GT1  |  GT2  |  GT3  |  GT4  |  GT5  |  GT6  | GT7

Bani Dev Makkar [1]

Introduction

The literature on empowerment of women in poor communities in Brazil by way of their action is nothing new.  The discussion of ‘empowerment’ of women in Brazil is connected to the absence of government assistance, i.e. that women are mobilising for resources in the absence of State provision.  Conversely, the now huge and revived debate of poverty in the industrialised countries which has been located within a discourse of the ‘underclass’, posits a notion of ‘dependency’ as a feature that is emerging within poor communities.  This it says is linked to the presence of the welfare state.  Women are at the core of these debates, with single motherhood and female heads of households as their centrepiece. 

This paper will examine the experiences of low-income single mothers and female heads of households in Salvador and London in relation to these concepts.  The paper will also ask if the experiences of women in these neighbourhoods support the discourses of empowerment and dependency (seemingly opposing concepts) and what similarities and differences can been drawn from them.  The issue of gender, class and race are brought together in this paper in that low-income women are very often also black or non-white.  This is seen more strikingly in Salvador, itself a city who’s inhabitants are heavily from Afro-Brazilian or African ascendancy.  Of special importance in this respect, is the relationship between the racial dimension of each specific research setting and the experiences of these women.

After a brief look at the literature that this paper will refer to, I shall put forward a comparative discussion of some of the experiences of women in Britain and Brazil in relation to these concepts of empowerment and dependency and in relation to the presence and absence of welfare provision.  In essence, I shall argue that the literature of women in relation to empowerment in Brazil is a highly romanticised account of women’s participation in poor communities within a context of little welfare provision, whilst on the other hand the literature of women in relation to dependency is a highly demonising account of women’s non-participation within a context of welfare provision.  The accounts of women’s experiences in contrast to these will be the focus of this paper.

Gender, Dependency and Poverty

The rise of lone motherhood has fed into the debate on a ‘new’ type of poverty, which has placed lone motherhood at its core.  They are depicted as part of population who deviate from societal norms, display deviant behavioural characteristics and rely upon state welfare. The problems women experience within poverty differ from those of men and in many cases are extenuated.  Here we shall look at the literature that is concerned with this ‘growing’, ‘new’ class of poor within which lone motherhood plays an essential part. This growing group of poor have been referred to in various ways as the ‘underclass’ and/or the socially excluded.

The underclass debate is a hotly contested issue not least because among the arguments lies the assertion that the term itself is socially constructed rather than an objective phenomenon (Dean and Taylor-Gooby, 1992). In the same way, it has also been described as a labelling device to further marginalise the poor by means of stereotyping and stigmatisation (Gans, 1995) or as part of a more general discourse of  ‘social exclusion’ (Levitas, 1998).  In addition, the discussion of ‘dependency’ or ‘dependency culture’ is part of this discourse. Thus the legitimacy of the concept of ‘underclass’ has been brought into question as has the use of the term ‘dependency culture’, which Levitas argues ‘became embedded in a discourse concerned with social order and moral integration (Levitas, 1998, p.14).

Criticism of the underclass thesis makes reference to the fact that often the people who are the target of analysis (poor mothers) are not the focus of many of the studies (Edwards and Duncan, 1997, Holloway, Fuller, Rambaud, Eggers-Piérola, 1997).  Instead statistical data sets have been used and anecdotal evidence examined to form conclusions about lone motherhood that have been the subject of much contention. 

 The debate also includes the idea that there has been a shift away from rights implicit in the notion of citizenship to that of obligations implicitly embedded within the concept of social exclusion and that the two are opposite and adversarial (Lister, 1990).  Indeed, it can be said that in a general sense blame has been placed upon the poor for their own situation as opposed to an emphasis upon external forces, a distinction between structure and agency (Lister, 1996), deserving and undeserving (Katz, 1989).  However, this is not necessarily a novel way of seeing see the poor in this way. Throughout this century there have been endeavours to divide the poor into ‘those whose poverty is caused by factors largely beyond their control and those whose behaviour contributes in large measure to their own poverty’(Walker, 1996).

