Poverty – Page 3 – Feministe

On second thought about Kermit Gosnell

He does tell us a few things about abortion. They just aren’t what William Saletan thinks.

The Gosnell case shows us the worst of what happens when abortion isn’t accessible. Gosnell’s “clinic” was nothing short of a house of horrors, and he preyed upon women who couldn’t get abortions anywhere else or who were unfamiliar with the American medical system — poor women, immigrants, minors. Michelle Goldberg writes:

No woman would subject herself to such a place if she thought she had somewhere else to go. Forty-one-year-old Karnamaya Mongar, who died after being given an overdose of sedatives at the clinic, was a refugee who had recently arrived in the U.S. from a resettlement camp in Nepal. She couldn’t read English and may not have had any idea how to find a decent clinic. Minors went to Gosnell’s clinic—it was the one place they could skirt state law and get abortions without parental consent. Gosnell performed illegal late-term abortions on women who should have been cared for months earlier.

As Florence pointed out in a comment on the previous Gosnell post, “It also says quite a bit about how important it is to give laws teeth. The laws were in place to prevent this from happening, but despite numerous complaints the state couldn’t or didn’t intervene.”

Gosnell’s clinic hadn’t been reviewed by the Department of Health in 15 years. Members of his staff were unlicensed and not properly trained. And Gosnell knew that he could get away with offering sub-par care to women who he thought were less likely to complain — young women, immigrants, poor women and women of color. As Lori Adelman details:

As you may have witnessed, media coverage of these charges against Dr. Gosnell and nine staff members of his clinic has been rife with gruesome details like this one, which have understandably generated public reactions of horror and disgust. But buried deep in articles describing “bloodstained furniture” and ” jars packed with severed baby feet,” is a less gory but equally as horrifying insight that, at Dr. Gosnell’s clinic, “white women from the suburbs were ushered into a separate, slightly cleaner area” than Gosnell’s regular clientele, which was comprised primarily of poor minority women, including many immigrants. Gosnell reportedly treated these white suburban clients to a more pleasant and sanitary experience because he believed they were “more likely to file complaints” about substandard care.

He was right about that for a long, long time. Lori continues:

The crimes of which Gosnell is accused are exceedingly serious; he must be prosecuted for them to the fullest extent of the law. But the undeniably racialized elements of his practice reflect a need to explore the bigger picture of this story, beyond Gosnell’s presumed guilt or innocence: why Gosnell’s clinic was allowed to continue for so long, and why Dr. Gosnell’s patients, who were overwhelmingly poor minority women, had come to expect their health care needs to be met with such inadequacy that they were forced to accept Gosnell’s “care”.

Gosnell tells us quite a bit about the state of health care in the United States — and especially about abortion care. His clinic was by all accounts a disgusting, flea-infested mess. It doesn’t sound like the kind of place that women would go if they felt like they had any other options. Obviously anti-choice advocates are latching onto this story as an illustration of the horrors of abortion, even though most abortion clinics don’t look like Gosnell’s and are in fact subject to must stricter rules than other medical facilities — but there are more than a few health clinics, abortion-related or not, that are decrepit and run by incompetent practitioners. Those sub-par centers almost exclusively serve communities that are poor, of-color, immigrant, or non-English-speaking. It is absolutely a crisis.

But that’s not the story that you’re going to hear from anti-choicers and conservatives. You’ll hear “abortion is bad” without any recognition that outlawing abortion would have done absolutely nothing to help the women and babies who died or suffered in Gosnell’s care. You won’t hear about how affordable and accessible health care for everyone could have alleviated this situation, or how greater government oversight and enforcement of health care laws could have shut down Gosnell’s operation years ago. To prevent this from happening again — to stop other predatory clinics that offer a variety of health care services, not just abortion — we’d have to get into the hard stuff of recognizing the socioeconomic and racial inequalities in our current health care system. We’d have to admit that for many Americans, decent health care is inaccessible, and reproductive health care is especially poor. There’s a reason we have one of the highest infant death rates in the developed world. There’s a reason that in Washington D.C. the infant death rate is 14.1 per 1,000 live births, while in Connecticut it’s 5.5.

If we want to actually help women and babies (and men and children too), we can increase access to health care and increase government oversight of health care facilities and practices. We can give government entities greater ability to enforce existing laws, and we can push for new laws across the spectrum of consumer safety — in health care, in food regulation and in consumer goods. But those are tough, across-the-board changes. They take (yikes) taxes and government involvement. They require recognizing that we have a problem, and that the USA is not #1 where health care is concerned.

