Articles on Women

{quotes}    These few articles on women were quite interesting. Some reconfirmed my thoughts on certain situations and others shocked me. I thought there was an interesting difference between not only gender issues but racial issues too. The article by Ransby about women and Hurricane Katrina was appalling. Looking back at the situation of Katrina we know that things could have been handled better. What I never knew was the the race issues that went on in the aftermath. Ransby talks about how most who were left behind and who were treated poorly were poor and Black. The ones who were the least helped and had the fewest resources were poor Black women (Ransby, 616). They are basically saying that these Black poor women who are typically single mothers are being looked at as unworthy of aid and that we should be unsympathetic which is astonishing. Everyone in the wake of this storm should be helped not just people with money or of a certain race. It went on to talk about how some say that they were trying to push poor black women and their children out of the city after this. They were trying to make a new city without the black poor (Ransby, 620). Instead of helping these people recover, find new shelter, make money, etc they thought maybe they could push them out and recreate the city with their own guild lines of who should live there in order to make it a better place. This was an article that targeted women, specifically bringing up the racial difference in terms of a national disaster and just how they are treated. It certainly does not help their case that they are women.
        The other articles we read also dealt with women in regards to wage, work schedules, and prostitution. The article "Minimum Wage" discussed how many women struggle to make ends meet. Most of these women are single mothers who have only their paycheck to rely on. Women being the large majority of minimum wage workers (2/3) (NWIC, 1). It talks about how we need to increase minimum wage to help these women make ends meet and be able to close the gap between men and women in terms of wages. This also ties in with the article "Working Mothers in a Double Bind". Which discusses flexible schedules and wages. Working mothers need the flexible schedules because they are the ones who need to take care of the kids. Even though they are the ones who needs the flexibility the most they are the least likely to receive it. Gender plays a role here again as does race. Men are more likely to have flexible hours. It also states that Blacks and women are less likely to have flexible jobs and equal opportunity (McCrate, 17). Race and Gender seem to come together here. Black people and women are less likely to have the opportunities in work that white men do.Taking it one step further, Black women seem to have even less of an opportunity for flexible work schedules.
        Zeroing in on our own state in "An Uneven Path", we see that we have a huge problem with helping women economically. Things that were set up to help low income women, especially single mother women has decreased drastically over the years. With budget cuts to these sort of programs it has sent women far below the poverty line. These women rely on these sort of things because their jobs pay minimum wage which we have discovered is not enough to keep a one paycheck family afloat. The cost of living is far to high for the amount of money they get paid. We need to help support these working mothers and help with generating the increase of minimum wage. This will not only help them but it will essentially help the economy because the more they make the they spent and put back into the economy and we know Rhode Island needs the help! All these articles are intertwined dealing with not only women but bringing in ideas of gender and race and how it affects things economically. Women need help and need to be allowed to close the gap on wages, and job flexibility.