Feminization of Poverty? Living Conditions of Women in the United States

Feminization of Poverty? Living Conditions of Women in the United States PDF

Author: Anja Villinger

Publisher: GRIN Verlag

Published: 2006-03-01

Total Pages: 131

ISBN-13: 3638474860

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Thesis (M.A.) from the year 2005 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,0, Technical University of Chemnitz, language: English, abstract: Introduction No novelty in the United States struck me more vividly during my stay there than the equality of conditions. (Alexis de Tocqueville) With this statement, the European aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville, who came to the U.S. in 1831, took up one of America’s well-known founding myths: that of equality. The view of America as the land of unlimited opportunities and equal chances, where everybody can try his luck and pursue his own happiness, is still widespread today – inside as well as outside of America. The paradox with this myth is that today, the USA is the Western nation with the greatest percentage of the world’s rich and with the widest gap between rich and poor. A closer look into the statistics reveals that certain groups and minorities seem to be more disadvantaged than others since they are stronger represented among the poor. This fact seriously calls into question the image of America as the country of equal living conditions. Nevertheless, most Americans strongly trust in their equal opportunities for economic advancement: 72% believe in their own chance to raise their living standard – a share that is disproportionately higher than in other countries. In Germany, for example, only 41% of the interviewees estimate their opportunities in such an optimistic way (cf. Rode 1992: 192). This picture of the United States is also often predominant in the minds of adult learners of English as a foreign language. My intention with this paper is to show them the “other America”, that one far away from the rags-to-riches stories told in numerous Hollywood films. The other America shows high and persistent poverty rates for certain population groups and minorities. During my preliminary reading, I repeatedly came across the term Feminization of Poverty. I wondered what this term exactly embraces, how this phenomenon can emerge in one of the richest industrialized Western nations and why the U.S. government is not able– or not willing - to counter effectively to that phenomenon. As, in my opinion, the issue of the Feminization of Poverty in the United States needs further explanation to understand its complex nature and with it, some particularities of the American society, I decided to dedicate my thesis to poor women and their living conditions in the United States.

Poor Women in Rich Countries

Poor Women in Rich Countries PDF

Author: Gertrude Schaffner Goldberg

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2010-04-10

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 0199718202

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The first book to study women's poverty over the life course, this wide-ranging collection focuses on the economic condition of single mothers and single elderly women--while also considering partnered women and immigrants--in eight wealthy but diverse countries: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In a rich analysis of labor market and social welfare sectors, Gertrude Schaffner Goldberg and a team of outstanding international contributors conclude that both living-wage employment and government provision of adequate benefits and services are necessary if lone women are to achieve a socially acceptable living standard. Taken together, the chapters extend a feminist critique of welfare state theories and chart nations' disparate progress against poverty -- probing, for instance, how Sweden emerged a leader in the prevention of women's poverty while the United States continues to lag. By identifying the social and economic policies that enable women to live independently, Poor Women in Rich Countries provides nothing less than a blueprint for abolishing women's poverty.

The Feminization of Poverty

The Feminization of Poverty PDF

Author: Gertrude Schaffner Goldberg

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 1990-11-09

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 0313390266

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This comprehensive and carefully organized collection provides an overview of the relationship between gender and economic stratification in seven industrialized countries. Everywhere, as a Polish commentator notes, `men have too much power, and women too much work.' Nevertheless, these studies reveal large differences in the circumstances of women in different countries and help to illuminate the several developments in the labor market, the family, and public policy which explain the extreme feminization of poverty in the United States. Frances Fox Piven, City University of New York Lucid, careful, and systematic, the book builds a compelling explanation for the needless impoverishment experienced by millions of American women and offers a sensible, realistic agenda for its reduction. Michael B. Katz, University of Pennsylvania This study asks whether the feminization of poverty, the tendency of women and their families to become the majority of the poor, is unique to the United States, where the phenomenon was first discovered. Seven industrialized nations, both capitalist and socialist, with different degrees of commitment to social welfare are compared: Canada, Japan, France, Sweden, Poland, the Soviet Union, and the United States. In each of the countries the authors analyze information about women, labor market conditions, equalization policies, social welfare programs, and demographic variables such as the rates of divorce and single parenthood. According to Goldberg and Kremen, it is possible to predict the feminization of poverty when three conditions are present: (1) insufficient efforts to reduce work place and wage inequities for women; (2) the absence or ineffectiveness of social welfare programs which can redress the cost, both economic and personal, of the dual role that women have assumed in industrialized societies; and (3) the presence of increasing rates of divorce and single motherhood. An array of labor market and social welfare programs in use in the six other industrialized nations are then reviewed by the authors for possible adaptation in the United States. This important work will be a valuable resource for scholars across the academic and professional disciplines of political science, sociology, economics, social work, and women's studies.

Women and Children Last

Women and Children Last PDF

Author: Ruth Sidel

Publisher: Penguin Mass Market

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13:

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Comparing the affluent U.S. of today to the Titanic (which, as a luxury liner, nevertheless lacked lifeboats for steerage women and children), Sidel contends in this realistic appraisal that despite the women's movement, social and economic trends of the last 20 years, especially the divorce rate and mechanization of industry, have reduced to bare survival hundreds of thousands of already impoverished women and children. Many are older women, battered wives or female heads of families, asserts Sidel (who interviewed several of them), and they are often victims of sex and racial discrimination in the workplace or of government cutbacks in human services. Following Sweden's example, the U.S., she argues, should develop policies to strengthen family life through universal entitlements; should pay women better wages, provide family planning, maternity leaves and prenatal care, along with day and after-school care.

Poverty in the United States

Poverty in the United States PDF

Author: Ann O'Leary

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-12-19

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 3319438336

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This important text explores the deep relationships between poverty, health/mental health conditions, and widespread social problems as they affect the lives of low-income women. A robust source of both empirical findings and first-person descriptions by poor women of their living conditions, it exposes cyclical patterns of structural and environmental stressors contributing to impaired physical and mental health. Psychological conditions (notably depression and PTSD), substance use and abuse, domestic and gun-related violence, relationship instability, and hunger in low-income communities, especially among women of color, are discussed in detail. In terms of solutions, the book’s contributors identify areas for major policy reform and make potent recommendations for community outreach, wide-scale intervention, and sustained advocacy. Among the topics covered:• The intersection of women’s health and poverty.• Poverty, personal experiences of violence, and mental health.• The role of social support for women living in poverty.• The logic of exchange sex among women living in poverty.• Physical safety and neighborhood issues.• Exploring the complex intersections between housing environments and health behaviors among women living in poverty. A stark reminder that health should be considered a basic human right, Poverty in the United States: Women's Voices is a necessary reference for research professionals particularly interested in women’s studies, HIV/AIDS prevention, poverty, and social policy.

For Crying Out Loud

For Crying Out Loud PDF

Author: Diane Dujon

Publisher: South End Press

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 436

ISBN-13: 9780896085299

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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.

Women, Work, and Poverty

Women, Work, and Poverty PDF

Author: Heidi I. Hartmann

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 1135803161

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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.

The Oxford Handbook of the Social Science of Poverty

The Oxford Handbook of the Social Science of Poverty PDF

Author: David Brady

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 937

ISBN-13: 0199914052

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The Oxford Handbook of the Social Science of Poverty builds a common scholarly ground in the study of poverty by bringing together an international, inter-disciplinary group of scholars to provide their perspectives on the issue. Contributors engage in discussions about the leading theories and conceptual debates regarding poverty, the most salient topics in poverty research, and the far-reaching consequences of poverty on the individual and societal level.

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