Which is to say that enacting those changes is almost certainly a pipe dream. But that would be a whole lot more life-affirming (and life-saving) than simply using the Gosnell atrocity to fall back on the same old “make abortion illegal” position in the abortion debates. Illegality doesn’t end abortion. Demonizing abortion doesn’t end abortion. Using the Gosnell case as an example of why abortion is bad doesn’t end abortion. But affordable and accessible health care, including abortion care, for everyone regardless of socioeconomic status or location or immigration status or race or English language skills? That saves lives. That decreases the abortion rate. And that’s how we make sure that women aren’t forced to accept inadequate and dangerous “care” because they have no other options.

Matthew Boyle steals from the government to prove that poor people don’t need food.

Wow, this is really horrible you guys: Did you know that you can use food stamps to buy actual food? Thank goodness right-wing investigative “journalists” are on the case.

Matthew Boyle lied on his food stamps application, thereby defrauding the government and receiving social services to which he was not actually entitled. He then went to Whole Foods and bought a single gourmet meal with the generous $105 in benefits he received for the whole month. The next month he bought $100 worth of candy.

The point, I guess, is that since Matthew Boyle defrauded the government and spent the money he stole on organic food and Rite Aid candy, food stamps are bad. Because poor people should not buy food. Definitely not organic food. Definitely not non-organic candy either. Or maybe the point is that the government should regulate what people are able to buy with their food stamps? (Boyle, of course, is a small-government-promoting Tea Partier). It’s unclear, actually, what the point of his article is, other than to admit to the world that he stole from the government — which is exactly what Republicans routinely accuse poor people of doing. Apparently he couldn’t find an actual poor person who wanted to spend their $105 for a month of food on Skittles, and so he did it himself. Awesome.

Amanda has more. Perhaps poor people just don’t need to eat more than once a month?

Cash-Transfer Programs Show Remarkable Success in Fight Against Global Poverty

Last week, Newsweek published a story about how a growing strategy against global poverty is showing strong signs of success. The plan isn’t about infrastructure, or making necessities like food, water, and education more readily available. It involves handing out cash directly to those who need it.

As she approaches her 50th birthday this month, Zanele Figlan has seen firsthand what does and does not work in the fight against global poverty. Living in a shack on the outskirts of Cape Town, her family serves as a reminder of South Africa’s 15-year failed effort to house its poor. Instead, Figlan says, the most effective help she receives is the $1 a day the government provides for each of her two youngest sons, which amounts to more than double her monthly income and allows her to make sure they’re well fed. It also means she can afford to send them to a reputable school in a wealthier part of the city, something that was previously unthinkable.

At first glance, simply handing out cash to the poor may seem naive. When cash-transfer programs, as they’re known in the parlance of international aid, first rolled out in Latin America in the 1990s, they were met with skepticism, especially from development agencies more intent on structural reform than redistributing wealth. More than a decade later, however, evidence shows that even modest payments grant the world’s poorest the power to make their own decisions; it also indicates that they make smart choices, especially on matters of health and education. Today, cash-transfer programs are thriving in some 45 developing countries and helping more than 110 million families. The World Bank has put at least $5.5 billion into nearly a hundred different projects.

What some may find most shocking of all is that attaching restrictions to the funds actually decreases their overall impact:

One of the biggest impacts of these programs: education. Since its launch more than a decade ago, South Africa’s Child Support Grant has cut the number of children out of school in half. South Africans are free to use their payment any way they wish, but some countries require school enrollment to keep the money coming in. “It changes the dynamics of the way people conceptualize welfare,” says John Hoddinott, a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute. “Both parties have rights and responsibilities.” In many cases, however, simply having cash in hand allows parents to keep their children in the classroom. “Poor households … need the labor of their children; that’s why they don’t send them to school,” says Santiago Levy, the architect of Mexico’s cash-transfer program, now called Oportunidades. But what works in one country doesn’t always work in another. In Malawi, one of the least-developed countries in the world, the World Bank compared two different groups of school-age girls: one was given cash only if they went to school; the other was simply given the money. The results showed little difference in attendance. In fact, those without conditions fared better when it came to reducing teen pregnancy and teen marriage, factors that often pull Malawian girls out of the classroom.

