Women in the American Welfare Trap

9. Trapped as They Are

Chapter 9 Trapped as They Are It'd be REALLY INTERESTING to, to find out when you get all through with this, if a profile of an AP worker and a profile of a CLIENT are VERY very much ALIKE ... like a whole, all OVER, overwhelming sense of POWERlessness, and we in a sense are AS TRAPPED as they are. (AnneJensen 6/28/90) When Anne made the above comment she was expressing comembership . Specifically, workers and recipients are the same insofar as both are trapped in the welfare system, and both suffer from an "overwhelming sense of powerlessness." These feelings of entrapment and powerlessness were of course shared by recipients, who frequently referred to the dilemmas of being "stuck on welfare." Such sentiments, moreover, express the economic reality of both groups' dependence on the welfare system. As I have already discussed, the two groups of women did not share high levels of educational achievement, and none of them came from well-off families. Indeed, one of the workers grew up in an AFDC family, and another had a sister who was currently receiving AFDC. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that a comparison of the women's employment histories shows that the kinds ofjobs that recipients had or were currently holding are strikingly similar to those that workers had held prior to becoming AP workers (see Table 1). Most of these jobs were low paid, low status, and defined as "women's" work. Jobs that did not overlap were also often similar in terms of pay and status (e.g.,janitor, bakery worker, dry cleaning worker, farm laborer, etc.). The difference between the two groups is that, in the category of jobs not shared, workers held more "professional" jobs in bookkeeping, teaching, management, and the like; and, that workers did not report engaging in illegal work activities such as prostitution or check stealing. Nevertheless, the vast majority of workers had been clerical workers prior to becoming AP workers (see Appendix B, Table B2); and recipients, as well as workers, listed several "professional" jobs, such as math tutor (junior college level), lab tech- 132 Chapter 9 TABLE 1: Workers' and Recipients' Employment Histories Jobs held in common by AP workers and recipients Restaurant worker (cook/waitress) Clerical worker Domestic worker Cashier Bar tender/server Factory worker Daycare worker Nurse Lab technician Government reporter/inspector Jobs not held in common by AP workers and recipients AP workers Recipients Community aide Safety officer Janitor Bakery worker Dry cleaning worker Data operator Computer operator Library aide Bookkeeper Teacher Store manager Carnival worker Farm laborer Street vendor Sewing (alterations) Gas station attendant Tutor Illegal: Check stealing Prostitution nician, and nurse (see Appendix B, Table B1). Despite the variations, then, and in terms of both income and status, the women's employment backgrounds appear more similar than different. Clearly, both groups of women suffered from the general economic oppression of women in U.S. society: from occupational segregation by gender, in which women are restricted to certain forms ofwork (Ehrenreich and Piven 1984), and from the attendant low level ofwomen's earnings relative to those ofmen (Shortridge 1984). In addition, AP work itself, being in the "helping" professions, fits into the category of "women's" work. Issues of Control: Shared Relationships to the Welfare System Anne alludes to more than economics, however, when she refers to an "overwhelming sense of POWERlessness." She is also pointing to the lack of autonomy and control the women experience in their relationships with the Department of Social Services. Recipients, for instance, Trapped as They Are 133 were routinely told where they could live, what kinds ofmedical care they could receive, what kinds of relationships they could have with men, and what decisions they could make concerning employment and schooling. Workers, for their part, were divested of control over almost every aspect of their work lives: from knowledge to attire, from the organization of work to the organization of space. Although the department did not have the power to regulate intimate aspects ofworkers' lives outside the welfare office, workers felt as if the department did control their entire lives. Recipients and workers accordingly held some similar views: 1. Both recipients and workers believed that the people in power (legislators in the case of recipients; managers in the case ofworkers) "had it easy," and were ignorant of what conditions (for poor people and AP workers) really were. Both felt that those making decisions about their lives were incompetent to make such...