It is too easy an argument to blame race for the isolation of these communities (Wilson,1987).  It is important to see how race plays a role in conjunction to other changes in society. The absence of work in the inner-city is one such change as is the decline in the demand for an unskilled workforce.  This has adversely affected the African American population because a greater percentage of them are unskilled and because of the demographic shift of work  to the suburbs, have less access to work (Wilson, 1996).  As a consequence both the structural and cultural effects are felt within these neighbourhoods, with a lack of income to sustain the neighbourhood as well as a lack of ‘cultural resource, such as conventional role models for neighbourhood children’ (Wilson, 1999, p. 484).

Racism for Wilson is a term too that has been used with little precision.  It should he argues be comprehended in terms of an ideology of ‘racial domination’ whose traits consist of the credence of biological or cultural subordinate to the dominant group and the use of this to ‘rationalize or prescribe the racial group’s treatment in society, as well as to explain its social position and accomplishments’ (Wilson, 1999, p.490).

The discussion of race as a factor contributing to the development of an underclass has been disputed, especially when discussion of biological differences between black and white populations have informed the debate.  The highly controversial publication of The Bell Curve in 1994 by Hernstein and Murray, argues that the cognitive ability of African-American is lower than that of whites (Hernstein and Murray, 1994). Not surprisingly many have been highly critical of this work and the authors have been accused of using sources which are known to be biased (Rosen and Lane, 1995).

 Gender, Empowerment and Poverty

 The articulation of specific gender interests in Brazil was formed in various ways and on various levels.  The lack of alternative means for survival shaped very deeply the response that emerged from the women of the popular classes.  Their restriction to a space, which depended upon the workings of the patriarchal family, was instrumental in shaping their ability and inability to act to change their existing condition.  It is in this acting, in the practice of participation that it has been argued that ‘consciousness’ is developed (Fowraker, 1995). This idea of consciousness in relation to gender finds its roots within the Liberation Theology tradition of ‘critical consciousness’ as well as the articulation of gender interests between strategic and practical as defined by Maxine Molyneaux (1996) and is one in which the discussion of empowerment has emerged. The distinction between strategic and practical gender interests is one which defines the difference between interests which are directly related to women’s subordination and circumscribe demands which articulate the aim of overcoming all types of gender inequality(strategic) and a response to the immediate practical needs and do not ‘strategize’ within a long-term plan for gender equality (practical) (Molyneux, 1986).

It has been argued that it is the politicisation of practical gender interests and the transformation of these into strategic interests that forms a core element of feminist practice (Molyneux, 1986). Within this it is the practical gender interests that form the basis for political participation in popular social movements.  In order for a conversion between practical gender interests into strategic gender interests to occur, there is a necessity for a women to recognise their capability to represent their own interests as well as there being a potential for those interests to have impact within the political system in order that the affect is felt and the state then gives recognition to these interests.  This however, for Molyneux is not an automatic process, that is, that simply because women participate within for example, a neighbourhood organisation, that she will become politicised or, more importantly, see her position in the strategic sense differently than before.  Indeed, it is perfectly conceivable, that some or many of these women return to the private sphere and resume where they left off and indeed to not want to do politics as has been assumed by some authors who have overly romanticised the affects of female participation in social movements.

Taking on Molyneux’s distinction, Cocoran-Nantes (1993) says that it is practical gender interests that form the basis of women’s political participation within popular social movements.  For Molyneux, the transformation between the practical and strategic interest forms  ‘a central aspect of feminist practice’.  For Cocoran-Nantes this transformation also depends on the wider political realm in that there is a space in which pressure can be put upon the state in order that those interests are recognised.  This will also need to be done across ethnic and class boundaries in the realisation that all women are affected by the same mechanisms.

Machado (1993) talks about the influence of the Catholic Church on a particular women’s group in Sao Paulo.  She also addresses the question, to what extent did the feminist movement in Brazil, contribute to better healthcare in the area?  Her conclusion was that the ideology of the Feminist movement in Brazil did influence the group she was looking at.  Indeed the most visible influence was the Catholic church and more so the Popular wing, providing women with space for discussion at a time when the state’s political repression severely restricted any other form of gathering and participation.  This is arguably a response to Cocoran-Nantes work on consciousness raising.  She says that most women in social movements in Brazil have previously been involved in parish organisations. Also that feminist ideology was spread among poor women and that the church groups were comprised mainly of women who were indeed attracted to do the parish’s work by it’s ‘recently’ expressed support for the rights of women in the family and in the neighbourhood.

