women and welfare

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THELADYAND THETRAMP(II):FEMINISTWELFAREPOLITICS,

POORSINGLEMOTHERS,AND THE

CHALLENGEOFWELFAREJUSTICE

GWENDOLYNMINK

I have worked in various politicalvenues on welfare issues forten years-for about as long as I have been researching andwriting about women and U.S. social policy.'Most recently, Iworked as a Steering Committee member and cochair of theWomen's Committee of 100, a feminist mobilization againstpunitive welfare reform. I signed up with the Women'sCom-mittee of 100 in March or April of 1995-roughly a year after

completing a book on welfare policy history and around thesame time as the book'spublication.2I have always done both politics and scholarship, so di-

recting my activism toward my field of professional expertiseat first did not seem especially odd or problematic. However,Ihad just published a book critical of experts like me-a bookwhich, among other things, faulted solipsistic women welfareinnovatorsof the early twentieth centuryforbuilding a welfarestate harmful to women and to gender

equality.The bookwas

barely between covers, and I had already embarked on a pathof policyadvocacythat veered disturbinglyclose to the reform-ers I had criticized. There I was, consorting with a group ofsupereducated,do-goodfeminists, most of whom would neverneed a welfare check.And there we were, using our social andprofessional positions to gain entry into congressional offices,where we spoke against reformsthat would affect not us butpoorwomen. It seemed to me that maybe I hadn't really inter-

nalized the lessons I had drawn from early-twentieth-centurywelfare history.I struggled a bit with my own contradictions-betweenwhat

Feminist Studies 24, no. 1 (spring 1998). ? 1997 by Feminist Studies, Inc.55



56 GwendolynMink

I felt compelledto do as a feminist activist confrontedby the

political crisis of welfare reform and what I had cautionedagainst as a student of elite women reformers. But I didn'thave to struggle long. It quicklybecameapparentthat any his-torical analogies I fearedwere the productof academicoverin-

terpretation. An awesome collection of women makes up theCommitteeof 100-none ofwhom, to my knowledge,has any in-terest in motheringthe pooras our forebears did earlier in thecentury and all of whom reject the morallyand culturallypre-

scriptive politics of early-twentieth-centurywelfare innovationand of late-twentieth-centurywelfare reform.We mobilizednot to speak for poormothers but with them-

to speak forourselves as feminists frustratedby the absence of

women'svoices and by the lack of gender equality concernsinthe welfare debate. Although members of Congress paid scantattention, in our lobbying,letter writing, and media efforts,werepeatedly explained how welfare reform risks many of the

rights and protections upon which women's security and

equality depends. Often speaking of "welfare as a women'sissue," we argued that "a war against poor women is a war

against all women."This was a strategically clever rallying cry,but it failed to

rally many women-even feminists. In fact, the war againstpoorwomen was just that: a war against poorwomen. And itwas a war in which many middle-class women participatedonthe antiwelfare side. All but one woman in the U.S. Senate

supported the Personal Responsibility Act when it first wastaken up in the summer of 1995.3 In 1996, twenty-six of thirty-one Democratic women in the House of Representativesvotedfor their party's substitute bill, which, like the Personal Re-

sponsibility Act, stripped poor single mothers of their entitle-ment to welfare.4Meanwhile, across the country, a National

Organizationfor Women Legal Defense and Education Fund

appeal for contributionsto support an economicjustice litiga-tor arousedso much hate mail that NOWLDEF stoppeddoing

directmail on the welfare issue.5Although the feminist Women's Committee of 100 cam-

paigned ardently against the welfare bill, Republicans wontheir war against poor single mothers with the complicity ofmillions of other feminists. Feminist members of Congressdid



GwendolynMink 57

not write the Personal Responsibility Act, of course. Nor did

NOW members or contributors to Emily's List comprise thedrivingforce behind the most brutal provisionsof the new wel-fare law. My point is not that feminists were uniquely respon-sible for how Congress reformed welfare. It is that they were

uniquely positioned to make a difference. We have made a dif-ference in many arenas across the years, even during inauspi-cious Republican presidencies-reforming rape laws, winningrecognitionof sexual harassment as a form of sex discrimina-

tion, and securing passage of a federal law against domestic vi-olence. Feminists certainly could have made a differencewhena friendly Democraticpresident began casting about for waysto reform welfare in 1993; and although we could not havechanged Republican intentions in the 104th Congress, wesurely could have pressured the Democrat we helped elect tothe White House to veto the Republicanbill.

