It was with slight nostalgia and substantial frustration that I read the interview with Cloward and Piven in issue #2 of Black Rose. It recalled a period in my life, when as a "welfare mother", I invested much energy and optimism in the struggle for "welfare rights." The optimism that cast a slightly rosy haze over events during that period, accounts for the nostalgia. The actuality of what was taking place then, and how little has been learned from this history in retrospect, accounts for the substantial frustration I experienced reading the interview.

By making some criticism of these events, I don't mean to imply that Piven and Cloward are solely or even mainly responsible for influencing the direction and outcome taken by those events. To do so would be giving far too much credit and/or far too much blame. Rather, I would apply an assessment similar to their assessment of apparently "spontaneous" social movements actually being the result of a long-term welling up of social forces culminating in a particular situation. Thus, in assessing their theories and analyses I find their thinking influenced by previous and traditional sociologic thought churned out by a long line of academics before them: drawing on established dogma, upholding cherished prejudices, ignoring reality where it conflicts with the basic parameters of academically acceptable social theory. This tradition of social theory, and its perpetuation, is well pointed out by Dobash and Dobash in their work The Role of the Sociologist in the Struggle of Women Against Repression (University of Stirling, Scotland, 1977).

In short, Cloward and Piven are products of their time and place. They, and those who peopled the social movement they analyzed, exist in two different worlds. Piven and Cloward seem unable or unwilling to bridge the gap to recognize the reality of that other world that most women must cope with daily.

Cloward and Piven give lip service to the importance of "understanding and identifying the institutional position of different groups and analyzing the kinds of power available to them," and that, "goals emerge out of people's understanding" (or their spokesperson's understanding) of "what's wrong with their situation." Not incidentally, the term used by NWRO (National Welfare Rights Organization) was always "spokesman" not "spokesperson" and this terminology fairly represents the general level of understanding given to "welfare mothers" by those who shaped the strategy and analysis of NWRO and helped carry it out. There was not just a lack of understanding and identifying the position of "welfare mothers", instead there was real resistance against dealing with the reality of our lives. Issues such as: the economic alternatives of women (as women) to welfare, the status of female-headed families, the role of women in the family, the unwaged and unrecognized work of women in the home, the lack of options for childcare, and the myriad of other issues that constitute the bedrock of "welfare mother's" existence were suppressed or ignored by NWRO.

Far from understanding and attempting to identify the position of "welfare mothers", NWRO sought to contemptuously suppress any analysis or understanding of their position and instead manipulated women as a tool in trying to gain a guaranteed annual income. In most cases, this goal constituted a "hidden agenda" that didn't allow for discussion or input from "welfare mothers" and further testified to the contempt in which their opinions were held. (Of course, if discussion on this topic were opened, it might bring up embarrassing questions like: Why was the most economically vulnerable segment of the population being used as shock troops on this issue? Why were women who didn't even get paid for the work they did [in the home] expected to struggle alone to secure this benefit for everyone? Why weren't the ones who actually got paid for most of their work, received the highest pay, and have the most power [men] taking the brunt of this struggle that they would benefit from?)

Even the most superficial analysis of welfare would have yielded the fact that most welfare recipients are women and therefore what must be dealt with is the reason why it's most frequently women who are forced to resort to this economic option that's generally considered so degrading. Such an analysis would have led to questioning whether the stigma attached to welfare came a priori or whether it arose because mostly women are forced to avail themselves of welfare. Even a superficial analysis would also have had to note that all "welfare mothers" actually do work at home maintenance and childrearing, as the truism "every mother is a working mother" states. (In NWRO only women who worked outside the home were referred to as "working".)

Recognition of these realities would have led to an exploration of such questions as: why aren't women paid for their work?, why does unemployment money, where the recipients actually aren't working, have less of a stigma than welfare, where most of the recipients are working? A realistic analysis would also explore how women do wind up on welfare: battering husbands, lack of job opportunities, lack of childcare options, etc.? All of these issues lead back to the position of women that must constitute the basis of a realistic appraisal of the position of "welfare mothers."

The presence of these issues is assiduously ignored by Piven and Cloward. The discontent of "welfare mothers" (which they helped channel for their own ends) was merely part of the general discontent being felt and expressed by great numbers of women. Unfortunately, in the case of "welfare mothers" much of this discontent was redirected away from the issues that were of primary importance to them and onto issues that were secondary effects of their primary position. (Indeed, it was quite a feat to aid in influencing such a great outpouring of energy and dissatisfaction away from any fundamental change.) Without dealing with or changing those primary conditions, there was little hope of having an effective impact or changing more distant economic structures in a way meaningful to women on welfare.

The perspectives of Cloward and Piven that impel them to ignore the issue of male supremacy in addressing welfare, manifest themselves quite clearly in their disparaging comments in regard to the women's movement and their obvious need to underrate and ignore its impact and potential. Knowing the women's movement quite well from a grass-roots level, I find the assessment of it by these two academics, vastly ironic. Their apparent ignorance of the issues that have been tackled by the women's movement, and the energy, sacrifice and endurance it has entailed, is appalling. The deep impact of these issues (economic discrimination, rape, battering, sexual harassment at work, childcare, etc.) on the lives of women of all classes and nationalities is something that any credible sociologist should be acutely aware of.

Unfortunately, Piven and Cloward seem not to have learned much from their association with NWRO, and its manipulative omissions and failures. Beyond their peculiar and fundamental failure in the area of women's position, the movement that Piven and Cloward describe in their interview was almost unrecognizable to me. As a "welfare mother" activist in NWRO, my view of its operation is very much at odds with the picture of that organization they paint. What I saw on an organizational level was a nascent bureaucracy, membership drives, disappearance and misuses of funds, cultivation of an elite corps of "spokesmen" handpicked by the leadership of paid organizers, decisions taken without any consultation with the rank-and-file, etc. On a personal level what I saw was sexual exploitation of "welfare mothers" by the male organizers (tragically, some women were left with "another mouth to feed" after the NWRO organizers had moved on to newer pastures). Exploitation by the paid male organizers of the skills and energies of the "welfare mothers" for doing much of the organizing work was everywhere evident. Economic exploitation of the "welfare mothers" who provided meals to the paid organizers was also a matter of course. Sexist, degrading remarks to, and about, the "welfare mothers" was everyday practice in NWRO. Cloward and Piven seem oblivious also to these features that were very much part and parcel of NWRO.

For "welfare mothers" though, I think the real tragedy lay in the fact that so many hopes were raised and so much energy extracted, while so little was actually changed. The end result, I believe, is that many of these women will refrain from trying again to exert control over their lives through a social movement.

Betsy Warrior