Pinder explores how globalization has shaped, and continues to shape, the American economy, which impacts the welfare state in markedly new ways. In the United States, the transformation from a manufacturing economy to a service economy escalated the need for an abundance of flexible, exploitable, cheap workers. The implementation of the Personal Responsibility Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), whose generic term is workfare, is one of the many ways in which the government responded to capital need for cheap labor. While there is a clear link between welfare and low-wage markets, workfare forces welfare recipients, including single mothers with young children, to work outside of the home in exchange for their welfare checks. More importantly, workfare provides an “underclass” of labor that is trapped in jobs that pay minimum wage. This “underclass” is characteristically gendered and racialized, and the book builds on these insights and seeks to illuminate a crucial but largely overlooked aspect of the negative impact of workfare on black single mother welfare recipients. The stereotype of the “underclass,” which is infused with racial meaning, is used to describe and illustrate the position of black single mother welfare recipients and is an implicit way of talking about poor women with an invidious racist and sexist subtext, which Pinder suggests is one of the ways in which “gendered racism” presents itself in the United States. Ultimately, the book analyzes the intersectionality of race, gender, and class in terms of welfare policy reform in the United States.

In Why the Vote Wasn't Enough for Selma Karlyn Forner rewrites the heralded story of Selma to explain why gaining the right to vote did not bring about economic justice for African Americans in the Alabama Black Belt. Drawing on a rich array of sources, Forner illustrates how voting rights failed to offset decades of systematic disfranchisement and unequal investment in African American communities. Forner contextualizes Selma as a place, not a moment within the civil rights movement —a place where black citizens' fight for full citizenship unfolded alongside an agricultural shift from cotton farming to cattle raising, the implementation of federal divestment policies, and economic globalization. At the end of the twentieth century, Selma's celebrated political legacy looked worlds apart from the dismal economic realities of the region. Forner demonstrates that voting rights are only part of the story in the black freedom struggle and that economic justice is central to achieving full citizenship.

More Than a Job examines northern, urban black women's pursuits of economic rights during the 20th century. It highlights the experiences of African-American mothers, professional women, welfare recipients, businesswomen, and workingwomen in order to understand the economic issues black women faced and the ways in which these women sought to address them. The dissertation considers black women from the context of their homes, workplaces, the city, state, and federal institutions they accessed, as well as the grassroots and national organizations in which they led and participated. Throughout the 20th century, black women waged an undeniable battle for economic justice that has been minimized by scholar's focus on civil rights and social justice campaigns. This dissertation examines black women's economic agendas and strategies, thereby expanding conversations about civil rights activism to include the ways in which black women agitated for a full range of economic rights including access to jobs, educational training, and state resources as well as the freedom to create, own and lead businesses and participate in the consumer market. Additionally, exploring the urban north through the lens of Milwaukee, Wisconsin provides a great opportunity for understanding the context of black women's economic activism. Milwaukee's black population grew tremendously during the World War II period as African Americans migrated north in search of economic freedom. However, black women experienced an economic depression as the jobs they came in search of failed to materialize. During the post-World War II period, poverty enveloped the rapidly growing black community and black women organizers in Milwaukee kept this reality in the forefront of their struggles as they negotiated a racially, politically, and economically unjust urban terrain. Focusing on Milwaukee underscores the importance of including economic activism when examining movements for justice in the United States.

This book employs a sociological perspective to examine the situation of the African American female in light of changing global economic, political, and educational events. The legal forum is utilized along with social statistics to describe the worsening plight of women and minorities in the face of intensified ethnic competition and decreased world resources. A multiplicity of methods are used to clarify and detail the negative influence of global forces in the forums of the courts upon the Black woman. In addition, the negative impact upon the working classes is implied in describing the devastation from the agenda known as the new world order. The author combines the disciplines of law and sociology to provide a grassroots approach to understanding exactly how policies which are unresponsive to the needs of working people actually inhibit global growth.

Fun and fabulous popular education workbook enables users to understand the impact of the global economy on women. Includes activities on eight themes, glossary, resource lists. Perfect for community-based organizations, study groups, or classrooms.