short response 11-04-10

“The Lady and the Tramp (II): Feminist Welfare Politics, Poor Single Mothers, and the Challenge of Welfare Justice” by Gwendolyn Mink was an interesting read. Mink discusses in her article how women and feminist need to come to together and fight for welfare reform. She believes that feminist, usually white middle class women, need to stop lobbying against it and start being for it. The women of congress were not necessary responsible for welfare reform, but they were in a position to change it (Mink 57). While I was reading all of this, I was thinking that these white middle class women are not going to do anything about, but why? Why are they not helping out these women in need? This is one of the questions that Mink seeks to answer in her new; she says, “It is a call to middle-class feminists to practice true ‘sisterhood’: by upholding poor mothers’ rights as we do our own (Mink 58). This is an awesome statement made my Gwendolyn Mink because it’s calling out feminism and saying that they only care about the issues that deal directly with them. Feminist need to help these women because even though they are in a different economic situations, they are women and they do need help. I don’t know much about the welfare system in place, but how she describes it; it does not make it sound good. Its horrible that they are treated like a separate caste and that they are subject to different laws. Mink explains that persons who work in their own house and who take care of their children should be given welfare as an income that is owed to them. Just to play devil’s advocate here, I can see people saying that all women who have a kid she be given this income. Why should only single mothers get it? They are doing the same work as other mothers in better economic situations are doing. Based just on work they are doing to the same thing, just because the single mother doesn’t have other income doesn’t justify them getting paid and other mothers not getting paid. I can also see how people can take real advantage of this system, by having kids just to collect a check, and that is unfortunate because they ruin it for the people who really need it. “In the popular imagination, welfare participants are reckless breeders who bear children to avoid work (Mink 59).” Feminist need to realize that these type of people only make up a small majority of people that use welfare; once they do that they will realize that they need to help their fellow women out.