Mimi Abramovitz

In the following viewpoint, written before the passage of the 1996 welfare reform bill, which placed a five-year lifetime limit on benefits and established work requirements, Mimi Abramovitz contends that proposals to reform welfare are sexist and punitive toward unmarried mothers. Politicians seeking to reform welfare blame poverty on the behavior of poor women, she argues, rather than on market forces that make it difficult for them to achieve economic independence. Abramovitz maintains that welfare reform measures should respond to the actual lives of poor women and the real causes of poverty. Abramovitz is a professor of social work at Hunter College in New York City and is the author of Under Attack, Fighting Back:Women and Welfare in the United States (New York, Monthly Review Press, 1996) and Regulating the Lives of Women: Social Welfare...