Welfare Reform and Sexual Regulation

Welfare Reform and Sexual Regulation
Author: Anna Marie Smith
Publisher:
Total Pages: 311
Release: 2014-05-14
Genre: Feminist theory
ISBN: 9780511296710

Inspired by the political interventions of feminist women of color and Foucauldian social theory, Anna Marie Smith explores the scope and structure of the child support enforcement, family cap, marriage promotion, and abstinence education measures that are embedded within contemporary United States welfare policy. Presenting original legal research and drawing from historical sources, social theory, and normative frameworks, the author argues that these measures violate the rights of poor mothers. Drawing on several historical precedents the author shows that welfare policy has consistently constructed the sexual conduct of the racialized poor mother as one of its primary disciplinary targets. The book concludes with a vigorous and detailed critique of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's support for welfare reform law and an outline of a progressive feminist approach to poverty policy.

Race and the Politics of Welfare Reform

Race and the Politics of Welfare Reform
Author: Sanford F. Schram
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 391
Release: 2010-03-10
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0472025511

It's hard to imagine discussing welfare policy without discussing race, yet all too often this uncomfortable factor is avoided or simply ignored. Sometimes the relationship between welfare and race is treated as so self-evident as to need no further attention; equally often, race in the context of welfare is glossed over, lest it raise hard questions about racism in American society as a whole. Either way, ducking the issue misrepresents the facts and misleads the public and policy-makers alike. Many scholars have addressed specific aspects of this subject, but until now there has been no single integrated overview. Race and the Politics of Welfare Reform is designed to fill this need and provide a forum for a range of voices and perspectives that reaffirm the key role race has played--and continues to play--in our approach to poverty. The essays collected here offer a systematic, step-by-step approach to the issue. Part 1 traces the evolution of welfare from the 1930s to the sweeping Clinton-era reforms, providing a historical context within which to consider today's attitudes and strategies. Part 2 looks at media representation and public perception, observing, for instance, that although blacks accounted for only about one-third of America's poor from 1967 to 1992, they featured in nearly two-thirds of news stories on poverty, a bias inevitably reflected in public attitudes. Part 3 discusses public discourse, asking questions like "Whose voices get heard and why?" and "What does 'race' mean to different constituencies?" For although "old-fashioned" racism has been replaced by euphemism, many of the same underlying prejudices still drive welfare debates--and indeed are all the more pernicious for being unspoken. Part 4 examines policy choices and implementation, showing how even the best-intentioned reform often simply displaces institutional inequities to the individual level--bias exercised case by case but no less discriminatory in effect. Part 5 explores the effects of welfare reform and the implications of transferring policy-making to the states, where local politics and increasing use of referendum balloting introduce new, often unpredictable concerns. Finally, Frances Fox Piven's concluding commentary, "Why Welfare Is Racist," offers a provocative response to the views expressed in the pages that have gone before--intended not as a "last word" but rather as the opening argument in an ongoing, necessary, and newly envisioned national debate. Sanford Schram is Visiting Professor of Social Work and Social Research, Bryn Mawr Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research. Joe Soss teaches in the Department of Government at the Graduate school of Public Affairs, American University, Washington, D.C. Richard Fording is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science, University of Kentucky.

Sexual Citizens

Sexual Citizens
Author: Brenda Cossman
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2007
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9780804749961

This book explores the relationship between sex and belonging in law and popular culture, arguing that contemporary citizenship is sexed, privatized, and self-disciplined. Former sexual outlaws have challenged their exclusion and are being incorporated into citizenship. But as citizenship becomes more sexed, it also becomes privatized and self-disciplined. The author explores these contesting representations of sex and belonging in films, television, and legal decisions. She examines a broad range of subjects, from gay men and lesbians, pornographers and hip hop artists, to women selling vibrators, adulterers, and single mothers on welfare. She observes cultural representations ranging from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy to Dr. Phil, Sex in the City to Desperate Housewives. She reviews appellate court cases on sodomy and same-sex marriage, national welfare reform, and obscenity regulation. Finally, the author argues that these representations shape the terms of belonging and governance, producing good (and bad) sexual citizens, based on the degree to which they abide by the codes of privatized and self-disciplined sex.