In the absence of widespreadfeminist oppositionto the wel-fare reform principles of the Personal ResponsibilityAct, the

legislative record is devoid of a counternarrative that mighttemper administrativeandjudicial enforcementof the new law.Moreover, t is devoid of any discursive precedent for women-friendly,equality-enhancingamendments to the new law. Be-cause most feminists did not contest or disturbthe Republicanwelfare paradigm, about all they can do now to fix the newwelfare mess is urge that moremoneybe spent onjob trainingand childcare and that broaderexceptionsfor battered women

be adopted.These are importantgoals, but they do not repairthe damage wrought by the new welfare law on the lives andrights of poorsingle mothers.

Why were so many feminists unconcerned that welfare re-formnot only repealedpoorsingle mothers'entitlement to cashassistance but encroached on their basic civil rights as well?Given the degree of harm inflicted on poor single mothers bythe new welfare law, why were there no candlelight vigils likethere were against O.J. Simpson?Why were there no marches

like there have been to defend Roe v. Wade?Why were no boy-cotts waged like there were against the film The People vs.LarryFlynt?

These questions are the fruit of my frustration as a welfareactivist. They have renewed my scholarlyattention to the rela-



58 GwendolynMink

tionship between welfare and equality, on the one hand, and

between welfare and feminism, on the other.Out of these con-cerns has emergeda new scholarlyproject... a new book.6Thebook is a broadside against the Personal Responsibility Act,culminating in defense of welfare. It is also a call to middle-class feminists to practicetrue "sisterhood":y upholding poormothers'rights as we do ourown.

Although the Personal Responsibility Act deserves bound-less criticism for its seismic practicalconsequences-for driving

a million more children into poverty,for example-my book isconcerned less with the economic than with the political im-

pact of welfare reform.The new welfare law distinguishes poorsingle mothers as a separate caste, subject to a separate sys-tem of law. Poorsingle mothers are the only people in Americaforcedby law to work outside the home. They are the only peo-ple in America whose decisions to bear children are punishedby government. They are the only people in America of whom

government may demand the details of intimate relationships.And they are the only mothers in Americacompelledby law tomake roomforbiologicalfathers in their families.

Based on lessons drawn from eighteen months of struggleagainst the Personal ResponsibilityAct, one of my goals in thebookis to defendwelfare as an affirmativeright of poor singlemothers, a right backed up by the reproductive,associational,family, and vocational rights assured to all persons under theConstitution.Toward his end, I argue that welfare (bywhich I

mean income supportfor caregivers)is a conditionof women'sequality (bywhich I mean full and independentcitizenship).Withoutwelfare, motherswho work inside the home are de-

privedof equal citizenship, for they alone are not paid fortheirlabor.Moreover,acking earnings for their economicand socialcontributions,women who work full- or part-timeas caregiversfor their children are ideologicallyunequalin a politicalculturethat prizes income-producingwork as the currency of virtue.Further,unwaged mothers do not have marital freedom: ack-

ing the financial means to exit marriages, they lack the free-dom to choose to stay in them. When they do dare to exit oravoidmarriage,mothers do not enjoyvocationalliberty:unpaidfor their work in the home, they are forced either by law or byeconomiccircumstanceto choosewages over children.



GwendolynMink 59

We should not think of welfare as a subsidy for dependencebut as insurance for the rights that comprise independence.Nor should we think of welfare as an income substitute forthe

wage earned by breadwinners-fathers-in the labor market.Rather, we should reconceive welfare as the income owed to

persons who work inside the home caring for, nurturing, and

protectingchildren-mothering.The idea that welfare should supportmothers in their care-

givingroles should not be terriblycontroversial.This was a core

premise of mothers'pension programs early in the centuryanda justification for including Aid to Dependent Childrenin theNew Deal's Social Security Act.7The problemis that the care-

giving work performedby poormothers has lost its luster overthe past thirty years;who welfaremothersare explains why.

