Jessica Valenti: A Good Job is Hard to Find

A Good Job Is Hard to Find
By Jessica Valenti (Executive Editor of Feministing)
AlterNet

President Bush is betting $500 million that poor women are better off having a man than holding a job.

American women are 40 percent more likely than men to be poor. In fact, 90 percent of welfare recipients are women. While the Bush administration pours money into ineffective marriage-promotion programs, it ignores what may be the best bet for women to lift themselves out of poverty -- "men's work."

Last month, President Bush committed $100 million a year for the next five years to a "Healthy Marriage Initiative" as part of the welfare reform bill reauthorization. This move diverts funds from programs that have proven successful -- such as education, child care and job training -- and gives money to often religious-based programs that tell women marriage is the best way out of poverty.

The Bush administration swears up and down that the programs are simply common sense. Wade Horn, assistant secretary for children and families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services touts marriage promotion as helping "couples who choose marriage for themselves gain greater access, on a voluntary basis, to services where they can develop the skills and knowledge necessary to form and sustain a healthy marriage."

Sounds innocuous enough, but the goal of this initiative isn't about helping people have healthy marriages, it's about ensuring that they have "traditional" marriages. In fact, President Bush cited his Healthy Marriage Initiative in the same breath that he defined marriage as a heterosexual institution in a 2003 statement on the creation of "Marriage Protection Week."

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