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.

Women and Poverty analyzes the social and structural factors that contribute to, and legitimize, class inequity and women's poverty. In doing so, the book provides a unique documentation of women's experiences of poverty and classism at the individual and interpersonal levels. Provides readers with a critical analysis of the social and structural factors that contribute to women's poverty Uses a multidisciplinary approach to bring together new research and theory from social psychology, policy studies, and critical and feminist scholarship Documents women's experiences of poverty and classism at the interpersonal and institutional levels Discusses policy analysis for reducing poverty and social inequality

The work addresses current issues in women's history and women's studies, such as the relationship between women's paid employment and male power and the multifaceted causes of women's subordination in working-class families."--BOOK JACKET.

'This extraordinarily lucid book demonstrates that women from all walks of life get the short end of the stick because of their gender. From welfare mothers to corporate executives, Albelda and Tilly show and why the powers-that-be benefit from scapegoating and marginalizing women.' Professor Mimi Abramowitz, author, Regulating the Lives of WomenA 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.

Despite an overhaul in the 1990s, the American welfare system remains with a business model focused on the bottom line. Crafted by male-dominated legislative bodies whose members most likely never had to choose between paying the rent or feeding their kids, established policies primarily protect the popular programs that ensure politicians' re-election. This book offers a feminist perspective on the 21st century attitude toward poverty, illustrated by the words of women forced to live every day with social policies they had no voice in developing. Topics include the struggles of daily life, crime, health care, education, employment, and a discussion of capitalism, inequality, greed, and moral obligation in a free society. In the unrestrained pursuit of wealth, this work shows that America has created a vast poverty problem, making the rich richer and forcing the poor into a forgotten class.

Brings together the words of welfare mothers, activists and advocates, as well as scholars in a poignant and powerful challenge to the impoverishment of women.

The debt crisis and global economic changes of the 1980s caused Third World nations to restructure economic policies, community resources, the labor market, and intra-household divisions of labor. These changes swelled the ranks of the unemployed, the poor, and the malnourished. Women, in particular, were affected negatively by processes of structural adjustment because they represent a disproportionate share of the world's poor, are increasingly represented among low-wage workers, and are forced to balance wage work with subsistence and domestic production in meeting household needs. Using country-based studies, this text offers new perspectives on the consequences of economic crisis in terms of changing state practices and household and family organization, patterns of resource allocation, and women's work.