In the popular imagination, welfare participants are reck-less breeders who bear children to avoid work. Such vintagestereotypes have bipartisan roots and were popularized begin-ning in the 1960s by RepublicanRichardNixon, southern De-

mocrat Russell Long,and sometime DemocratGeorgeWallace.Even LyndonJohnson, often credited for expandingwelfare as

part of his War on Poverty,shared these views: he called forlimits on payments to nonmarital children and complainedthat their mothers "sit around and breed instead of going outto work."'Into the 1990s, the racial mythologyof welfare castthe welfare mother as Black,pinned the need forreform on hercharacter,and at least implicitlydefined Blackwomen as other

peoples' workers rather than their own families' mothers.9Racially charged images of lazy, promiscuous,and matriarchalwomen have dominatedwelfare discoursefor quite some time,inflaming demands that mothers who need welfare-althoughperhaps not their children-must pay for their improvidentbe-haviorthroughwork,marriage,or destitution.10

If racism has permitted policymakersto negate poor singlemothers as mothers, middle-class feminism has providedtheman excuse. New attitudes about wage earning by mothers am-

plified by successful feminist challenges to employment dis-crimination have turned work outside the home into a rhetori-cal resource for critics of welfare. 1Middle-classeminists' em-phasis on women'sright to work outside the home also has in-flected welfare politics among women, diminishing the scale of



60 GwendolynMink

coalitions forwelfarejustice-especially by comparisonto coali-

tions for abortionrights or against rape or domestic violence.This created something of a vacuum in the defense of poormothers'politicaland economicrights.

Part of the problem,I think, is that white and middle-classfeminists-who are the mainstream of the women'smovement-view mothers who need welfare as mothers who need femi-nism. They see welfare mothers as victims-of patriarchy,may-be of racism,possiblyof false consciousness.They don't see wel-

fare mothers as feminist agents of their own lives-as womenwho are entitled to and capable of making independent andhonorable choices about what kind of work they will do andhow many children they will have and whether they willmarry.As a result, when many white, middle-class feminists

weighed into the welfare debate, it was to prescribereformstoassimilate welfare mothers to white feminists'own goals-prin-cipally, ndependence through paid employment.

Most of the policy claims made by Second-Wave feminists

have emphasized women's right to participate in men's worldand have made work outside the home a defining element forwomen's full and equal citizenship. Middle-classfeminists re-

sponded to their particularhistorical experiences, experiencesdrawn by an ethos of domesticitywhich confinedmiddle-classwomen to the home. From this perspective, the home is thesite of oppressionfor women, while the labor market is poten-tially liberating.But when middle-classwomen moved into the

labor market, they did not trade in their caregiving obliga-tions. Now doublytaxed by the dual responsibilitiesof earningand caring, many feminists have demanded labor market poli-cies to address the family needs that fall disproportionatelyonwomen-parental leave and childcare,for example."However,they have been less interested in winning social policiesto sup-port women where we meet our family responsibilities:in thehome. In the absence of widespread feminist attention to thesocial value of the childraising and home management work

mothers do, poor mothers' right to do motherwork has beenonly faintly defended.

The popularfeminist claim that women earn independence,autonomy,and equality throughwages historicallyhas dividedfeminists along class and race lines, as women of color and



GwendolynMink 61

poor white women have not usually earned equality from

sweated labor.To the contrary. Especially for women of color,wage work has been a mark of inequality: expected by thewhite society for whom they work; necessary because theirmale kin cannot find jobs or cannot earn family-supportingwages; and exploitativebecause their earnings keep them poor.Thus, the right to carefortheir own children-toworkinside thehome-has been a touchstonegoal of their strugglesforequality.The fact that women are positioned divergently in the nexus

amongcaregiving,wage earning,and inequality separatedfem-inists one from anotheron the welfare issue and separatedem-

ployedmiddle-class feminists from mothers who need welfare.Out of the middle-classfeminist emphasis on winning rights

in the workplacehas emerged, sotto voce,an expectation thatwomen ought to work outside the home and an assumptionthat any job outside the home-including caring for other peo-ple's children-is more socially productivethan caring for one'sown. Feminists in Congressbetrayed this bias, voting unfazed

to require poor single mothers to work outside the home bothas a conditionof welfare and as a consequenceof time limits.

