week 12

1) "The End of Welfare as We Know It: An Overview of the PRWORA" by Alejandra Marchevsky and Jeanne Theoharis 1) "The End of Welfare as We Know It: An Overview of the PRWORA" by Alejandra Marchevsky and Jeanne Theoharis

Following from our discussion of neoliberalism last week, we will be examining neoliberal discourses of individual choice and responsibility in US welfare reform. Many of us are probably aware of the various images used in welfare reform discourses to characterize recipients of government aid—most of which are highly racialized, as Alejandra Marchevksy and Jeanne Theoharis argue in “The End of Welfare as We Know It: An Overview of the PRWORA.” These include black mothers as “making careers of having babies just to collect a larger welfare check and Latino immigrants with their overly large families […] crossing borders illegally to cash in on American entitlements” (421). The authors outline how the PRWORA (Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act) of 1996 constitute a number of policies that purport to combat abuses of the welfare system by individuals through limiting federal and state financial aid and the instatement of “workfare”—public programs to transition welfare recipients to paid employment. Even the title of this Act implies that being poor and receiving welfare is to be personally irresponsible, and that the Act’s policies seek to create more work opportunities for the poor. As Marchevsky and Theoharis point out, welfare reform’s ideology of personal choice and responsibility is tautological, insidious, and obscures the “ways in which choices are themselves structured by the political economy” (429). Its proponents espouse postfeminist discourses of women’s “self-sufficiency” through employment, despite the fact that most workfare participants earn minimum wage and continue to live near the poverty line.

To remind us of our discussions from previous weeks, the post-1960s era in the US has often been called “post-racial” insofar as racial barriers to the benefits of full citizenship have been legally obliterated. But as we have also learned, new kinds of racism have arisen in the wake of pre-Civil Rights forms and these tend to be couched in the language of a color-blind ideology of meritocracy in which we are all free to make our own choices and be captain of our own fates. So too, as we learned last week, the post-Civil Rights ideology of meritocracy also purports to be gender-blind and believes that women have as much social and economic opportunity as men. The insidious and tautological aspect of this myth of meritocracy becomes especially evident when poor welfare recipients are expected to make the “right” choice by participating in an economy and culture that “lacks adequate wages, safe childcare, decent medical coverage, and affordable housing, and, in the same breath, blame the continued marginalization of black and Latina workers on their self-defeating cultures and unfortunate lifestyle choices” (429). This ideology of meritocracy locates individual choice in “the private, psychological terrain of the ‘self,’” and blames individuals—particularly black and Latina women—for being poor.

Neoliberalism Neoliberalism

Neoliberalism is a mode of governmentality involving free trade, the decline of employee unions, the rise of corporate interests, and the privatization of previously public services and institutions—the combination of which has greatly influenced employment conditions in Western capitalist nations. In the US, it has replaced the Keynesian government of the mid-twentieth century, which was defined by the New Deal, social security and welfare, and based on the norm of a patriarchal nuclear family with a male breadwinner and female homemaker. Under this type of government, single mothers with children making under an income determined to be under the poverty line were given welfare stipends by the state. In the 1970s and ‘80s, neoliberal policies were instated (“free” market deregulation, decline of governmental public aid and services, privatization and corporatization of public services) in which social welfare is less predicated on the patriarchal family and assumes greater gender equality in the workforce. The moral emphasis of neoliberalism is on individual agency and responsibility for one’s economic fate without,

however, increasing the grounds of possibility for this agency. The predicament of feminism today is to go along with neoliberalism’s emphasis on individual agency or else risk charges of a return to conservative, patriarchal values. Women—particularly ones with children—continue to be at a disadvantage in the paid workforce despite conservative claims about women’s economic gains in the past half century.

Let us not forget that, as our previously assigned reading on involved fathering points out, men are also subject to employment discrimination when it comes to parenting and their desire to spend more time with their families. Involved fathers also earn less and are penalized by employers for taking paternity leave or spending more time with their families. Such pay gaps constitute what is called the “family wage gap,” which effectively labels the cost of having a family as a worker in the US.

The family wage gap does not apply or function to the same degree in other countries, however, as Disch notes in her introduction to this unit. For instance, Scandinavia is home to the highest number of women in paid employment, apparently due to the robustness of state-funded childcare and family programs. Swedish and Finnish women also have more children than other European countries because of similar reasons.

