Critical Essay Reflection
This is a piece written for my Women Studies class I would like to share here.
The lesson this week, Feminist Public Policy- Gender & Poverty, offered astonishing information for me that I was never educated on before. I was always aware of the rising poverty epidemic and I was not sure of who the main demographic was that was primarily affected by it, I always figured it was mainly people of color. I was shocked to come to learn in this week’s lecture that those affected the most by poverty is women, but especially women of color and single mothers. I found it interesting that I continuously saw a similar statement through all the readings, which was that being in poverty was subjected to being equated to being lazy, unemployed or criminal behavior; and if I’m being honest when I was younger, I thought this as well.
I really was intrigued by this topic and how it is associated to being a feminist issue and I wanted to become more well educated on in the financial struggles’ women are faced with. I feel this lesson helped me learn of all the work, societal and economic hurdles they are faced with to escape poverty and establish a life for them. The way welfare and government public policies are set up kind of makes it inevitable for women and even LGBTQ people to dig themselves out of this deep hole. It is also interesting to see that we acknowledge women being the main victims of poverty and labeling it the feminization of poverty but there is so little effort to help them out of it.
In this paper I am going to focus on how public policies and the gender gap in the workplace affect women, especially those considered outsiders of society such as women of color and LGBTQ+ community.
It is important that I first address the statistics of the demographic affected by poverty so I can emphasize who the biggest victims are. According to this week’s lecture, it is stated that worldwide 70 percent of the poor are women, and to breakdown this percentage, 21.4 percent of US Black women, 22.8 percent of US Native Americans, 18.7 percent of US Latinas and 10.7 percent of US Asian women live in poverty. We see more women of color than white women face difficulties with poverty because of institutional racism that is extremely persistent in our country to this day. This institutional racism results in lower wages, less job opportunities, unfair treatment in the workplace, more health challenges and less educational opportunities that impact their ability to make do with a fair, livable wage. According to the article, “Poverty, Gender and Public Policies” by Cynthia Hess and Stephanie Roman, poverty rates don’t do the numbers we are shown justice and much more women of color and single mothers are suffering than we know. In the 1960s, the Federal poverty threshold was established and adjusted for inflation within the government “but not for increases in widely accepted living standards and, therefore, does not accurately measure the resources needed to avoid economic hardship” (Hess and Roman). Based on this threshold, the proportion of women who face economic hardship is much higher than calculated.
Like I mentioned before, a main cause of women of color facing more poverty is because of strong institutional racism. For example, the roles of African American women in society since slavery have always connotated that these women are meant to hold low wage, domestic and service jobs. African American were in the workforce primarily as low-wage caregivers for white families, which helped secured the well-being of white families. According to the article “Black Women’s Labor Market History Reveals Deep-Seated Race and Gender Discrimination” by Nina Banks, “The state would simultaneously undermine the well-being of black families by denying black mothers the cash assistance that they needed to support their children and leaving black women with no other option but to work for very low wages”, African American women were set up to fail and cannot even acquire help from their own government. Black women have also been left vulnerable to workplace exploitation by excluding them from various worker protections. African American women and many other women of color are eligible for public benefits but “usually do not receive the support they qualify for due to complicated application and eligibility determination process, lack of transportation and inconvenient appointment times to complete the application process” (Hess & Roman). It was also found that only 36 percent of families with children in poverty received TANF benefits (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families). It is horrible to see the government showing little care for these struggling families, creating welfare that they know will not even make a difference.
LGBTQ+ members also face extreme workplace discrimination and receive significantly lower salaries than their heterosexual counterparts. Many LGBTQ workers have left their jobs because of how unwelcoming the work environment was. In this week’s reading of the book Gendered Voices Feminist Visions by Susan M. Shaw and Janet Lee, in the article by Anne Swartz titled, “This is the Hidden Financial Cost of Being an LGBTQ American Today” it was mentioned Federal law does not cover gender identity and sexual orientation, which means private companies have the right to choose who can receive benefits and who cannot. According to a study in that article it was found that lesbians made more than $5,000 less than straight women, bisexual women made about $15,000 less; in my opinion sexual orientation should have no say on how much you get paid for your job, if you are working hard. I think to myself that it is so hard to believe that race and sexual orientation can have such detrimental effects on their economic status.
A question I would like to pose is this, how can big businesses, the government and even society make changes to create better policies and even bring more awareness to our society on the uprise of women of color in poverty and workplace discrimination?
To give a partial answer to this question is in connection with previous lessons and looking at this term gender gap. The gender gap is the discrepancy in opportunities, status, and attitudes between men and women. In the workplace it is imperative to start paying women and men equally for doing the same jobs, and even paying women of different races the same wages. By closing the wage gap, we would see a decline in the number of women suffering from poverty. Closing the gender gap is not easy and will take time but corporations and businesses can start within by promoting change in how they and other workers treat women. For example, another article part of Gendered Voices Feminist Visions, the article “Which Country Will Be the First to Close the Gender Gap- and How” by Vesselina Stefanova Ratcheva and Saadia Zahidi, there were examples of successful companies introducing more internal measurement and monitoring of the gender gap. Some effective interventions “have ranged from legislation promoting non-discrimination in hiring, appropriate paternity leave, child subsidies & tax credit, gender neutral taxation for families and quotas in economic and political life” (Ratcheva & Zahidi). Other companies are trying to create a safe workplace environment by developing awareness and accountability among senior staff and provide training on understanding biases in management. By creating a safe workplace and closing the gender gap, it will encourage more people to stick with their jobs and promote good work, leading to them not having to quit and file for unemployment and live off welfare.
By establishing better public policies, closing the gender gap and offering a safe workplace environment, we can move towards a society of diminishing poverty and equality in compensation. Both women of color and LGBTQ+ community face a number of hurdles now, slowly but surely, we are seeing a change.
Bibliography
“Poverty, Gender, and Public Policies.” Institute for Women’s Policy Research. Feb.2016. Web. 1 Nov 2020. https://iwpr.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/D505-Poverty-Gender-and- Public-Policies.pdf
“Black Women’s Labor Market History Reveals Deep-Seated Race and Gender Discrimination” Economic Policy Institute. 19 Feb 2019. Web. 1 Nov 2020. https://www.epi.org/blog/black-womens-labor-market-history-reveals-deep-seated- race-and-gender-discrimination/
“Which Country Will Be the First to Close the Gender Gap- and How”. Gendered Voices Feminist Visions. 2016.
“This is The Hidden Financial Cost of Being an LGBTQ American Today”. Gendered Voices Feminist Visions. 2017.