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 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, September 11, 2002.
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