Now, it should be against emphasized such ideas aren’t really “new.” Activists working on poverty issues both locally and globally have advocated similar plans for a long time. But they can certainly use all of the good press that they can get, because convincing people in powerful positions, and those who vote them into office, that the idea has incredibly strong merits is an uphill battle.

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On Generosity

This is the third in a series examining issues raised by a blog post from Chamber of Commerce Senior Communications Director Brad Peck, where he suggested that women’s interest in closing the gender pay gap amounted to a “fetish for money,” and the subsequent apologies for it by himself and Chamber COO David Chavern. Part 1 and Part 2 at the links.

Seth Godin, a popular marketing author, has written extensively about what he sees as the two key elements of future business success: creatively using the cognitive surplus and participating in a gift economy.

Cognitive surplus refers to the time and mental energy modern workers are supposed to have left over after their regular work that’s represented in volunteer projects like Wikipedia, the online reference site.

Many people have commented on the fact that contributors to projects like Wikipedia are overwhelmingly male. Maybe it has something to do with what the AFL-CIO found in a 2008 survey of working women, that nearly half reported having less than an hour a day to themselves.

If a person has less than an hour of time to themselves per day, it’s the extraordinary individual who has any surplus to give.

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Transit cuts hurt car drivers too

The Post-Gazette has a story today detailing the costs of transit cuts in the city of Pittsburgh.

The city’s Port Authority needs $47 million to avoid cuts of 35 percent. According to the P-G, the Port Authority would have to reduce services hours by 35 percent, lay off 555 employees, and eliminate more than 40 routes, resulting in service ending entirely to over 50 communities. Pittsburgh public transit would lose 15 to 22 percent of its ridership under these cuts.

This could be devastating to many communities, and leave a lot of people stranded. Either you walk or you drive to wherever you have to go. Don’t have a car? Can’t walk that far? Sorry, you won’t be going to work today. Or bringing groceries home.

But people who ride public transportation are not the only people who would be affected by these cuts…

Chris Sandvig, project manager of the Pittsburgh Community Reinvestment Group’s GoBurgh Initiative, which has studied the benefits of transit in stimulating development, said Wednesday the actual costs would be far greater than those absorbed by displaced riders.

He estimated that $100 million to $200 million in infrastructure spending would be required to accommodate the additional traffic generated.

With Downtown parking already scarce and the city proposing to lease its parking garages to a private operator, increased demand could cause prices to skyrocket — an impact that would be felt by all commuters, not just former transit riders, he said.

“We really don’t have anywhere to put those cars,” Mr. Sandvig said.

Much of the additional money spent by former transit riders “doesn’t stay in southwestern Pennsylvania,” he added. “It leaves,” going to oil companies and automobile manufacturers.

Parking in the city of Pittsburgh is already a contentious affair. And driving? Do you really want to ask?

I grew up in California and I am used to navigating snarled, jammed, poorly-designed and/or simply overloaded roads and highways. It’s highly frustrating! But I know how to handle it. But I can tell you that driving in western Pennsylvania, especially the city proper, is nothing like I’ve ever experienced on the west coast. It’s not just that the roads are jammed; that’s true in any city. It’s the way Pennsylvania doesn’t know the value of a good sign — they’ll tell you when a lane is going to shift three feet, but they won’t tell you where the hell you are. That makes it rather difficult to figure out where you’re going, too.

Ahem. Anyway.

Imagine how bad it is trying to drive in a city already packed to the brim with wheeled vehicles (and the occasional duck boat) and occupied parking. Now imagine adding another 16,000 to 24,000 drivers.

Just because you don’t personally ride public transit doesn’t mean transit policy doesn’t affect you.

Cross-posted at three rivers fog.

More on Fast Fashion

To follow up on my previous post, let’s discuss a few more things about Fast Fashion.

Who says women love to shop? It’s obviously not true that every woman everywhere loooooves to shop. Personally, I hate shopping. I think it’s boring; it’s time consuming, tedious and expensive. If I have absolutely have to, I prefer to do it online so I don’t have to interact with annoying store clerks and I can try things on in the comfort of my own home. Even women who don’t like to or, more importantly, cannot afford to shop still face societal pressure to do so.

