Feminist policy scholars intervene in welfare debate.

• Date: 22 December 2003
• Author: Mink, Gwendolyn
• Published date: 22 December 2003
• Author: Mink, Gwendolyn

AS PUNITIVE WELFARE PROPOSALS BEGAN TO MAKE THEIR WAY THROUGH CONGRESS in the spring of 1995, a group of feminist social policy scholars joined together to combine our voices and deploy our expertise in sisterhood with poor mothers and in opposition to "welfare reform." Calling ourselves the Women's Committee of One Hundred--because our initial goal was to pledge 100 scholars, advocates, and social welfare practitioners to the cause of welfare justice--we lobbied Congress and the White House, mobilized call-in campaigns, designed and placed ads in the New York Times and the New Republic, and developed teach-in materials for communities and campuses. Our primary message was that caregiving is work, including when it is performed for one's own children or other dependents. We worked to bring the caregiving issue to the welfare debate, and so to expose the race- and class-based double standard behind efforts to strip poor mothers of economic security through stringent welfare requirements such as mandatory work outside the home and time limits.

In August 1996, President Clinton signed into law the welfare legislation we had opposed. The new welfare law replaced the Aid to...