Model Rules of Professional Conduct

Model Rules of Professional Conduct
Author: American Bar Association. House of Delegates
Publisher: American Bar Association
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2007
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9781590318737

The Model Rules of Professional Conduct provides an up-to-date resource for information on legal ethics. Federal, state and local courts in all jurisdictions look to the Rules for guidance in solving lawyer malpractice cases, disciplinary actions, disqualification issues, sanctions questions and much more. In this volume, black-letter Rules of Professional Conduct are followed by numbered Comments that explain each Rule's purpose and provide suggestions for its practical application. The Rules will help you identify proper conduct in a variety of given situations, review those instances where discretionary action is possible, and define the nature of the relationship between you and your clients, colleagues and the courts.

The Oxford Handbook of Gender, Sex, and Crime

The Oxford Handbook of Gender, Sex, and Crime
Author: Rosemary Gartner
Publisher: Oxford Handbooks
Total Pages: 745
Release: 2014
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0199838704

The editors, Rosemary Gartner and Bill McCarthy, have assembled a diverse cast of criminologists, historians, legal scholars, psychologists, and sociologists from a number of countries to discuss key concepts and debates central to the field. The Handbook includes examinations of the historical and contemporary patterns of women's and men's involvement in crime; as well as biological, psychological, and social science perspectives on gender, sex, and criminal activity. Several essays discuss the ways in which sex and gender influence legal and popular reactions to crime. An important theme throughout The Handbook is the intersection of sex and gender with ethnicity, class, age, peer groups, and community as influences on crime and justice. Individual chapters investigate both conventional topics - such as domestic abuse and sexual violence - and topics that have only recently drawn the attention of scholars - such as human trafficking, honor killing, gender violence during war, state rape, and genocide.

The Straight State

The Straight State
Author: Margot Canaday
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2009
Genre: History
ISBN: 0691149933

Annotation 'The Straight State' is an expansive study of the federal regulation of homosexuality across the US. Margot Canaday uses new evidence to show how the state came to systematically penalise homosexuality, giving rise to a regime of second-class citizenship that dogs sexual minorities to this day.

The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Block Grant

The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Block Grant
Author: Gene Falk
Publisher:
Total Pages: 90
Release: 2008
Genre: Political Science
ISBN:

The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant provides federal grants to states for a wide range of benefits, services, and activities. It is best known for helping states pay for cash welfare for needy families with children, but it funds a wide array of additional activities. TANF was created in the 1996 welfare reform law (P.L. 104-193). TANF funding and program authority were extended through FY2010 by the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 (DRA, P.L. 109-171). TANF provides a basic block grant of $16.5 billion to the 50 states and District of Columbia, and $0.1 billion to U.S. territories. Additionally, 17 states qualify for supplemental grants that total $319 million. TANF also requires states to contribute from their own funds at least $10.4 billion for benefits and services to needy families with children -- this is known as the maintenance-of-effort (MOE) requirement. States may use TANF and MOE funds in any manner "reasonably calculated" to achieve TANF's statutory purpose. This purpose is to increase state flexibility to achieve four goals: (1) provide assistance to needy families with children so that they can live in their own homes or the homes of relatives; (2) end dependence of needy parents on government benefits through work, job preparation, and marriage; (3) reduce out-of-wedlock pregnancies; and (4) promote the formation and maintenance of two-parent families. Though TANF is a block grant, there are some strings attached to states' use of funds, particularly for families receiving "assistance" (essentially cash welfare). States must meet TANF work participation standards or be penalised by a reduction in their block grant. The law sets standards stipulating that at least 50% of all families and 90% of two-parent families must be participating, but these statutory standards are reduced for declines in the cash welfare caseload. (Some families are excluded from the participation rate calculation.) Activities creditable toward meeting these standards are focused on work or are intended to rapidly attach welfare recipients to the workforce; education and training is limited. Federal TANF funds may not be used for a family with an adult that has received assistance for 60 months. This is the five-year time limit on welfare receipt. However, up to 20% of the caseload may be extended beyond the five years for reason of "hardship", with hardship defined by the states. Additionally, states may use funds that they must spend to meet the TANF MOE to aid families beyond five years. TANF work participation rules and time limits do not apply to families receiving benefits and services not considered "assistance". Child care, transportation aid, state earned income tax credits for working families, activities to reduce out-of-wedlock pregnancies, activities to promote marriage and two-parent families, and activities to help families that have experienced or are "at risk" of child abuse and neglect are examples of such "nonassistance".

