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

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

New York: Monthly Review Press, 1996

Reviewed by John E. Tropman

THIS BOOK GETS VERY HIGH marks from me. It came out just before the "welfare reform" bill was finally passed and signed by President Bill Clinton, so it does not have the most recent material. However, given the historical flow of the analysis, the "most recent" is only another chapter in the ongoing "war on welfare." We know the outcome because we have already seen it in the historical cycles of "attack the poor," "let up a bit," attack again, let up a bit more, and so on. Abramovitz gives us a perspective on these cycles of repression and remission - one that puts the role of women as central to the understanding of the war on welfare. From her perspective, this war is, in reality, a war on women, pursued in order to sustain patrimony and the capitalist system. While this is perhaps not the complete explanation, it is a vital addition to the welfare analysis cannon. Regrettably, this analysis shows that a bad problem is even worse than we thought.

The book is divided into four parts. The first two examine the myths and stereotypes that have fueled the current assault on welfare and explore the history of earlier attacks that, like the current one, targeted women's work and family life. They suggest that, in their repeated efforts to retrench public assistance, the nationis leaders have been responding to the fears of employers that welfare undercuts wages, and to the fears of family-values advocates (that assistance to single mothers seriously challenges the patriarchal status quo) (p. 11).

Part three looks at the "social science of social welfare" highlighting the absence of a gender perspective in the analysis of welfare problems. Part four looks at how women have been politically active. As much as female social scientists contested the prevailing scholarly analysis in the academy (chapter three), politically active women contested subordinating definitions and structures in the polity.

The book lacks a part five, which could have suggested what might be done, given the analysis of parts one through four. It is a serious omission. Nonetheless, the book is an exemplar in the historical sociological tradition. It takes a social problem - "welfare" - and shows that it can be more fundamentally understood as a different problem - or as a symptom of a different problem - anti-womanism (a neologism built on the idea of anti-Semitism) and their subordination in western society. Anti-womanism in turn, derives from patrimony - the structure of male privilege from capitalism's need to have a flexible labor force. The author shows how much historical material can support such an analysis and be illuminated by it. She also shows how women have historically struggled against subordinated definitions of themselves and sought to engage the polity in conversations of change that would cause paradigm shifts and fundamental realignments. I personally learned much from this book and find its material useful - for its acuteness, its economy, and its straightforwardness.

How then, can there be problems? Making a big problem a bigger and different one has consequences of its own. These need to be considered. Then too, even if a problem is, really, the bigger one, does that mean there is nothing we can do? Many of children's illnesses can be prevented through proper medical care. Perhaps our society hates children, or at least does not like them, and that is the "real" reason we have such lackluster programs in child health. Is there, however, nothing we can do to make the patient more comfortable or even better while we wait for more global change?

Let us look at problem one. If anti-welfarism is really anti-womanism, where does that leave us with respect to intervention? One kind of intervention would be to take anti-womanism on headfirst; if this were accomplished, the problems of "social welfare" would/should disappear. Abramovitz makes no suggestions here. A second approach would be to propose welfare reforms consistent with the anit-womanism analysis. She makes no suggestions here.

These critiques are perhaps unfair, though. Pervasive, powerful streams of historical causation are not going to change overnight (or even over many, many nights). Thus, the more realistic challenge to Abramovitz is to suggest some things that could make life better for people (women and kids in particular) here and now. After all, the scope of childhood itself is rather limited. We only have a few years to help children before they are not children anymore. It is here that an additional chapter would have been helpful as it is better, in my opinion, not to stop at the analysis phase.

This last criticism - lack of practical next steps for policy - may be attacked on the grounds that, "Well, what can one do for such a profound problem?" That criticism would bring us to the point of asking, "Is she right? Is anti-welfarism really anti-womanism, and its antecedent and subsequent conditions?" My answer is, "not entirely." There is no question that anti-womanism plays a crucial role in the "welfare question," so does race. But it is my contention that, as powerful as each of these explanations is, neither tells the whole story. Welfare questions may have their own dynamic into which other important questions come. How much help to provide is, it appears, an eternal question. The story of the prodigal son, the good Samaritan, and historical representations of helping acts are discussed with passion to this very day. Or consider the story of two women watching the son of one trying and failing to tie his shoe and expressing lots of frustration about it. "Why don't you help him?" the woman asked. "I am," replied the other woman. The balance between independence and interdependence is a problem in its own right, and one does a disservice by reducing one problem totally to another. Thus, we need to recognize that racism, sexism, and no doubt other "isms," are going on. However, there are also value conflicts that would occur in any package of recipients. Independence and interdependence has already been mentioned. Achievement vs. equality might be another dilemma; condition (what help do you need) vs. cause (what responsibility do you bear) is another.

In sum, from my perspective, welfare is a bundle of problems. Gender and race are factors. Dilemmas of helping, important in their own right, are factors. Class and status are factors. Some are big; some are little. Looking at the problem as a whole I can see macro factors (such as the examples above), meso factors (specific times and places exerting influence), and micro factors (very immediate problems). Work at all these levels is necessary and important.

John E. Tropman

TheUniversity of Michigan

School of Social Work

Copyright Family Service America Jan/Feb 1999
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