Increasing Hardships for Single Mothers

The everyday lives of single mothers on welfare have drastically worsened due to welfare reforms and the development of Workfare. In Ontario in 2004 the estimated welfare income (including basic assistance plus other benefits provided through the tax system, such as the federal tax benefit and GST credit) for a single employable person was 6,973 and for a single parent with one child was 14, 251, while at the same time the Statistics Canada Low Income Tax Cutoff (LICO) for a city with a population of 500,000 or more, for a single person, was 20,337 and for a family of two was 25, 319(National Council of Welfare, 2005). Clearly, welfare recipients are living in poverty. In Margaret Little’s study she explains that the women she has interviewed, who are trying to survive under the new workfare policies, have attempted suicide, reduced their food consumption, sold almost all their household furniture and been subjected to physical and sexual abuse.

For instance, research from the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine reveals that of the single mothers who used food banks, 70 percent had gone moderately or severely hungry in the past year and 57 percent had done so in the past 30 days. Another example of increased hardships comes from a survey of single mothers in Toronto and found 27 percent of them did not have telephone services some time during the last two years (Ontario Workfare Watch, “Broken Promises”, 1999). As Little outlines, without telephones mothers cannot reach emergency services, have a much harder time seeking employment (an obligation of Workfare) and are cut off from friends and family.

Women have also been subject to increased amounts of violence and sexual harassment partly due to stringent Workfare policies as well as welfare cuts. The 1990s Statistics Canada Violence Against Women Survey reveals that one in three women had experienced acts of violence by their partners. In addition, the vulnerability of poverty increases the extent to which women suffer from acts of violence. A study of low income mothers found that 50 percent had lived with a partner who had physically assaulted them. (Falkiner et. al. V Her Majesty the Queen, October 25, 1995). Little’s research illustrates that the level of harassment and violence in women’s lives has escalated since the welfare reform and introduction of Workfare.

As less and less women are qualifying for welfare and more women are specifically avoiding it because their childcare responsibilities are incompatible with Workfare, they are having to return to, or stay with, abusive partners. The Ontario Shelter Movement has reported that since the welfare reforms increasing numbers of women are returning to abusive partners in order to provide shelter, clothing and food for themselves and their children (Ontario Association of Internal and Transition Houses, 1997).

In addition, the exposure to sexual harassment has also increased. In Little’s interviews with single mothers she explains that many have complained that landlords have attempted to exchange sex for lower rents. One women explains “he [the landlord] told me that if I had sex with him he would take $150 a month for rent”. Another woman also explains a similar experience when an ex partner offered her $5 for a hug and more for sex – if she needed the money. Single mothers can no longer turn to social assistance as a means to escape oppressive relationships. Since Workfare has been introduced, single mothers are forced to avoid it, putting themselves at greater risk of harm and in greater situations of poverty.

Works Cited for last three blogs about single mothers:

Snyder, Linda. (2006). Workfare: Ten years of pickin’ on the poor. In A. Westhues (Ed.) Canadian social policy: Issues and perspectives (4th edition.; pp. 309-331) Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press.

Mirchandani, Kiran and Chan, Wendy (2007). Criminalizing race, criminalizing poverty: Welfare fraud enforcement in Canada. Nova Scotia: Fernwood Publishing.

Evans, Patrician. (2001). Women and social welfare in Canada: Exploring the Connections. In J. Turner and F. Turner (Ed.) Canadian Social Welfare (4th ed.; pp. 140-153). Toronto: Pearson Education Canada Inc.

Little, Margaret. (2003). The Leaner Meaner Welfare Machine: The Ontario Conservative Government’s Ideological and Material Attack on Single Mothers. In D. Brock (Ed.) Making normal: Social regulation in Canada (pg. 235-258). Toronto: University of Toronto Press.