Under Attack, Fighting Back: Women and Welfare in the United States

By Mimi Abramovitz

Book Overview

This new edition updates a highly acclaimed work with an analysis of the most recent developments in welfare "reform" and welfare rights activism. Drawing on first-hand reports of women forced to leave welfare and other newly available data, Mimi Abramovitz documents the impact of this historic change in public policy on the lives of poor single mothers and their children. She punctures the highly publicized claims that equate successful reform with shrunken rolls, showing that if the reformers set out to improve the lives of women and children, something went dangerously awry. Abramovitz argues that welfare reform has penalized single motherhood; exposed poor women to the risks of hunger, homelessness, and male violence; swept them into low-paid jobs, and left many former recipients unable to make ends meet. In four readable essays, Under Attack, Fighting Back also presents the long history of punitive attacks on programs for poor single mothers and applies a gender lens to conventional theories of the welfare state. The last essay, a short history of low-income women's activism during the twentieth century, pays special attention to the welfare rights activism spurred by the latest welfare reform. Contrary to popular wisdom, Abramovitz shows that poor women have always the courage and ability to fight back.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1583670084
• ISBN13: 9781583670088
• Release Date: March 2000
• Publisher: Monthly Review Press
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Continues to offer insight and information

Now in a newly updated edition, Mimi Abramovitz's Under Attack, Fighting Back: Women And Welfare In The United States continues to offer insight and information on recent developments in welfare "reform" and welfare rights activism. Abramovitz documents the impact of that recent historic changes in welfare policies have had on the lives of impoverish single mothers and their children. Contrary to popular wisdom, governmental hype, and media reports, poor women have always had the courage and ability to fight injustice in behalf of themselves and their children. That struggle continues today as political activists continue to strive to humanize and truly reform current welfare policies. Under Attack, Fighting Back is "must" reading for women's rights advocates, political activists, social reformers, welfare policy makers, and welfare program administrators.