The Feminization of Poverty

On January 28, 1981, Jane Fleming and Avril Madison of Wider Opportunities for Women, Inc. testified before the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee on sex discrimination in employment. The following is excerpted from their testimony:

Almost unnoticed in the national media, a study released last year by the National Advisory Council on Economic Opportunity contained a startling analysis of poverty in the United States. Critical Choices for the 1980's, the Council's 12th annual report, concluded its findings on women and poverty with the following predictions:

All other things being equal, if the proportion of the poor who are in female-headed families were to increase at the same rate as it did from · 1967 to 1977, they would comprise 100 percent of the poverty population by about the year 2000.

The research of the Advisory Council looked at the sex, age, and race of the poverty population in the United States and at the ways this population has changed over the past two decades. It also examined the extent to which public policy has had an impact on these developments.

In summary, the study reported that the-percentage of those living in poverty has declined since 1960. It is down from 35 percent to 25 percent of the total population. The reasons for the improvement, and who benefited, are the major questions the study examined. The impact of economic growth and the resultant "trickle down" of jobs and increased earnings has, it seems, reduced poverty only for maleheaded families. From 1964 on, women and minorities were virtually unaffected by gains in jobs and earnings resulting from economic growth.

The number of female heads of household in the U.S. increased more than 30 percent between 1970 and 1979 (to a total of 8,456,000). By 1978 one in every three of these female-headed households lived in poverty, as opposed to one in eighteen maleheaded households. In 1978, there were about 1.2 million fewer poor children in families headed by men than in 1968-but there were 1.5 million more poor children in families headed by women. The Advisory Council concluded:

To the extent there have been "winners" in the War on Poverty during the 1970's, they have been male and mainly white....The feminiza. tion of poverty has become one of the most compelling social facts of the decade.

The Causes

What social phenomena are responsible for the feminization of poverty? Researchers seem to agree that the reasons include increased marital disruption in society, inadequate benefits and support services for working mothers, continuing barriers to employment opportunities for female workers, and low earnings of working women.

Most women today have no choice but to work to keep their families solvent and intact. The economic status of women after marital dissolution, the continuing patterns of sex discrimination which keep women in poorly paid dead-end occupations, the pat⚫tern of discriminatory hiring practices, the lack of commitment by education and training systems, to eliminate sex discrimination in the preparation of women for work, and the "dual career" needs women must try to meet are the barriers which make and keep women poor. This is particularly true for minority women and for older women who, along

with sex discrimination, suffer the double impact of race and age in the market place.

Marital dissolution-through separation, divorce, or death-is now a commonplace in American life. While the social consequences of widowhood, separation or divorce are painful for the individual, the family, and the community, the resultant economic consequences for the woman in most cases lead to poverty.

During International Women's Year in 1975, popular mythology was replaced with statistical reality:

Only 14 percent of divorcing women are awarded alimony; only 7 percent of those collect it regularly.

Only 46 percent of divorcing mothers are awarded child support-and only half of them collect it regularly.

Three years after a divorce, only 19 percent of divorced fathers continue to pay awarded alimony or child support.

In California, for example, where three out of five single-headed households are on welfare, divorced women and their children there live on an average of $218 per month, while divorced men average $800 per month.

These economic realities remain hidden from the

general public. As a society, we persist in the stereotype of the American family as one male breadwinner, a homemaker wife, 2.5 children, and a life of economic affluence. But the stereotype no longer matches the lives around us. Close to one in every two marriages in the U.S. ends in divorce and this stereotype costs us dearly. It cannot continue to be the basis for public policy.

When a marriage dissolves, a wife must, almost without exception, seek employment or continue employment begun during marriage. When she seeks employment, she faces sex, age and perhaps racial discrimination in the marketplace. In addition, she is taught that, as a former homemaker, the labor market places no economic value on the work she has done or the skills she has acquired. Unemployment among women in this group is extremely high; and even when employment is forthcoming, it is to be found largely in the poorly paid, dead-end clerical and service jobs that keep women counted among the "working poor". For those women who have always worked outside the home (as is frequently the case in minority households, and more and more true these days in all families) the jobs generally held are at the lowest end of the wage spectrum and cannot support a family without the addition of public assistance. Among single mothers with children under 6 who worked full-time in 1977, more than a third were poor. When women's wages are so low that even full-

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time work cannot lift them out of poverty, the impact of sex discrimination cannot be denied.

In addition to marital dissolution, the dual responsibilities of the working woman-as wife, mother and sole or supplementary breadwinner-provide another basis for female poverty. Regardless of whether she works in paid employment outside the home, in most families the woman is also fully responsible for domestic work and child care. This is a societal norm. Yet to purchase the services of another to do the domestic tasks she does at home costs the working woman more than she can afford out of her wages from her job.

Quality child care, for example, is expensive when it is available at all. The compromise-part-time work has three other economic disadvantages: lower pay, lack of benefits (especially health coverage), and the interruption of one's career path. Few women return to the job market after part-time or full-time mothering to similar or comparable wages. Usually the returning woman takes a cut in wages even though the cost of living has risen..

Although there are more than 44 million women in the paid labor force today, the majority are restricted to just 20 of the 420 listed occupational, categories-mostly retail sales, service, factory, or plant work. The growth of job opportunities in these traditionally female occupations has not kept pace with the growing number of female job seekers. As a result, women make up the majority (66 percent) of "discouraged" workers-those who have actually given up looking for paid employment. Of those women who found jobs in 1978, only 9.9 percent held well-paid traditionally. "male" jobs; 21.6 percent held sex-neutral jobs; and 68.5 percent of the female work force was segregated into the low-paid traditionally "female" jobs.

All these figures out of context sound like an argument for vast cultural change. But there is no need for argument, because the vast social change has already occurred. Most women work and need to work-in fact, women are the fastest growing part of the labor force. With the current wage differential between women and men (women earn $.59 to every $1.00 earned by a man), and with the increasing poverty among women, public policy must address the changes which have already taken place.

To look for a moment at actual wages, one can see the impact of sex discrimination immediately. In a 1979 study on the median weekly wages of full-time workers, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that sales work (which has a traditionally female work force) generated $154 per week for female workers and $297 for male workers. This is frequently the case. Even in occupations which are predominantly female, men hold positions of greater responsibility, status, and financial reward. In the traditionally male occupations, the problem lies not only in the wage patterns, but in the barriers to the entrance of

women.

It is true that in the last decade, because of affirmative action and pioneer efforts to train women for traditionally male fields, the number of women in skilled trades increased by 80 percent. Yet this figure is based on the previous invisibility of women in these trades. With the increases, for example, women are only 4 percent of painters; 3 percent of machinists; 2 percent of electricians; 2 percent of tool and die makers; 1 percent of plumbers; and 1 percent of auto mechanics.

There is evidence collected this year that the entrenchment of women in women's traditional fields might be lessening somewhat. The Institute for Women's Concerns assessed enrollment in vocational and technical schools in several states and found a slight increase in women entering nontraditional jobs, but a significantly larger number turning to "sex neutral" training programs in which wages appear better than in traditional "women's work",

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May, 1981/What She Wants/Page 5