QUESTIONS-

1- Neoliberalism

[Note: this prompt is associated with Disch's introduction to Part VIII.]

Neoliberalism is a mode of governmentality involving free trade, the decline of employee unions, the rise of corporate interests, and the privatization of previously public services and institutions—the combination of which has greatly influenced employment conditions in Western capitalist nations. In the US, it has replaced the Keynesian government of the mid-twentieth century, which was defined by the New Deal, social security and welfare, and based on the norm of a patriarchal nuclear family with a male breadwinner and female homemaker. Under this type of government, single mothers with children making under an income determined to be under the poverty line were given welfare stipends by the state. In the 1970s and ‘80s, neoliberal policies were instated (“free” market deregulation, decline of governmental public aid and services, privatization and corporatization of public services) in which social welfare is less predicated on the patriarchal family and assumes greater gender equality in the workforce. The moral emphasis of neoliberalism is on individual agency and responsibility for one’s economic fate without, however, increasing the grounds of possibility for this agency. The predicament of feminism today is to go along with neoliberalism’s emphasis on individual agency or else risk charges of a return to conservative, patriarchal values. Women—particularly ones with children—continue to be at a disadvantage in the paid workforce despite conservative claims about women’s economic gains in the past half century.

Let us not forget that, as our previously assigned reading on involved fathering points out, men are also subject to employment discrimination when it comes to parenting and their desire to spend more time with their families. Involved fathers also earn less and are penalized by employers for taking paternity leave or spending more time with their families. Such pay gaps constitute what is called the “family wage gap,” which effectively labels the cost of having a family as a worker in the US.

The family wage gap does not apply or function to the same degree in other countries, however, as Disch notes in her introduction to this unit. For instance, Scandinavia is home to the highest number of women in paid employment, apparently due to the robustness of state-funded childcare and family programs.

Swedish and Finnish women also have more children than other European countries because of similar reasons.

What are your thoughts on the rise of neoliberalism and the decline of public services in the US? Do you think that the government should be more involved in regulating employers’ discrimination against parents?

2- "The End of Welfare As We Know It" - Marchevsky and Theoharis

Many of us are probably aware of the various images used in welfare reform discourses to characterize recipients of government aid—most of which are highly racialized, as Alejandra Marchevksy and Jeanne Theoharis argue in “The End of Welfare as We Know It: An Overview of the PRWORA.” These include black mothers as “making careers of having babies just to collect a larger welfare check and Latino immigrants with their overly large families […] crossing borders illegally to cash in on American entitlements” (421). The authors outline how the PRWORA (Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act) of 1996 constitute a number of policies that purport to combat abuses of the welfare system by individuals through limiting federal and state financial aid and the instatement of “workfare”—public programs to transition welfare recipients to paid employment. Even the title of this Act implies that being poor and receiving welfare is to be personally irresponsible, and that the Act’s policies seek to create more work opportunities for the poor. As Marchevsky and Theoharis point out, welfare reform’s ideology of personal choice and responsibility is tautological, insidious, and obscures the “ways in which choices are themselves structured by the political economy” (429). Its proponents espouse postfeminist discourses of women’s “self-sufficiency” through employment, despite the fact that most workfare participants earn minimum wage and continue to live near the poverty line.

To remind us of our discussions from previous weeks, the post-1960s era in the US has often been called “post-racial” insofar as racial barriers to the benefits of full citizenship have been legally obliterated. But as we have also learned, new kinds of racism have arisen in the wake of pre-Civil Rights forms and these tend to be couched in the language of a color-blind ideology of meritocracy in which we are all free to make our own choices and be captain of our own fates. So too, as we learned last week, the post-Civil Rights ideology of meritocracy also purports to be gender-blind and believes that women have as much social and economic opportunity as men. The insidious and tautological aspect of this myth of meritocracy becomes especially evident when poor welfare recipients are expected to make the “right” choice by participating in an economy and culture that “lacks adequate wages, safe childcare, decent medical coverage, and affordable housing, and, in the same breath, blame the continued marginalization of black and Latina workers on their self-defeating cultures and unfortunate lifestyle choices” (429). This ideology of meritocracy locates individual choice in “the private, psychological terrain of the ‘self,’” and blames individuals—particularly black and Latina women—for being poor.

What are your thoughts on the aforementioned issues in Marchevsky and Theoharis’s argument? Do you agree with their assertions about the racist implications of welfare reform and the insidious aspects of the ideology of meritocracy and personal choice?