Who defines “cheap”? If you have ever been to Forever 21 or looked at the website I shared, you’d know most of the dresses go for about $20-$30 dollars. Now whether you think a $20 dress is cheap or expensive is a matter of perspective, priority, and relative privilege, but in our current retail structure, a $20 dress is considered cheap both in terms of quality and pricing. I am reminded of German fashion designer Jil Sander, who told the New York Times earlier this summer “My mother always said that we were too poor to buy too cheap.” I also did not have a wealthy upbringing in West Africa (surprise! I’m a WOC!) and this is a philosophy my mother drilled into all her children. We rarely bought new clothes and when we did they were meant to last for years because my younger siblings and cousins would have to get mileage out of them as well. There were no Wal-Mart or Target equivalents in Africa when I was growing up, and the first “mall” in Lagos was built in the late ’90s. So unless you were wearing traditional clothes, western clothes were almost always imported. A lot of our clothing consisted of discarded items from the closets of Americans and Europeans just like you. I hated wearing someone else’s second-hand clothes because they reminded me every day I couldn’t have new clothes like the wealthier kids at my French private school. It’s ironic that, for both admittedly aesthetic and financial reasons, I now do the bulk of my shopping at thrift stores.

What about fat women? I did not address the size issue because I was planning to do so in another post. Just because I shop at vintage/thrift/consignment stores doesn’t mean I’m not aware their politics can be fucked as well. Just last week I had to scratch Mustard Seed, a well-recommended store in the DC metro area off my list because according to the woman on the phone they rarely buy clothes over a size 12. Yes, size 12 because that’s considered plus-size. I don’t have to remind you the average American woman is a size 14. I am bigger than the average American woman. (Surprise! I’m fat!)

What’s style got to do with it? Consumers at Fast Fashion stores are style-conscious. Yes, I know it sounds vain! But shopping at Wal-Mart and shopping at Forever 21 are not one and the same. Fast Fashion thrives on our desire for the latest clothes from magazines and the runway. Styling tips always tell larger women to “dress for their body type”, whatever the hell that means. Yes, I recognize that I am an able-bodied, childless woman and this allows me to take to time experiment with different lengths, patterns, and structures. And it’s still a frustrating process. Many things I try on don’t fit. I’m lucky to have a good friend who will hem my muumuus and turn tube dresses into skirts for me. Even when I go into straight size stores, I try on things that are not marked my size. (Yes, this is style advice, not feminist life advice.) More on fat fashion later…

Why don’t you just stop buying clothes? Take it from an African woman: Western women (and men DUH), in a global context, have unsurpassed buying power. Their choices affect people all over the world. This is not meant to shame anyone but rather to force us to confront our consumer choices. The reason I started this discussion is precisely because I don’t have a good solution to this problem. Actually, no one has a good answer. To those of you that say “stop shopping altogether” I’m glad that’s working out for you because you never have to buy anything ever.

This conversation about women and consumption is not a new one, and probably be culturally relevant for as long as we have to wear clothes. It is especially relevant this week as Inditex, Zara’s parent company, announced its aggressive expansion plans. The company opened more than 90 stores in 29 countries in the first quarter alone. This is American Apparel on crack. Also this week Uniqlo’s parent company, the appropriately named Fast Retailing, outlined plans to launch a non-profit initiative in Bangladesh, alongside Grameen Bank, that would create jobs for garment workers. This venture would produce high quality items that cost around $1. While they currently only have plans to sell to Bangladeshis, this and similar nonprofit approaches would go a long way in improving Western women’s cheap clothing options- allowing them to buy stylish clothes that aren’t quite as harmful to women in other parts of the world.

In the meantime, I am trying to make small, practical changes in my life. You can decide what changes work for you.

Retail: It’s Complicated

You can blame Barbie, Mall Madness, the sexualizing and gendering of kids and their toys, but there’s no denying that women love to shop. Got a date? Buy a new dress. Feeling sad? There’s a sale at the mall. Your boyfriend broke up with you? These new shoes will show him! Women are socialized from a very young age to embrace the “born to shop” and “shop ’til you drop” mantras.

My sister’s birthday is coming up soon and caught in the pandemonium of getting a last-minute gift for her, I wandered over to Forever21.com, where I found painfully on-trend dresses and a handful of accessories for around $100. $100! You’ve got to be kidding me. Over and over, I found myself thinking “WHY IS THIS DRESS SO CHEAP?”

