Equal pay for equal work is not the national practice. In 1996, women working full time and year round earned 74 cents to every man’s dollar in 1996 and college-educated African American women earned $400 less per year than white male high school graduates. In addition to earning less wages than men, women are still the primary caretakers of children and home. Therefore, women are not compensated for all the work that they do. Feminist scholars and economists refer to the dual responsibility as wage earners and primary caretakers as a woman’s double burden. 

Poverty Is A Woman’s Issue

Single women with children are the most vulnerable to these economic constraints. In addition to facing the same obstacles as other women, they lack the second income so necessary in these economic times. Women with children are sometimes forced to take part-time jobs with little or no benefits that rarely pay a living wage. Higher wage, full-time jobs can make demands on a single mother’s time that she cannot meet. Moreover, finding safe and affordable child care is a persistent and widespread problem. Half of all single mothers in the U.S. have incomes below the poverty level and many are dependent on public assistance. Two-thirds of all poor adults are women. One out of every four children in the United States lives in a poor family. Given this information, one can conclude that poverty is clearly a woman’s issue. 

Welfare Reform Is Contrary To “Family Values”

Federal welfare reform has made matters worse. Poor women with children on public assistance are obligated to work in a world that offers them few opportunities. The number of “working poor” is at its highest in decades. Entry-level jobs that pay a living wage are scarce and parental leave laws offer weak protection to working mothers.

Welfare grants levels are the “safety net” for poor single mothers and other women with children who may become poor through divorce, failure of the father to pay child support, loss of employment, or pregnancy. These grants, which are subject to a lifetime limit of five years, are the only thing poor women have to protect them from destitution. With the advent of welfare reform, “work first” requirements, and grant reductions, large numbers of women searching for jobs have been flooding the labor market. This surplus labor drives low wages further down, thus decreasing the opportunities for women to earn a living wage.

Welfare policies inherently reflect how women’s work is regarded politically and economically. Reducing grants and requiring that recipients obtain low-wage, dead-end jobs despite of a lack of safe, affordable childcare encourages an economic system that pays women much less than men and does not value the unpaid work of caring for families. This is contrary to the rhetoric of “family values.”

Six Strategies That Work

Californians for Family Economic Self-Sufficiency (CFESS), with technical assistance from its national partners, has defined six strategies which show the most promise in achieving long-term success in moving low income families out of poverty. The six strategies are:

1. Adopting a Self-Sufficiency Standard to measure what is needed to eliminate poverty for families and to assess the success of programs designed to move welfare recipients into the workforce;
2. Targeting high-wage employment sectors for use in developing and designing education, employment, and training opportunities and for the provision of career counseling;
3. Integrating literacy and basic skills into occupational skills and family support programs to improve the efficiency and success of adult education investments;
4. Improving the access of low income women to nontraditional training and employment;
5. Training and support for microenterprise development;
6. Supporting the use of individual development accounts, facilitating the development of assets by low income families.

Unless we invest in the ability of low income people, especially women, to acquire skills and increase productivity, build businesses and jobs, and establish stable homes and communities, the likelihood is that needs will continue to grow while the resources to meet them, both public and private, will diminish.