Although feminism is fundamentally about winning womenchoices,ourlabor market bias has put much of feminismnot onthe side of vocational choice-the choice to work inside or out-side the home-but on the side of wage earning for all women.Thus, most congressionalfeminists, alongwith many feministsacross the country,have conflated their right to work outsidethe home with

poor singlemothers'

obligationto do so. This is

an obligation of no small significancefor poor single mothers,who are conscripted nto wageworkunder the new welfare law.

Most single mothers work outside the home, and most singlemothers who receive welfare want to. The question is whethersocialpolicyshould dictate that they must. Poorsingle mothers

already shoulder a double burden in parenting: should socialpolicyrequirethem to performyet anotherjob?

Except for a few young men in my classes who insist that

mothering is love, not work, I think most people understandthat the caregiving mostly providedby mothers is work. Dis-agreements arise over whether that work is worth anything ifit is performedfor one's own family. Or,more accurately,dis-agreements arise over when that work is worth something andin what kinds of families.



62 GwendolynMink

When Republicans and Democrats have wanted to, theyhave acknowledgedmothers'caregivingwork in public policy:they've even remunerated it. The very week it negated themotherwork of poor single women by giving final approvaltothe PersonalResponsibilityAct, Congressaffirmedthe mother-work of middle-class homemakers by granting them rights totheir own IRAs.12Representative Nancy Johnson hailed themeasure as forwardingequalityforhomemakers. Others hailedit forhonoringthem. Viewedalongsidewelfarereform,IRAsfor

homemakersdeepened existing differentiations n law betweenmarried and unmarried mothers, between white women andwomen of color,and between rich women and poor.It also cre-ated a distinction between poor single mothers'activities in thehome and married, middle-class mothers' work there. IRAs,after all, are an untaxed portionofearnedincome.

Clearly,legislators do understand that what (some) domes-tic mothers do is not pass the time but work. The challenge,then, is to lead policymakersto give poor mothers'caregiving

work the dignity it is due by providingit an income. Paymentsfor mothers' caregiving work ought not to be too difficult tocalculate, for much of the work done by caregivingmothers al-

ready has a market price if performedfor someone else's fami-

ly. We pay teachers, for example, as well as psychologists,nurses, accountants, chauffeurs, launderers, housecleaners,cooks, waitresses, even personal shoppers.'3

Tosome extent we can derive a right to a caregiver's ncome

throughconstitutional

reasoning:a

socially providedincome

guaranteeought to be a conditionof reproductive,marital,fam-

ily,and vocational freedoms-as well as a matter of equalprotec-tion.Althoughthe Constitution does not obligeus to provideforone another's economicsecurity, it does permit us to imaginedifferent ways to enforce its meaning legislatively: the Four-teenth Amendment gives Congress the responsibilityto enactlaws that enforce its provisions, including its clause promising"equal protection of the law."Moreover,the Constitution per-

mits us to defend rights with remedies, includingremedial so-cial supports-legal assistance for poorcriminaldefendants,for

example-without which the rights of some citizens would dis-

appear.Welfare remedies poor single mothers' inequality, specifically



GwendolynMink 63

the inequalityof economicdisfranchisement.Mothers'economicdisfranchisement comes from our failure to impute economicvalue to the work that they do. In marriages, mothers whowork inside the home surrender their economicpersonhoodtohusbands and occupythe legal status of dependent.Such mar-ried mothers' lack of their own economicresources-earnings-skew power relations in the family; some mothers may feeltethered to husbands because they could not survive the eco-nomic consequences of leaving them. Single mothers, mean-

while, must acceptdestitution as a conditionof caringfor theirchildren.Unpaid and disdained, they are expectedto forswearchildraising for full-time wage earning. Full-time caregivingmothers, then, are disproportionatelydependenton men if mar-ried and disproportionatelypoor, f not. These private inequali-ties have public effects, foreclosing mother-workers' ndepen-dent citizenship.

