Poverty Among Women

For centuries, gender, race, ethnicity, and age, have contributed to the social stratification of persons in society, and more specifically, for the means of this essay, women in society. In the United States for example, gender and age greatly contribute to whether or not one will be subject to a life of poverty. In Cultural Anthropology: A Problem Based Approach, Robbins discusses the book Women and Children Last by Ruth Sidel in which Sidel draws a comparison between the Titanic and American society in the 1980’s. “Both were gleaming symbols of wealth that placed women and children at a disadvantage” (Robbins, 239). When the Titanic went down that night, the women and children traveling first and second-class were the first to be saved, but the women and children in third-class and steerage were either the last ones to be saved or rather not saved at all, so much so that 45 percent of the women and 70 percent of the children in steerage died. Sidel claims that the same way certain women and children on board the Titanic were the last to be saved, in the United States as well, certain women and children are not the first to be saved, but rather the first ones to fall into poverty.

Race and ethnicity as well have contributed to the social stratification of different groups in society. For a long time, to be part of a certain racial or ethnic group essentially decided ones place in the social hierarchy. Most people had little trouble convincing themselves that race and ethnicity play a key factor in the justification of racial stratification, especially when the state and religious authorities reinforced this idea. To additionally reinforce racial superiority, scientist Samuel George Morton conducted an experiment in which he falsely claimed to prove that whites were not only socially superior, but biologically superior to blacks and American Indians. While it was later discovered by Harvard biologist Edward Jay Gould that Morton’s measurements were in fact erroneous, Morton’s conclusions continued to support the beliefs that the social status of persons in society could be biologically based well into the twentieth century.

The same way in which whites were looked at as biologically superior to blacks and American Indians applies to women as well in relation to men. Women were, and sometimes still are, looked at as biologically inferior to men and not just socially constructed as such. “Many people believed that women’s bodies defined both their social position and their function, which was to reproduce, as men’s bodies dictated that they manage, control, and defend” (Robbins, 253).

In Alisse Waterston’s book, Love, Sorrow, and Rage: Destitute Women in a Manhattan Residence, she discusses the paths that lead a number of women to come to live in Woodhouse, “a supervised community residence that provides formerly homeless, mentally ill women with living quarters, meals, security, structured activities and support services” (Waterston, 26). Many of these women were married, had normal jobs, and lead normal lives until certain unfortunate events changed the course of their existence. Moving around from shelter to shelter with the uncertainty of where their next meal or shower would come from, as well as the traumatic events such as death, rape, and verbal/physical abuse that these women witnessed or experienced, brought about mental illness in many of the inhabitants of Woodhouse.

The facts presented here to seem to agree with Ruth Sidel’s argument that certain women will be the first to fall to poverty. The women of Woodhouse, for a large part, were members of the lower class and their chances of success were much less than that of middle to upper class (married) women. Leading a life of poverty is not solely incumbent upon race and ethnicity but certain events in one’s life as well can lead one down similar paths.

The low-caste Bombay women as discussed by Sara S. Mitter in “The Shadow Economy: Cleaners in Bombay”, seem to fit a similar mold as the women in Woodhouse. Although the lower class women in Bombay do have work and are not living on the streets like the women in Woodhouse were once subject to,