Abstract
We live in a society that is often referred to as “post-racial,” where the color of your skin no longer determines life opportunities and social mobility is thought to be equal for everyone who has a strong enough work ethic. However, in reality, our social stratification system in the United States continues to place black women on the bottom rung of the ladder. In Black Women, Work, and Welfare in the Age of Globalization, Sherrow O. Pinder makes a compelling case for the negative impact of the U.S. welfare system on single black women and how globalization has exacerbated this social problem.
Beginning with a history of U.S. social safety nets throughout the twentieth century, Pinder examines the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA), which replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and was signed into law by President Bill Clinton. Among many changes, the bill shifted welfare from a federal program to block grants given to the states to distribute at their discretion. Pinder details how this major overhaul of the welfare system is often referred to as “workfare” because it required recipients to be employed in order to receive benefits. And therein the problem lies. Those in favor of the work requirement believe it creates an incentive for working; however, as Pinder points out, the exploitative nature of workfare is apparent in the way it has created a class of low-paid unskilled service workers, and many of those receiving benefits are women (generally single mothers). Not only are they underpaid, but they lack money for childcare, they lack access to transportation, and they are employed in primarily low-paying service jobs.
To couch her argument, Pinder presents a great deal of theory from feminist theorists, legal scholars, political theorists, social historians, and sociologists. However, her conceptual framework is most closely focused on the intersectional nature of disadvantage based on membership in overlapping marginalized groups. Intersectionality includes race, class, and gender, as well as membership in any other group that is disadvantaged. Rather than use an additive framework, Pinder focuses on the unique ways that disadvantage overlaps and creates hardship and difficulty in the lived experience of women on welfare. For example, single black mothers on welfare generally end up in part-time low-wage jobs without health insurance or childcare. By occupying these interdependent groups, women of color who suffer from poverty and lack a partner have few life opportunities, a predicament Pinder identifies as an unlivable life or “death-in-life.” In other words, their lives do not matter to the white hegemony since they aren’t heteronormative, nuclear families with traditional gender roles.
Attitudes about welfare are framed around the idea of undeserving poor black women who do not want to work and are referred to as “welfare queens.” And even in the lowest-paying service jobs, employers are more likely to hire white women on welfare since they are viewed as more deserving than black women, who are often thought of as young single mothers who have no sense of personal responsibility. The societal discourse around welfare is racist and alarmist, and, as Pinder argues, it is reductionist and does not recognize the complex, structural social problems that date back to the legacy of slavery. Instead, she asserts, “the government, rather than spending the bulk of their efforts on labor market policies that would create more jobs and better jobs . . . their single purpose is to police the poor with its mandatory workfare program as a way of marshalling them into low paying jobs” (p. 97).
Globalization is yet another factor that has been detrimental to welfare. Pinder points out three ways globalization has weakened welfare. First, there was a shift from manufacturing jobs that paid relatively well to low-paying service jobs. Second, the outsourcing of so many industries led to the creation of a two-tiered labor force (very skilled and unskilled) that is racialized. Third, welfare came under attack as creating dependency, and this problem was “solved” with workfare. Poor women on welfare now compose a disposable and vulnerable workforce, since they must be employed to receive benefits. This disposable workforce is primarily young single mothers; and from a structural functionalist perspective, they are necessary for filling unattractive jobs that are devoid of meaning or a living wage.
In addition, a global economy is built on capitalism and encourages western governments to allow the free market to regulate economic inequality. Pinder explains globalization historically and how it operates through free markets with very little regulation. Globalization, workfare, and stereotypes labeling black women as the “undeserving poor” perpetuate and reinforce the idea that only white women are the “deserving poor.” This creates discrimination in hiring: now even the most unattractive jobs are difficult for black women to obtain, and without a job they no longer have the option to receive welfare. Ultimately, Pinder argues that welfare should be a right, not a government-mandated channel to force single black women into low-paying service jobs that are traps since they lead to continued poverty. Without the opportunity to acquire the education and training needed, recipients will never escape the indignity of living in poverty. They have little choice but to rely on family or friends for childcare so they can work another day in a repetitive, often physically taxing job in order to continue to receive benefits.
In the book’s last chapter, Pinder focuses on social rights and her belief that welfare should be redistributive and basic human right. Unfortunately, the section on welfare as a right, a compelling reason to read the book, is quite short, and the author has more questions than answers. A section on how this change could occur is brief. However, Pinder ends on a positive note, with the optimistic attitude that those people who believe in economic equality and social justice can work together to combat neoliberal government practices and resist the workfare state.
The main strengths of this book include the rich history of welfare, how it became workfare, and how it was framed as a black woman’s problem. The book also illuminates the discrimination black women on welfare face in a society that deems them undeserving of financial help. The addition of globalization to the argument is quite compelling. It adds a new dimension to the myriad ways that single black mothers are discriminated against and exploited as a cheap labor source, in part because of the manifest and latent effects of globalization in a society that demonizes poor black women as lazy or unwilling to work. Clearly, workfare is not the solution to the daily poverty these women and their families will quite likely never escape.