I (maggie) wrote, then Carroll wrote:> It is this same reasoning which answers my
question of > why welfare reform now -- We were running out of women to put into
low wage> work, and we needed to 'free' them from the bonds of welfare....
cheers,> (end maggie) (start Carroll) <This makes sense, but it raises a question
-- which perhaps the old base/superstructure metaphor may help phrase. On the one
hand we have a capitalist need -- roughly, a need felt in the relations of
production crudely conceived. On the other hand we have Clinton (with Gore's
urging) and Congress passing legislation superstructure crudely conceived) that
indirectly fills that need. Can the various mediations connecting the two be
described? I doubt that the CEO of Kentucky Fried Chicken or of some mail
processing plant in Iowa called up their Senator and said, Hey, push some more
workers our way. Or did Clinton and various thinktanks somehow intuit the need
coming up?Carrol>>>>
True, my statement does sound incredibly mechanical, but I really do think
that there was a shortage of specifically female labor for quite some time before
the official stats began showing overall low unemployment rates. Why? for a few
reasons: 1) women still perform most reproductive labor in the home and, at the
same time are officially engaged in market labor at almost the same rate as men,
and they spend almost as much of their lifetime in the paid market force, though
they have a higher turn over. This means that, overall, women may be reaching the
limit of the amount of work they can offer in the market place unless someone
comes along and offers the wash the dishes and care for the kids 2) women are
involved in unofficial labor at a very high rate -- at one point I calculated that
just including unrecorded domestic labor into official stats would raise women's
labor force participation rates by a few%, and that doesn't include unrecorded:
day care, work performed in the home for pay (piece rate), illegal garment
factories, prostitution, etc. It is my guesstimate (not a complete guess, but
less certainty than an estimate) that including ALL work that women do for pay off
the books would increase women's labor force participation rates by 25-50%. 3)
sound outrageous? Not really, there are a couple of small studies out there which
begin to support this. Take for instance Edin and Lein's masterpiece "Making Ends
Meet." They found that about 50% of women receiving welfare worked off the books
at work that primarily would have been legal if they were receiving a paycheck.
So, if you can accept the fact that specifically female labor is in short
supply, then there are two ways to draw women into the workforce. Either pay them
more money or make it easier to go to work (child care, health care) (oy, I'm
dreaming), OR force them into the labor force. The new work rules for welfare
predominantly force more women into the workforce. maggie coleman
