Resisting the Welfare Mother: The Power of Welfare Discourse and Tactics of Resistance

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of dominant discourses on welfare on the lives of women caught up within the American welfare system, focusing primarily on community differences in levels of stigma and the possibility for resistance to the dominant practices. Based upon interviews with 36 women conducted in 1997, one year after the passage of the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, the paper compares women living in concentrated poverty in the inner cities with those living in rural and suburban communities. The levels of stigma vary dramatically between the two areas, with women in mixed class communities experiencing much more negative treatment and internalizing the punitive welfare discourse to a far greater extent. Women experiencing lower levels of welfare stigma are able to enact more resistive practices to counter the effects of the dominant discourse.

Keywords

welfare discourse women poverty stigma power.

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