Naomi Wolf’s latest dispatch answers that very question:

But what has been liberating for Western women is a system built literally on the backs of women in the developing world. How do Primark and its competitors in the West’s shopping malls and High Streets keep that cute frock so cheap? By starving and oppressing Bangladeshi, Chinese, Mexican, Haitian, and other women, that’s how.
We all know that cheap clothing is usually made in sweatshop conditions – and usually by women. And we know – or should know – that women in sweatshops around the world report being locked in and forbidden to use bathrooms for long periods, as well as sexual harassment, violent union-busting, and other forms of coercion.

Most of the two million people working in Bangladesh’s garment industry are women, and they are the lowest-paid garment workers in the world, earning $25 a month. But they are demanding that their monthly wage be almost tripled, to $70. Their leaders make the point that, at current pay levels, workers cannot feed themselves or their families.

Fast Fashion — much like Fast Food — is cheap, addictive, and built on an unsustainable, low-wage system. These throwaway clothes are purposefully designed to be worn a few times and discarded, which contributes the growing problem of textile waste. According to the EPA Office of Solid Waste, the average American household throws away more than 68 pounds of clothing and textiles per person per year so it’s not hard to imagine how the constant production of new clothing poses a number of environmental challenges, especially in developing countries. Don’t even get me started about H&M trashing its unsold merchandise rather than donating it to charity.

With the advent of cheap-chic stores providing both big-name designer collaborations (H&M and Target) and disposable knock-offs (Forever 21), this problem is worsening at alarming rates. Shopping for clothes has changed radically since H&M introduced the concept of high-end designer collaboration to fashion retailing in 2004 with their Karl Lagerfeld capsule collection. (I would be lying if I didn’t admit I was devastated when this collection sold out in a matter of hours and I didn’t stand a chance of owning any of it.) Consumers today are much more savvy and experimental, and far less patient. So impatient, in fact, that in 2005 Zara bragged that it “can design and distribute a garment to market in just fifteen days.” Fifteen days. I bet you it’s even faster now.

For a long time, I justified shopping at American Apparel because of their relatively good labor policies — so thanks for ruining that for me, Dov Charney. I appreciate Wolf’s candor in admitting that despite her knowledge of the horrible work/life conditions endured by the women creating these clothes, she also shops at H&M and Zara — something I am equally guilty of. It is difficult to deny the ease of Fast Fashion even as I’ve been challenged to think even more deeply and more morally about my shopping habits.

Wolf also brings up the fact that it’s largely women producing these clothes and largely women buying them. I’ve lived in developing countries enough to know that jobs in certain “sweatshops” can empower rural women and their families. But unfortunately most garment jobs do not create enough opportunity and prosperity for workers to pull themselves out of poverty. What does it mean for feminism when women are primarily responsible for creating appalling environments for other women? Fast Fashion is a perfect case study that the action—not the gender of the person committing it — is what determines whether it is feminist or not. Just because something is done primarily by women doesn’t automatically make it “more feminist.” Women have historically been at the forefront of successful consumer boycotts and there is no reason we cannot commit to pushing for larger political change — a Slow Fashion movement, if you will — to improve the conditions endured by these workers. We are, after all, the target consumers in these retail venues.

Truly committing to Slow Fashion would require us to learn more about the clothes we buy and who produced them, and using that knowledge to make socially and environmentally responsible choices. This alone won’t be enough, because we all know big systemic, change takes time. But it’s a start. One way I’ve curbed my Fast Fashion addiction is by thrifting. Yes, the clothes are secondhand and they were probably made in a sweatshop before they became second hand but it’s better than nothing.

Got a hot date in Oakland tonight…Much of it will be silent

The East Bay Meditation Center from East Bay Meditation Center on Vimeo.

(Description and transcript, to the best of my beginner’s ability, below the fold — additions and/or amendments appreciated!)

Friends, I’d like you to meet the East Bay Meditation Center, one of the dopest sanghas (dhammic spiritual communities) I have ever had the good fortune to encounter. For the month of June I’m the open/close volunteer for the Thursday night People of Color sit (terminology that, as Chally and others have pointed out, may be useful in this context but not in all! :). So tonight I’ll be setting up the chairs and cushions, the tea (so many kinds of tea — yummm), the sound system, arranging the chairs and cushions, lighting some candles…and then breaking everything down at the end of the night. I’m technically the bottom-liner but there are always other sweetheart regulars who are eager to help out, make the work go faster.