For Caldeira (1990), who focuses on women participation in social movements in Sao Paulo, like Cocoran-Nantes, she critisizes social science for marginalizing the analysis of women.  When it does look at women, she argues, it does so in respect to their relation to the family and production.  However, when macro studies are made of political parties for example, they are rarely mentioned and if at all are put as a separate category within the analysis.  She talks about the term ‘new’ social movement as applied to Latin America, and says that ‘frequently the novelty lay in some form of locally based egalitarian grass-roots organisation created out of an awareness of needs’. 

The conclusion she came to was that unlike above ‘the really novel aspect of recent social movements is that as a form of engaging in politics they affect daily life and modify it.’  Her findings are very interesting in that, women are never seen in their context within daily life, but rather within categories such as ‘the people’ or the ‘popular strata’,  i.e. what they represent in terms of ‘an expression of class interest’.  Indeed the very institutions that are defining these categories are the ones that these women are distancing themselves from.  She argues that as a result an  image was created about these women that had ‘nothing to do with the real meaning the women attached to their participation’.  She asserts that one of the greatest innovations  produced within daily action within social movements ‘is thus the transformation in women’s situation’.  She says that there has been a ‘much wider cultural transformation’ than expected.

Experiences of Women in Poverty in Britain and Brazil

Many of the women within the community I worked in both London and Salvador were either lone mothers or female heads of households.  However, the concepts of single motherhood as used in Britain has very different connotations that it’s use in Brazil. Single motherhood is a concept that has different meanings in Britain and Brazil. The individualistic nature of British society can be a factor that contributes to the use of the term single mother as well as the adherence to it’s definition more often than in Brazil.  In Britain, single motherhood is perceived as a concept that sees mothers as isolated or at least separate from their relatives or other people in the community.  The very word ‘single’ denotes a separation and singularity and not a plurality.  In Brazil, although the term is used, it is more often the term ‘female head of household’ that is applied. The term single mother is a generic term (See Duncan and Edwards, 1997) which is used in Britain to describe women who have had children outside of wedlock and without a cohabiting partner.  It can therefore be used to describe a whole host of mothers including widowed, separated, divorced and never married (Duncan and Edwards, 1997).

The term, ‘female head of household’ is frequently used in Brazil because often the women/mothers in Brazil are not living on their own and bringing up their children by themselves, without a partner. It describes the main ‘breadwinner’ of the family, in this case the mother.  She may very often have a partner who she lives with and who may or may not be the father of the children.  The father may not work or earn an income, or it may be that he earns much less than the mother of the children.  It may also be the case that the male in the family is the father of some of the children, but not all, and indeed that he is also a father of children in another family.  Thus there is a blurring of the boundaries of parenthood, and family structure. This distinction has often not been made in the literature in Britain with some exceptions, where the term ‘lone mother’ is used as a term to distinguish those mothers who have previously had a partner from those who have not (Duncan and Edwards, 1997).

Equally in Britain, some of the women I interviewed lived with partners that were not the father of the children.  Some lived with the fathers of the children, but supported the fathers, even though they were claiming social security benefits.  Some of the fathers had children with other women and some of the women had children with other men.  Thus the idea of ‘single motherhood’ in Britain is also one which requires further examination, since it implies that women live and bring up their children entirely alone and have never been married or partnered.  This idea is also problematic, because it doesn’t take into account the familial ties that some of these women have (see Holloway et al, 1997).  These ties can be with their own mothers, siblings, uncles, aunts and grandparents.  This ‘network’ of support detracts from the idea that ‘single mothers’ are alone and bringing up their children by themselves, both financially and emotionally.  Of course, this is the case for some women, but by no means for all.  Thus, there are some women that I interviewed who are bringing up their children and have very little or no familial support from their extended family, i.e. their own mothers or siblings.  This lack of ‘network’ support leaves these women in a more isolated and emotionally and financially trying situation than those who have this type of support.  Although I did find some mothers in this situation of isolation in Britain, I found very few in Brazil.  This indicates that the network of support in Brazil is more common spread and tighter and than in Britain.  In Brazil, this network of support is very apparent.  This is partially a cultural trait, in that Brazil in a general sense is a much less, ‘individualistic’ society than Britain, a trait that encourages social interaction at a much more communal level.

