Keeping Women Poor: How Domestic Violence Prevents Women From Leaving Welfare and Entering the World of Work (From Battered Women, Children, and Welfare Reform, P 31-43, 1999, Ruth A. Brandwein, ed. -- See NCJ-185940)

• NCJ Number: 185943
• Author(s): Jody Raphael
• Date Published: 1999
• Length: 13 pages
• Sale Source: Sage Publications, Inc
• Publication Format: Book (Softbound)
• Publication Type: Legislation/Policy Analysis
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This chapter explores the patterns of violence and abuse that sabotage women's welfare-to-work journeys.

Abstract

Until recently, researchers have depended on data from welfare-to-work programs to estimate the extent of the problem of domestic violence within welfare caseloads. Now, results from four recent in-depth studies, each involving fairly large samples, provide a more accurate assessment of the extent of current and past domestic violence among women receiving welfare. All of these studies were published in reports in 1996 and 1997. These four studies clearly show that domestic violence is a factor in a high percentage of welfare recipients' lives. Current domestic violence victims represent 14.6 percent to 32 percent of these welfare samples, and approximately 60 percent of the samples are composed of past victims of domestic violence. Further, interviews with welfare-to-work program participants and staff reveal consistent and multiple instances of male sabotage of women's welfare-to-work efforts. Although the variety of methods and devices used by these men to keep women at home and out of the workplace are startling, even more astonishing is the consistency of these practices throughout the country. This chapter describes some of these methods, including the infliction of visible injuries that make it embarrassing for the woman to appear at work or training programs, the destruction of work-related or training materials, the hiding or destroying of the woman's clothes, and the undermining of means of transportation. Threats of death and suicide are the ultimate weapons of sabotage. Given these prevalent circumstances in the lives of abused women in welfare-to-work programs, welfare policy at the State level must be sufficiently flexible to ensure that each battered woman receives the services she needs in order to take the appropriate pathway toward work that does not further endanger herself or her children. The development of appropriate policies for such women is not precluded by the new Federal welfare legislation. 10 references