Mimi Abramovitz

Mimi Abramovitz is a professor of social policy at the Hunter College of Social Work in New York City and is the author of Under Attack, Fighting Back: Women and Welfare in the U.S.

Welfare reform has become a mean-spirited campaign to modify poor women’s behavior and deny them their rights. This effort vilifies the marital, childbearing, and parenting behavior of poor women. Welfare reformers falsely portray recipients as “welfare queens” who prefer welfare to work, lie to gain benefits, and have additional children in order to get more aid. In actuality, cutting welfare benefits and forcing women to work will make it more difficult for them to raise and support their children. Welfare advocates and the poor must organize to prevent such punitive welfare policies.

Frances Fox Piven...