The Flexible Woman: Regendering labor in the informational society

■ In the US, as more poor women must work to support their house holds, and state support for women/caregivers is consistently reduced, we find an increase in violence and domestic conflict and the abandonment and neglect of children. The 1996 welfare laws exacerbate this situation as they force more poor women into the low-paid or unpaid labor force, to the further cost of poor children. These new laws reflect and reinforce a shift in what was viewed by the welfare state as legitimate dependence for mothers and children. It is no longer sufficient, if it ever was, to talk of male or female domination or subordination among poor people in the United States. In the 1990s, arenas of power for men are contradicted by other arenas of power or access to resources from the state for women. Thus in spite of the utility of analyses that dealt with the experiences of men and women separately, only an analysis that portrays the integral inter dependencies of the two interlocking/conflicting gender hierarchies in terms of class, poverty and state regulations can elucidate the parameters of the new poverty and the violence it generates.