority of women on welfare are not long-term welfare dependents; that welfare does not run in families; that "welfare mothers" do not keep having children to increase their payments (women on welfare have, on average, two children); and that almost half of all women on welfare turned to it after a divorce. At a time when welfare has become a hotly debated political issue, Faces of Poverty gives us the facts. The debate surrounding welfare will continue as each of the 50 states struggles to reform their welfare programs, and this debate will turn on the public's perception of the welfare population. Berrick offers insight into each of the reforms under consideration and starkly demonstrates their implications for poor women and children. She provides a window into these women's lives, brilliantly portraying their hopes and fears and their struggle to live with dignity.

Would a good mother sleep with her children in a car parked on a city street in the dead of winter? Would a good mother send her child to school in shoes two sizes too big because that's all she could find? Would a good mother tell her child to shut up and behave or the whole family will be out on the street again? Does the woman with no money, no home, and no help have any chance at all of being a good mother, according to the model our society sets up? This is the woman whose voice, so rarely heard and so often ignored, resonates through this book, which follows the lives of mothers on the margins and asks where they fit in our increasingly black-and-white picture of the world.

At once an anthropologist in the field and a social worker on the job, Deborah R. Connolly is ideally placed to draw out these women's life stories, the stories that our culture tells about them, and the revealing contradictions between the two. In their own words, by turns awkward and eloquent, poignant and harsh, these homeless,mothers map the perilous territory between the promise of childhood and the hard reality of motherhood on the street, between "We're never gonna get married, we're never gonna have kids" and "God, how did we end up like this?"

What emerges from these stories is a glimpse of the cultural imagination of class and gender as it revolves around the lives of mostly white homeless mothers. Attending to both everyday lives and cultural norms, while exploring and interpreting their interdependencies and tensions, Connolly makes these mothers and their plight as real for us as the headlines and stereotypes and the cultural paranoia that so often displace them and consign them to silence.

Glass Ceilings and Bottomless Pits demonstrates that, while the female corporate executive and the welfare mother may seem to be a world apart, they have much in common -- job discrimination, lower pay than men, and primary responsibility for the unpaid work of making sure their children are cared for. Randy Albelda and Chris Tilly provide a cogent analysis of the economic and social realities for women in the United States, across class lines. In an age when the right wing manipulates the dialogue around women's issues to separate middle- and upper-class women from their poorer sisters, this book's facts, figures, and analysis provide a much-needed antidote.

In clear language, with plenty of supporting data, the authors of this important book explain how the rapid changes in the U.S. economy and culture over the past half-century have increased pressures on families and have left single mothers in the dust. They examine the impact of public policies on families and the shortcomings of current welfare reform initiatives, including the 1996 welfare law. However, they don't stop there. Breaking through the artificial boundaries that have constrained the welfare debate, Albelda and Tilly lay out concrete proposals for transforming not just welfare, but a broad range of public policies to provide real support for families and secure women's economic equality.

Although poverty is one of the most serious issues facing the world's population, finding statistical information on this subject has, in the past, required a significant amount of time and effort. Now, this volume provides researchers with a single, comprehensive resource that includes detailed information regarding the worldwide and regional impact of poverty in the developing world and on individual countries from authoritative sources including the World Bank and the UN Human Development Report. The Handbook includes statistics on economic indicators, demographic patterns, income distribution, and other factors that impact poverty in the world today. Two special sections focus on women and children and on poverty in selected cities worldwide.