Climatic conditions may also account for why in Brazil, women’s networks appear more widespread and greatly knit than in Britain.  Particularly in Salvador, which is tropical and hot. Many of the poor are outdoors for most of the time.  Even if they are near to their houses, the doors of their houses are usually open and the community is constantly interacting. Thus the network may be more transparent and obvious than in Britain.

The term, Mãe Solteira (single mother), in Brazil is more ambiguous than in Britain, since the individualism that is implicit in the notion of single mother is challenged by the cultural plurality of Brazilian society.  As mentioned above, it is also the case that single motherhood implies that mothers live and bring up their children on their own, with no or little help from outside.

The historical context of poverty in both settings is also bound to have an effect.  The most obvious of these is the issue of race. Brazil is a culture borne from slavery, and this is especially so of the State of Bahia of which Salvador is the capital. The majority of people in Salvador are either Afro-Brazilian or from African ascendancy.  The poor who live on the periphery of the city are almost entirely made up of a non-white population. The connection between race and the discussion of one-parent households or female heads of households can be explored within this context. 

The idea that single mothers in Britain who are on welfare have become dependent upon this type of income and that this dependency has created a particular culture (Murray, 1996), which is repetitive, was not observed in my interviews.  The difficulties these women have with getting into the job market and returning to education are more due to the lack of childcare facilities than any ‘culture’ that has developed in which they are choosing not to work.  This view of ‘dependency’ also posits the idea that single motherhood itself is responsible for the discouragement of men staying in the family as they (the women), encourage their own situation as single mothers by not encouraging men to stay with them and not providing a good example for other men. This view also claims that women are restricting their sons from having a role model of a father, thus discouraging them from forming alliances with their own partners. This was not brought out by the interviews that I have conducted, since many of the women I talked to, conveyed that their ex-partners displayed a high level of irresponsibility towards their children, both economically and emotionally, i.e. support and contact. This was something that the women I interviewed wished was not the case and on many occasions felt it extremely important that their children should have contact with their fathers even if they themselves had problems with their ex-partners.  This was even the case with a woman who had experienced violent abuse from her ex-partner.  Indeed some fathers had families with more than one woman and were not supporting any of them either financially or emotionally.

The women in Britain that I interviewed are trying to raise their families on their income. Because their circumstances are such that they do not have support from a partner, and are not able to take up full-time employment because of childcare commitments, they are left with having to opt for income support, which provides a low-income.  Besides this, their commitments and ‘behaviour’ and daily patterns of activity does not appear to differ radically from any other women who are responsible for bringing up children.  Much of their day is taken up by preparing meals for their children, taking and fetching their children from school, and doing the housework in between these other tasks. 

This runs contrary to the idea that low-income single mothers somehow, have a lifestyle, which displays traits of a lack of will to work, a want to remain on benefits as a way to avoid working, and a desire to become pregnant in order to obtain greater State benefits (Murray, 1996).  This notion also includes the idea that any sort of adherence to the moral norms of society has faded away and there has been a move away from, ‘societal norms’ in terms of behavioural traits. However, when women from middle class backgrounds wish to stay at home with their children, it is admired, but for poor women it has become regarded as ‘lacking a work ethic and displaying excessive “dependency”’(Holloway et al, 1997, p.5). 

The idea that some of these women get pregnant in order to get greater benefits such as Council accommodation was not borne out by my interviews. I didn’t find that there had been any intention by the women in Britain to get pregnant for this purpose.  Many of the women I spoke to thought that this idea was absurd.  However, some women did admit to me that they are still with their partner, or with another partner and had not told the authorities, because they realise that it would be much easier to get accommodation of their own if they are considered one-parent families with small children.  The women I interviewed felt that accommodation of their own was essential for independence from their parents (if young women) or a way of enabling them to afford rental of an entire flat for them to bring up their children with autonomy.  Thus the impetus for becoming pregnant was not to obtain council accommodation but once pregnant, they were keen to ensure an unrestricted space for themselves to bring up their child independently even if this meant also living with a partner.

The literature that talks of ‘dependency’ of the poor within a perceived ‘culture of poverty’ (see Lewis, 1966), and describes the problems that people face within poverty as cultural rather than economic, places much emphasis upon ‘family values’.  This moral crusade to create policies that will tackle the problems of such a ‘culture’, has targeted amongst other factors, the family, and especially single motherhood.