We would begin to redress these inequalities by providingcaregiverswho are parenting alone an incomein recognitionof

their family work. A socially providedincome for solo parentswho bear the dual responsibilities of providing care for theirchildren and financing it, welfare is a condition of equality inthe family,in the labormarket, and in the state. As such, wel-fare should be a right, not an entitlement-a claim backed bylaw and courts that should be irresistible, or at least impossi-ble for a rogue Congress to deny. Unless we can establish aright to welfare, we cannot cure inequality where it is most

gendered-in sexual, reproductive,and family relations.A right to income supportin return for poor single mothers'caregivingworktackles the neglected side of the genderdivide,the side that has definedwomen as the legal and economic de-pendents of men. But although a caregiver's ncomewould ad-dress the gender divide, it need not reproduce that divide.Rights that accommodatemothers' caregiving work need notascribemotherworkto all women, nor only to women:men canmother,too. Nor need rights that accommodatemothers'care-

giving work disparage women's choices and equality claims inthe labor market. Such rights should widen options for solocaregivers of either gender by backing up the choice to workoutside the home with the means not to. Endingwelfare by re-definingit in this way will enable equality-in the safety net, be-tween the genders,amongwomen,and underthe Constitution.



64 GwendolynMink

NOTES

1. "Ladyand the tramp"refers to my essay, "TheLady and the Tramp:Gender,Race, and the Origins of the American Welfare State," in Women,the State, and

Welfare,ed. Linda Gordon (Madison:University of WisconsinPress, 1990),92-122.2. Gwendolyn Mink, The Wages of Motherhood:Inequality in the WelfareState,1917-1942(Ithaca:CornellUniversity Press, 1995).3. The Republicaninitiative (H.R. 4) was first introducedin January 1995. Passed

by the House in Marchand by the Senate in the late summer,the bill died with the1995 budget impasse. In 1996, the Congresspassed and the president signed a newbill, H.R. 3734, or P.L. 104-193. The new law repealedthe Aid to Families with De-

pendent Childrenprogram.

4. This was the Castle-Tannersubstitute amendment to H.R. 3734. See Congres-sional Record,18 July 1996, H7907-7974.5. Felicia Kornbluh,"Feministsand the Welfare Debate: TooLittle?Too Late?"Dol-lars and Sense, November/December 996, 25.6. Mink, Welfare'sEnd (Ithaca:CornellUniversity Press, 1998). Some material inthis article is taken from this book with the permissionof the publisher.7. Mink, WagesofMotherhood, hap.6.8. President LyndonJohnson to his budget director, LBJ White House telephonetapes, CNNMorningNews, 18 Oct. 1996.9. DorothyRoberts, "TheValue of Black Mothers'Work,"ConnecticutLaw Review26 (spring 1994): 871-73; Lucy A. Williams, "Race,Rat Bites, and Unfit Mothers:

How Media Discourse InformsWelfare Legislation Debate,"Fordham Urban LawJournal 22 (summer 1995):1159-96.10. See, e.g., Charles Murray, Losing Ground:American Social Policy, 1950-1980(New York:Basic Books, 1984).11. See, for example, BarbaraBergman and Heidi Hartmann, "AWelfareReformBased on HelpforWorkingParents,"Feminist Economics1 (summer 1995):85-91.12. The IRAs for homemakersprovisionwas part of the Small Business Job Protec-tion and MinimumWage IncreaseAct, H.R. 3448 (104th Congress,2d session).13. In 1972, Chase Manhattan Bank economists concluded hat the weekly value ofa family caregiver'swork was at least $257.53, or $13,391.56 a year (1972 dollars).See Ann Crittenden Scott, "TheValue of Housework:For LoveorMoney?"Ms., July1972, 56-59.

women and welfare

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