Full Description
Find out how welfare reform has affected women living at the poverty level
Women, Work, and Poverty presents the latest information on women living at or below the poverty level and the changes that need to be made in public policy to allow them to rise above their economic hardships. Using a wide range of research methods, including in-depth interviews, focus groups, small-scale surveys, and analysis of personnel records, the book explores different aspects of women's poverty since the passage of the 1986 welfare reform bill. Anthropologists, economists, political scientists, sociologists, and social workers examine marriage, divorce, children and child care, employment and work schedules, disabilities, mental health, and education, and look at income support programs, such as welfare and unemployment insurance.
Women, Work, and Poverty illuminates the changes in the causes of women's poverty following welfare reform in the United States, using up-to-date research that's both qualitative and quantitative. Taking racial and ethnic diversity into account, the book's contributors examine new findings on the feminization of poverty, the role of children and the lack of child care as an obstacle to employment, labor market policies that can reduce poverty and improve gender wage equality, sex and race segregation in the labor market, and the low quality of jobs available to low income women.
Women, Work, and Poverty examines:
marriage, motherhood, and work
pay equity and living wage reforms
community resources
welfare status and child care
acquiring higher education
advancing women of color
income security
repaying debt after divorce
gender differences in spendable income
women's job loss
Women, Work, and Poverty is an invaluable aid for academics working in social work, social policy, women's studies, economics, sociology, and political science, and for policy researchers, anti-poverty activists, and women's leaders.
Contents
Introduction (Heidi Hartmann)
MARRIAGE, WORK, POVERTY, AND CHILDREN
The Changing Impact of Marriage, Motherhood and Work on Women's Poverty (Hilarie Lieb and Susan Thistle)
Anti-Discrimination vs. Anti-Poverty? A Comparison of Pay Equity and Living Wage Reforms (Pamela Stone and Arielle Kuperberg)
Getting Beyond the Training vs. Work Experience Debate: The Role of Labor Markets, Social Capital, Cultural Capital, and Community Resources in Long-Term Poverty (Jo Anne Schneider)
Welfare Status and Child Care as Obstacles to Full-Time Work for Low-Income Mothers (Julie Press, Janice Johnson-Dias, and Jay Fagan)
Challenges Faced by Women with Disabilities Under TANF (Mary Kay Schleiter, Anne Statham, and Teresa Reinders)
The Work-Family Time Binds of Low-Income Mothers: Nurse Aides Struggle to Care (Peggy Kahn)
ADVANCING WOMEN OF COLOR
When the Spirit Blooms: Acquiring Higher Education in the Context of Welfare Reform (Avis A. Jones-DeWeever)
Policy Implications of Supporting Women of Color in the Sciences (Angela Johnson)
The Production of the Female Entrepreneurial Subject: A Space of Exclusion for
Women of Color? (Mélanie Knight)
INCOME AND INCOME SECURITY
The Ability of Women to Repay Debt After Divorce (Jonathan Fisher and Angela Lyons)
Women's Job Loss and Material Hardship (Vicky Lovell and Gi-Taik Oh)
Who Gets What? Gender Differences in Spendable Income (Tamara Ohler and Nancy Folbre)
About the Contributors
Index
Reference Notes Included