Indeed, the idea of ‘empowerment’ is juxtaposed against that of dependency in that economic incentives can be used to persuade low-income mothers to work and discourage her from remaining on state welfare.  This idea assumes that the reason women are at home caring for their children, is wholly economic and unlike more affluent women, they do not have a wish to stay with their children whilst they are young.  Thus solutions that are based upon a causal/response approach, i.e. cutting welfare benefits to break a cycle of dependency and encourage single mothers to wok (see Murray, 1996), do not sufficiently take into account the pluralities of these women’s lives.  Equally a policy to provide greater availability of jobs in a particular area also assumes a similar causal connection (see Wilson, 1987).

The issue of parenting is complex when we are dealing with single parent families, where most of responsibility of the families’ welfare, both emotional and economic is not easily shared.  Thus, the need to create survival strategies as well as remain vigilant to the development of the child is one which low-income women are forced to address (see Holloway et al, 1997). 

Certainly in the interviews I conducted in Britain, many women expressed that they didn’t choose to remain on welfare assistance, but were unable to find adequate childcare facilities, that they were happy with and that would be affordable to them. The emphasis of this is on the concern by the mother that her children are taken care of adequately and grow up within a loving environment.  It is therefore the restrictions that poverty places upon the role of motherhood that produce a variety of responses in managing the situation. 

These coping strategies varied amongst the women I interviewed in Britain, in that some wanted to go to work providing there was adequate childcare facilities, and others preferred to stay with their children because they wanted to be around them at least until they began school.  Many felt that they would have to claim welfare benefits if they were to prioritise their children’s development (as they saw it), but often I found that they did not like to have to claim benefits. 

There is a marked contradiction in the moral discourse which declares that women should try and find employment and not rely on welfare benefits and move out of ‘dependency’ (see Murray, 1996), and at the same time fulfil her moral duty as a mother who should take care of her child’s development.

Thus I found that there was no single ‘culture of poverty’, but rather what Susan Holloway has described as competing cultures of poverty, in which mothers in poverty have varied pathways available to them as they bring up their children (Holloway, 1997). These social channels can vary enormously according to ethnic grouping, different communities and among ‘kin networks’ within the same neighbourhood.

The interviews conducted in Brazil found much the same thing.  Women who are struggling to bring up their children on a low-income have to create survival strategies as well as cope with the development of their children.  Welfare benefits are not available to these women in the same way as it is in Britain and thus they find some other means to gain enough income to buy food and clothing for their families. 

This means that sometimes families are not able to eat.  In one case, the daughter of the house told me that she did not warm up the food too early in the day, for herself and two brothers while her mother was at work, because it would be gone and there would be none left for lunch time.  Thus the simple, daily routine of ‘snacking’ that most of us take for granted has been consciously prevented in this particular household. Women in Brazil are therefore coping with their dual role as mothers and ‘breadwinners’. 

As in Britain, many of the women that I interviewed in Brazil would like to be able to have reliable employment and therefore an income as well as the ability to be able to bring up their children with the care and attention that they believe is required.

Women on the periphery of Salvador are creating survival strategies in the same way that women in Britain are also doing. The fact that they do not have government assistance for themselves and family is not a factor that greatly differentiates their daily activities from their counterparts in Britain.

On the periphery of Salvador, where I undertook my fieldwork, I found that the women in the community are divided into two groups.  These groups are perceived in relation to the literature that is written about them.  The focus of this literature has been the mobilisation of women in popular/grassroots movements who have taken on responsibility for education and health and food provision in the face of severe lack of these resources and the lack of state provision.  The first group consists of those women who are involved in the associação de bairro (the neighbourhood association). The second group consists of those women who are not involved in the association and may not be aware that it exists (and even those who do know that it exists but are not interested in becoming involved for various reasons). 

This literature centres upon the idea of empowerment of women in poor communities.  The whole discussion of women and empowerment in Brazil is based on the idea of action.  It talks of women being active in poor neighbourhoods and consequently as a result of their action, are becoming empowered through becoming conscious of their potential as independent actors in both the private and public sphere (see, Cocoran-Nantes, 1993, Alvarez, 1990). Thus it runs diametrically opposite to the concept of dependency in relation to women in the literature in Britain.  In my fieldwork, I did find a strong associação de bairro in the neighbourhood.  Moreover, this neighbourhood association is made up almost entirely of women, it was established by women, and is run by women.  In addition, the women of this association offer courses and themselves attend courses on the rights of education and health for everyone in the community.  They are campaigning for a health centre in the community and have established a school through which the association is run. 

