My thesis for my B.A. degree in anthropology was about welfare and the various cultural attitudes that affect the policies impoverished mothers live with. As I worked on that project I began to see that there are many strategies women employ to survive poverty, and that poor women can learn from each other ways to improve their lives and insure their survival. In times of economic turmoil and high unemployment, middle class women may also make use of such strategies.
I envision this set of pages as a place to gather such information in the form of stories, recipes for low-cost meals, accounts of money management and bartering, information about products or outlets for low-cost necessities that women will find useful, first person stories of triumph over poverty, information about job training programs with excellent placement statistics, and so forth. Anything you can think of that will aid poor women or lower middle class women to prosper will be welcome here.
Women surviving poverty do not normally have the time or the facility to voice their struggle. It is up to those who have survived and come out the other side to try to represent the wide array of brave women who face the spectres of homelessness and starvation every day and keep on fighting.
This project was inspired by the work of Karen M. Wilks in uniting UCSC single parents fighting for their academic and personal survival, and by the exhibit Surviving The Faultline by Rosie Ramirez, of single parent families in UCSC in 1992.
Individual Development Accounts
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