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Title: Hard Choices: Poor Women and Public Institutions in Post-World War II Philadelphia

Citation Type: Dissertation/Thesis

Publication Year: 2002

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Abstract: This dissertation investigates the historical construction of urban poverty through an examination of the relationship forged between poor women and four public institutions: the welfare department, the courts, the public housing authority, and the public hospital in post-World War II Philadelphia. While scholars have successfully integrated racial analyses into studies of urban poverty, most work in this field still focuses on the male experience, particularly in employment and housing. This study shifts the focusfrom men to women, and from employment and housing to a range of public institutions where women constituted the majority of clients. By illuminating the process that led black women to turn to state programs more frequently than white women or black men, it illustrates how both gender and race shaped urban poverty and shows how public institutions both alleviated and intensified urban inequalities. State programs provided crucial support for women who had to care for children, faced race and sex discrimination in housing and employment, suffered from chronic health problems and domestic violence, and could not obtain adequate resources from their friends, families, and communities. Yet the assistance institutions provided came at a price. Public programs often encouraged women's disproportionate responsibility for childrearing, invaded their privacy, stigmatized them, prevented them from acquiring additional material goods or developing long-term relationships with men, and fostered hostility and distrust in their neighborhoods. Public institutions not only responded to inequalities but also played a crucial role in constructing and defining the nature of racialized and gendered urban poverty itself. Four chapters in this study each focus on a single institution, uncovering a variety of dynamic yet unequal relationships that developed between poor women and the programs designed to assist them and dispelling images of the state as a monolithic source of social control. The last chapter examines the harsh public discourse condemning black women's use of public institutions that emerged in Philadelphia in the 1950s and comprised a crucial component of Northern resistance to black migration and civil rights.

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Authors: Levenstein, Lisa

Institution: University of Wisconsin - Madison

Department: Department of History

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Degree: Doctor of Philosophy

Publisher Location: Madison, WI

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Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Poverty and Welfare, Race and Ethnicity

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