There is however, a large group of women who are not part of the associação de bairro and who do not wish to be part of it (although this was rarely a based on a point of principle).  This is either because they don’t have time as they say, or indeed because they are not aware that the association exists.  These women make up the majority of the female population of the community.  The minority then, are the women who work in the associations (there are other associations in the community).  The vast majority of women are in the main concerned with the immediacy of providing food, shelter and clothes for their families.  Many of the women that I interviewed are female heads of households and are bringing up their families with very little assistance (financially) from others.  The network ties in Brazil as aforementioned are such that the issues of childcare are very different than in Britain.  Although women with small children, who wish to work, have childcare considerations, they are more easily able (than in Britain) to arrange assistance from relatives or friends that live in the neighbourhood. 

Also, because life in the Northeast of Brazil, and especially on the periphery of Salvador, is very much an ‘outdoors’ life, because of the climate, much of the neighbourhood is on the street.  This means that people stand outside of their houses and chat or interact in the street or immediate area where they live, thus encouraging interaction and therefore networking.  The women in the neighbourhood who are not part of the neighbourhood association spend much of their day taking care of their homes and looking for work and taking care of their children.  Many of these women take a large part of these responsibilities on by themselves.  Even if they have partners, which some of them do, they still take on most of the burden of providing an income for themselves.  Thus restrictions placed upon single mothers/female heads of households in terms of location of work prevents them from taking up employment.

The income of these women comes from various sources.  Some of them work for a living, either part-time or full-time and others live from day to day relying on support from extended family members or friends to see them through.  Many expressed that they would like to work but cannot find employment.  Taking jobs as maids, which is the most common work for unskilled females, often means ‘living – in’.  This is untenable for most women since they have their own families to take care of.

Also travelling to and from work can take much time and expense, since most middle class houses who employ these types of maids are situated nearer the centre of the city and many of the poor live on the periphery.  Certainly the neighbourhood in which I was researching, is situated on the periphery and it can take up to and hour and a half to get from the centre of the city to the periphery in the rush hour.  It may also mean taking more than one bus, which can become expensive.

So there is a distinct difference between the women who campaign in the association and those who do not.  The literature on empowerment that has come from Brazil focuses its attention upon the women who campaign for the associations and grass root movements (Fowraker, 1995, Alvarez, 1990, Caldeira, 1990, Cocoran-Nantes, 1993).  Although, the fieldwork I conducted corroborated the studies done, of women campaigning for resources, I also found many women who were not active in the sense that the literature has documented, i.e. campaigning for resources for the community as a whole and thus becoming empowered as a consequence of this action.

 It is one thing to say that women are mainly responsible for mobilising within popular movements in poor communities and quite another to say that most women in the community are mobilising within popular movements in these communities.

In addition, it says very little about the women in these communities who are not working within these groups. There are some women who work within the organisation, the association, who see their work as a way of being employed and whose intention is not necessarily to bring badly needed resources to the community.  Also questionable is the idea of empowerment that has been seen by many as a natural consequence of mobilisation.  Many women within the association are not acting from strategic gender interests (see Molyneux, 1986).  Indeed it could be said that most women, including the women in the community at large are acting form ‘practical gender interests’ (Molyneux, 1986), and are concerned with the immediate requirements of their families. The translation of these practical gender interests to strategic gender interests therefore is questionable. 

The women in the community then, who are not part of the association, are only a part of the neighbourhood.  Some of these women within the organisation are concerned with the issues of gender oppression in terms of the fight for overcoming injustices towards women.  However this is by no means the case for all of the women who work in the Association, contrary to much of literature written about them.

In Britain, the women I interviewed expressed concern with childcare costs and said that this was the main impediment to getting back into the job market or continuing their education.  Many of the women who I interviewed said that they wanted to work but that they were not able to, mainly because of the high cost of childcare and inadequate crèche facilities available.  Many women are not able to find jobs that fit their schedules and take into account their childcare commitments, which include both a need to find adequate childcare facilities as well as placing restrictions upon them to travel far for employment.  In addition the ‘sex segregation’ of work which sees ‘women’s jobs’ which are often part-time cannot provide single mothers with an independent income (see Duncan and Edwards, 1997).

