and ain't i a woman: US women get poorer — and married
In 1996, then US President Bill Clinton signed into law a bill that
was designed to “end welfare as we know it”. The notorious law denied benefits
to many single mothers who could not, or did not, find work within two
years. By 1999, the number of people receiving welfare in the US had fallen
from 14.2 million to 7.2 million.
The law has to be “reauthorised” by Congress before the end of this
year. President George Bush seems intent on using this opportunity not
to just punish single mothers further, but to eliminate them altogether.
Since 1996, the main US welfare program (other than Medicaid and food
stamp programs) has been Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, which
is restricted to parents (mostly women) and pregnant women. Federal legislation
restricts access to TANF to five years over a person's life, and allows
the states to reduce (but not increase) this limit. Nearly half the states
have done so.
TANF does not guarantee women access to child care, which is now funded
through a separate program. Increasing this funding was the main sweetener
offered by Clinton to get the 1996 bill passed.
Many welfare “experts”, including Australia's Patrick McClure, have
claimed the sharp reduction in welfare expenditure in the US is a sign
that punitive measures get more welfare recipients into work. What they
don't say is that while the number of single mothers in work has risen
since 1996, the number of children living in poverty has also increased.
This is in large part because wages have been driven down, increasing women's
workload but not their incomes.
Bush wants to increase this trend. A reauthorisation bill was passed
by the US House of Representatives in June, and is yet to be debated in
the Senate. Aiming to redesign welfare as an income supplement to the very
low paid — i.e., a way of helping business top up starvation wages — Bush
proposes to insist that states have 70% of welfare recipients in work by
2007. To be classified as working, mothers of children under six would
have to work 40 hours a week, of which up to 16 hours could be “training”
or education.
Incredibly, Bush intends to reduce women's access to child care at the
same time — increasing funding by less than 10%, while doubling the required
hours of work. Currently, in 48 US states, child care costs more than public
college tuition.
The most ridiculous part of the bill, however, is the provision of US$300
million a year, for at least four years, for “marriage promotion schemes”.
The “aims” of the welfare program will also be re-worded to being to create
“healthy, two-parent married families”.
The money will be allocated to states which can prove they have “family
formation and healthy-marriage efforts”. Some programs are already in place,
including: compulsory classes to learn “how to create a stable family”
for pregnant women on welfare (Michigan) and a $100 monthly bonus for married
couples (West Virginia).
In February, Bush argued: “Stable families should be the goal of American
welfare policy.”
Such “stability” is likely to come at a high cost for many women and
children. According to the National Organisation of Women, more than half
the women receiving welfare have been physically abused by an intimate
partner during their lifetime. About a third are currently experiencing
such abuse.
Increasing the financial incentives to get married, and making it more
difficult to both work and care for young children while alone, is likely
to force many women to remain in, or return to, abusive relationships.
This welfare “reform” has been justified by a propaganda campaign against
single parent families, particularly those without a “father figure”. In
the last decade, single mums have been blamed for everything from the number
of young black men in jail to drug abuse and poor health.
Welfare “reform” does nothing to help women escape the poverty trap:
it is not designed to. It is designed to provide big business with a more
vulnerable, temporary and super-exploited workforce, and to force the responsibility
for “welfare” back on to the family unit: Child-care carried out by grandparents,
women working part-time and “supported” by a male partner, who may or may
not be abusive.
The US example is educative, as the Australian government continues
to debate welfare reform. The US path to reducing wages and job security
should be opposed not only by women, but by all workers.
BY ALISON DELLIT
From Green Left Weekly, September 11, 2002.
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