Sexual Politics

Sexual Politics
Author: Kate Millett
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 434
Release: 2016-02-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0231541724

A sensation upon its publication in 1970, Sexual Politics documents the subjugation of women in great literature and art. Kate Millett's analysis targets four revered authors—D. H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, Norman Mailer, and Jean Genet—and builds a damning profile of literature's patriarchal myths and their extension into psychology, philosophy, and politics. Her eloquence and popular examples taught a generation to recognize inequities masquerading as nature and proved the value of feminist critique in all facets of life. This new edition features the scholar Catharine A. MacKinnon and the New Yorker correspondent Rebecca Mead on the importance of Millett's work to challenging the complacency that sidelines feminism.

Understanding the Well-Being of LGBTQI+ Populations

Understanding the Well-Being of LGBTQI+ Populations
Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 437
Release: 2021-01-23
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0309680816

The increase in prevalence and visibility of sexually gender diverse (SGD) populations illuminates the need for greater understanding of the ways in which current laws, systems, and programs affect their well-being. Individuals who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, asexual, transgender, non-binary, queer, or intersex, as well as those who express same-sex or -gender attractions or behaviors, will have experiences across their life course that differ from those of cisgender and heterosexual individuals. Characteristics such as age, race and ethnicity, and geographic location intersect to play a distinct role in the challenges and opportunities SGD people face. Understanding the Well-Being of LGBTQI+ Populations reviews the available evidence and identifies future research needs related to the well-being of SDG populations across the life course. This report focuses on eight domains of well-being; the effects of various laws and the legal system on SGD populations; the effects of various public policies and structural stigma; community and civic engagement; families and social relationships; education, including school climate and level of attainment; economic experiences (e.g., employment, compensation, and housing); physical and mental health; and health care access and gender-affirming interventions. The recommendations of Understanding the Well-Being of LGBTQI+ Populations aim to identify opportunities to advance understanding of how individuals experience sexuality and gender and how sexual orientation, gender identity, and intersex status affect SGD people over the life course.

Feminist and Queer Legal Theory

Feminist and Queer Legal Theory
Author: Martha Albertson Fineman
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 505
Release: 2016-04-15
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1317135733

Feminist and Queer Legal Theory: Intimate Encounters, Uncomfortable Conversations is a groundbreaking collection that brings together leading scholars in contemporary legal theory. The volume explores, at times contentiously, convergences and departures among a variety of feminist and queer political projects. These explorations - foregrounded by legal issues such as marriage equality, sexual harassment, workers' rights, and privacy - re-draw and re-imagine the alliances and antagonisms constituting feminist and queer theory. The essays cross a spectrum of disciplinary matrixes, including jurisprudence, political philosophy, literary theory, critical race theory, women's studies, and gay and lesbian studies. The authors occupy a variety of political positions vis-à-vis questions of identity, rights, the state, cultural normalization, and economic liberalism. The richness and vitality of feminist and queer theory, as well as their relevance to matters central to the law and politics of our time, are on full display in this volume.