In Brazil, I did not come across this concern so much.  This is largely because women in Brazil are more easily able to find carers for their children within the social networks that exist in the community.  In many cases, relatives and neighbours take care of the children of other women or indeed older children within the family.  So, if there is an older brother or sister, he will take care of the very young members of the family. However, and importantly, these commitments have created restricted choice outcomes for women in terms of how their lives have progressed, for example with regard to restrictions on taking up paid employment.  A woman I interviewed who had six children over an extended period told about her inability to re-enter the job market (despite holding a menial job some twenty years previously) because of her childcare commitments.

 I did however, observe, on more than one occasion in Brazil, houses with very young children who were left alone for the day while the mother went to work. It was also the case in Brazil, that even if there were no formal arrangements for children to be left with a relative or neighbour, the proximity of the household to the house next door and the general community ‘spirit’ and network amongst all the members of the community, meant that children were taken care of ‘by default’.  Because the children know their neighbours very well and are familiar with many people in the community, a type of protective system has developed by which children are taken care of because they are known in the community and regarded as integral to it.

Thus, there exists a subtle form of network which regards ‘it’s own’ as something to be protected and conversely regards someone who is not from that community or immediate part of the community as suspicious.  This suspicion may remain until such time that the person becomes known to some of the people in the community.

Women in Brazil are managing as best as they can under the circumstances (see Duncan and Edwards, 1997, for their view of the same for lone mothers in Britain).  The fact that they are mothers is not incidental to the argument, but central.  It is their main concern as mothers that guides how they organise their time and how they are able to get provision for the family i.e. they are restricted from working full-time if they have pre-school children.  This is also the case for Britain (See Morris, 1994).  Those women in Brazil who are mobilising in popular movements in Brazil also have children as their main concern.  Education is primary to what they are doing.  Motherhood is a key issue here and motherhood in poverty is central.

There is no doubt that the level of deprivation is much higher on the periphery of Salvador, Brazil than it is in the poorer communities in London.  However, despite this, women and especially lone mothers and female heads of households in both settings prioritise their children.  This therefore guides their day-to day activities and the neighbourhood or ‘network’ support in both settings provides an essential ‘back-up’ to compensate for the lack of economic resources and other needs that motherhood in poverty creates.

There is a need to contextualise women’s experience as single mothers and female heads of households in relation to ‘welfare regimes’ or the lack of State support and to see how single motherhood is perceived in a broader sense in society and in popular discourses. The mother/worker dichotomy needs to be examined on this basis as part of a wider discourse as well as in the context of a more local identity within a neighbourhood setting where identity and perceptions of single mothers are constructed through local settings (see Sarti, 1995 for a discussion of identity in urban poor settings in Brazil).  These local identities are mediated by national discourses as well as the availability of jobs to women and more specifically the restrictions upon mothers to migrate to areas where work is available.  The added burden of ‘single mothers’ and female heads of households sustaining the entire family must be viewed in relation to the rewards available to them as ‘women workers’ and then ‘part-time women-workers’.  Moreover, single motherhood and female heads of households used as a category of analysis ignores the differences between them and their experiences by tainting them all with the same brush.

In addition the notion that an increased participation by women within poor communities results in an ‘empowered sense of self’ may overlook an alternative perspective that it simply describes yet another burden upon women in addition to the responsibilities they already have within the family and the formal workplace.  Equally, the ‘dependent’ mother on welfare dwells upon the agency of the individual in terms of rational choice and ignores the plurality and contradictions of choices in the lives of mothers in poverty. Thus the discourses of ‘dependency’ and ‘empowerment’ which pertain to contrasting settings oversimplify the experiences of women in poverty.

 Bibliography

Alvarez, S. E., (1990) Engendering democracy in Brazil : women's movements in transition politics, Princeton, N.J., Oxford, Princeton University Press.

Caldeira, T., (1990) “Women, Daily Life and Politics”, in Jelin, E.(ed)., Women and Social Change in Latin America, Zed Books,.

Cocoran-Nantes, Y., (1993) “Female Consciousness or Feminist Consciousness? Women’s Conciousness raising in community-based struggles in Brazil”, in Radcliffe, S.A. and Westwood, S (ed.), Viva, Women and Popular Protest in Latin America,  Routledge.