The video pretty much speaks for its own rad self, but basically this tremendously awesome spiritual organization is rooted in values of diversity and justice.* They have been so inspirational for me, not only by offering a space for me to maintain and strengthen my meditation practice, but in presenting that practice in a language I understand and care about. Back in March, I got an email from the listserv advertising a “Beyond Buddhist Patriarchy” 1-day workshop:

Alternating periods of silent meditation with facilitated discussion, we’ll explore what forms of spiritual practice, and both lay and monastic community structures, may arise as we collectively go beyond internal and external patriarchal structures.

Can I tell you how happy it made me to hear that in a spiritual context? Really happy.

I know that not everybody agrees on the utility of POC-only or LGBTQQI-only spaces (of note: only 2 out of 7 days a week at EBMC are caucused in this way), but I for one am a big fan. I am also a big fan of dana (“DAH-nah,” generosity) -based micro-economies, both on a spiritual level (cultivating generosity: helpful) and on a political level (more aligned with the socialist framework, “to each according to need; from each according to ability”).

Also important and encouraging is the attitude of EBMC sponsors who come from more privileged sanghas. Instead of focusing exclusively on ‘integrating’ or ‘diversifying’ their own populations, groups like Spirit Rock that are largely white, older, and wealthy are also offering some material and financial solidarity to self-led communities like EBMC. Key! So key.

If you’ve got a dollar to spare and would like to support our work, it would be especially appreciated now, as we’re trying to afford a bigger space so we can have childcare! Hell yes. And if you live in the Bay Area and have never been, come check it out!

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Don’t Resist: Resist!

There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt.

~Audre Lorde

Hey y’all, thank you so much for all the incredibly thoughtful comments on my first two posts. (For those just now hopping on board, they are here and here — the first one, which has my comment guidelines, might be especially helpful to read.)

Today I thought I’d share a post from my own blog (Kloncke! rhymes with honk, wonk, and badonkadonk) that speaks to similar themes (harm v. suffering; being open to situations v. putting yourself in danger) and might help illustrate some of the principles. In general I tend to write more about how dhamma might be useful for feminism (mainly because that’s what I’m working through for myself these days), but this one is a bit more about how a feminist lens can help make dhammic teachings more relevant. (And we’re not talking Add-Women-And-Stir.)

I promise I’m not always so serious! 🙂 In fact, the vast majority of the work on my own blog has quite a different vibe, based on my own theories of mindful blogging as spiritual praxis. More on that later. For now, goodnight — looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this one!

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I’ll be the first to admit it, folks: non-resistance, one of the core elements of Buddhist or dhammic praxis, seems like a sham. On its face, non-resistance sounds like one or a combination of (a) weakness: a sort of rationalized fear of fighting back; (b) delusion: playing Mary Sunshine and pretending that there’s nothing to resist; or (c) apathy: leaving it to fate or karma or whatever to sort everything out.

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TANF Not Providing Needed Assistance to Domestic Violence Victims

Last week, Legal Momentum and the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence published a study on the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program and how it assists, or specifically frequently fails to assist, victims of domestic violence who are living in poverty in the U.S. The full study, entitled Not Enough: What TANF Offers Family Violence Victims, is available here (pdf). From the press release:

Bureaucratic black holes, indifferent or hostile staff members, inadequate benefits, and shortsighted procedures and policies are preventing many family violence victims from getting the resources they need to escape abuse. According to an unprecedented new national survey of service providers, problems like these plague the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, effectively stopping victims of abuse from accessing help when they need it most.

The report, Not Enough: What TANF Offers Family Violence Victims, was produced by Legal Momentum and the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence (NRCDV). The survey on which it is based is a unique, comprehensive effort to understand when TANF successfully assists victims of family violence, and when the program falls short, leaving victims to fend for themselves. Some 600 staff members from domestic violence programs, legal aid and anti-poverty agencies who work with victims on TANF-related issues completed the survey.

Victims feel lost, confused, and frustrated with the system and it gets to a point where going back to the abuser is easier than dealing with the current system.

Conducted in late 2009, the survey finds that when TANF works well, it makes a significant difference in the lives of victims. But many victims of family violence encounter serious difficulties that undermine their efforts to access resources and forge a path to safety for themselves and their children.

In the survey, a mere 14 percent of respondents said that the TANF family violence responses work well in their states, and 43 percent said fewer than half of family violence victims were able to access TANF benefits. One in four respondents said “no” when asked if family violence information disclosed by victims was handled in an appropriate way.

(All emphasis here and elsewhere in the post is mine.)

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