Page 69 - Impact: Collected Essays on Expanding Access to Justice

they more frequently are sharing their income with dependents .4 This gender poverty gap was narrowed in the recession, but from 2010 until 2013 it was growing again, as more men got out of poverty and the women’s poverty rate remained steady .5
The poverty gender differential was certainly visible in my legal aid office where almost two- thirds of the low income people served are female . To put that differently, my legal aid office sees about twice as many women as men . And of the women assisted there, about half are in “deep poverty,” which means their income is 50 percent of the poverty line or lower, and the majority have children who live in poverty with them . The gender statistics are similar nationally in legal aid . Seventy-one percent of the national Legal Services Corporation (LSC) clients are women; thus women are assisted at about 2 .5 times the rate of men at legal aid offices across the country .6 Poverty is very much a women’s issue .
The work at legal aid is often in areas of particular importance to women, although, again, legal aid staff does not often think of it that way . Some issues that legal aid offices deal with obviously impact women more than men; domestic violence and sexual assault work are examples . But welfare, unemployment compensation, Social Security, employment, access to health care and housing issues - legal issues frequently handled by legal aid organizations - all impact severely and differentially on women .
The federal welfare program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), is designed to assist parents with children living in poverty . Unlike its predecessor, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), it sets expectations for single parents to work rather than stay home with young children, reflecting the changed norms around women’s work outside the home . TANF also sets time limits on benefit eligibility, again forcing single mothers to move into work rather than allowing them to stay home and care for their children . While AFDC was designed to provide assistance to parents who needed to stay home with children and did not have another breadwinner, the new world of welfare assistance is one that values “self sufficiency” even for women with no partners, few work skills, and young dependent children who will require childcare by others . The cultural changes around women moving into paid work, reflecting the success of the women’s movement, ironically resulted in more difficulty for women in poverty who seek some help as they raise children . “Welfare reform,” as it was called, made assistance harder to access for many impoverished single mothers, and resulted in a significantly smaller percentage of poor women with children participating than was true under the AFDC program . The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities reported that in 2014 only 23 percent of households in poverty received TANF, as compared to 68 percent who received AFDC in 1996, when that program was ended .7
4 Over half of poor children live in households headed by women. eichner & robbins, supra note 2 (citing u.S. Census Bureau statistics). And households headed by single women with children are almost twice as likely to be poor than those headed by single men. cynThia hess eT al., insTiTuTe for women’s Policy research, The sTaTus of women in The sTaTes: 2015 169 (2015), available at http://www.iwpr.org/publications/pubs/the-status-of-women-in-the-states- 2015-full-report.
5 Institute for Women’s Policy Research, Gender Poverty Gap Grows in Recovery: Men’s Poverty Dropped Since Recession, Women’s Poverty Stagnates, Quick figures (September 2013), available at http://www.iwpr.org/ publications/pubs/gender-poverty-gap-grows-in-recovery-mens-poverty-dropped-since-recession-womens-poverty- stagnates.
6 2013 LSC By the Numbers, legal serVices corPoraTion, http://www.lsc.gov/media-center/publications/2013-lsc- numbers#bfrtoc-client-demographics. The Legal Services Corporation is the funding conduit and oversight agency for legal aid organizations across the united States that receive federal funds.
7 Ife Floyd et al., TANF Continues to Weaken as a Safety Net, cenTer on budgeT & Policy PrioriTies (updated Oct. 27, 2015), http://www.cbpp.org/research/family-income-support/tanf-continues-to-weaken-as-a-safety-net.
Specific Areas for Reform: Women’s Rights
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