Dean, H and Taylor-Gooby, P (1992) Dependency culture: the Explosion of a Myth (Harvester-Wheatsheaf).

Duncan, S., and Edwards, R. (ed) (1997) Single Mothers in an International Perspective: Mothers or Workers?, UCL Press: London.

Edwards, R., and Duncan, S., (1997) “Single Mothers in Britain: Unsupported Workers or Mothers? in Duncan, S., and Edwards, R. (ed) Single Mothers in an International Perspective: Mothers or Workers?, UCL Press: London.

Fowraker, J., (1995) Theorizing Social Movements, Pluto Press.

Gans, J.H. (1995)  The War Against the Poor; The Underclass and Antipoverty Policy (New York: Basic Books).

Hernstein, R. And Murray, C (1997) The Bell Curve, New York: The Free Press.

Holloway, S., Fuller, B., Rambaud, M.F., Eggers-Piérola, C. (1997) Through My Own Eyes, Harvard University Press.

Katz, M.B. (1989) The Undeserving Poor; From the War on Poverty to the War on Welfare (New York: Pantheon).

Levitas, R (1998) The Inclusive Society?  (London: Macmillan Press).

Lewis, O (1966) La Vida: A Puerto Rican Family in the Culture of Poverty – San Juan and New York (New York: Random House).

Lister, R (1996) “In Search of the Underclass”.  In Charles Murray and the Underclass; The Developing Debate, ed. Lister, R, 1-16. (London: IEA).

Machado, L.V.M., (1993) “‘We Learned to think Politically’, The Influence of the Catholic Church an the feminist movement on the emergence of the health movement of the Jardim Nordeste area in São Paulo, Brazil”, in Radcliffe, S.A. and Westwood, S (ed.), Viva, Women and Popular Protest in Latin America,  Routledge.

Molyneux, M., (1986) “Mobilization Without Emancipation?  Women’s Interests, State, and Revolution”, in Richard R. Fagen, Carmen, Diana Deere, and Jose Luís Corragio, eds. Transition and Development: Problems of Third World Socialism, Boston: Monthly Review Press.

Morris, L (1994) Dangerous Classes; The underclass and Social Citizenship (London: Routledge).

Murray, C (1990) The Emerging British Underclass (London: IEA).

Murray, C (1996) ‘Underclass: the Crisis Deepens’ (London: IEA).

Rosen, J. And Lane, C (1995) “The Sources of The Bell Curve”.  In ed. Fraser, S. The Bell curve Wars , 58-62.

Sarti, S., (1995) “Morality and Transgression Among Brazilian poor Families: Exploring Ambiguities”, in Hess, J.H. And Da Matta, R., The Brazilian Puzzle; culture on the Borderlands of the Western World, Clumbia University Press: New York.

Walker, A (1996) “Blaming the Victims”. In Charles Murray and the Underclass; The Developing Debate, ed. Lister, R, 1-16. (London: IEA).

Wilson, W. J. (1987) The Truly Disadvantaged; the Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy, (Chicago: University of Chicago press).

Wilson, W. J. (1996)  When Work Disappears; the World of the new Urban Poor (New York: Knopf).

Wilson, W.J. (1999) “When Work Disappears: new implications for race and urban poverty in the global economy”.  Ethnic and Racial Studies 22 (May) 479-499.

[1] I am currently doing my doctoral thesis at Cardiff University, U.K. in Sociology, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), U.K., I have been a visiting researcher at O Núcleo de Estudos Interdisciplinares sobre a Mulher (NEIM), UFBA, Salvador, Bahia, between June–October 1997 and July-November 1998, during which time I undertook part of my fieldwork for my doctoral thesis. Makkar, Bani (2000) ‘Out of Context: Ethical Considerations in Overseas Fieldwork’, forthcoming in Lesley Pugsley and Trevor Welland (eds.),  Ethics in Social Research, Aldershot: Ashgate. Conference paper given ILASSA conference in the University of Austin, Texas, USA in February 1999 entitled; À Margem da Vida: Estratégias de Sobrevivência de Mulheres da Perifería Urbana de Salvador, Brasil.  My research interests include; gender and poverty, gender and development and social policy.