Unit C - Blog 12

In my opinion occupational segregation is unfair, men and women both work hard to get where they are today and it's not right that their goals are put on hold because a company wants to demean them because of their gender. No job has a specific rule on what gender is allowed to be in that position so this occupational segregation is appalling. I think this type of segregation exists even with laws out there protecting against this, because companies find ways to get around this. I think people can find ways of reprimanding people for gender or not hiring people based on gender because they research the person and try and find another reason or excuse to give them that would make it seem like they aren't denying them the position based on discrimination. Gender socialization relates to occupational segregation because boys and girls are defined by society and at an early age are told what roles they should be in and this forces kids to think those roles are what's right for their gender. By giving these kids gender roles at such an early age these kids aren't able to form their own opinions about who should do what in society and this gives them biased opinions on gender. I think that men gain by women entering into male dominating positions because these women bring new talents to the company that maybe other employees don't already have. These women can do these jobs as good as or even better than the men that already hold these positions and I think it would be an asset to any company that hires women for male dominated positions. Women gain many advantages by taking on male dominated positions. Some advantages are that they learn how to work in a new type of environment that is male dominated and they can learn new trades and enhance their skills in this new job. These women may also gain more confidence by realizing they can make it in a male dominated workplace and they won't be afraid to try new things and maybe apply for other jobs they were once afraid of applying at.

UNIT B - Post 11

A film that shows the struggles of a working poor woman is Erin Brockovich. This movie is about a woman who is a poor single mother and she struggles to support her family. She was desperate to find a job and her lawyer ended up giving her one as a favor to her since he didn't win her civil case for her. She is so poor she goes to work in torn ragged clothes and deals with people making fun of her but she continues to work as hard as she can until she rises up past everybody and succeeds just like she always wanted. Despite her financial situation she managed to overcome all the obstacles and make a good life for her and her family. This movie addresses the conditions of a poor working woman because Erin struggled for a job and was unemployed for quite a while and she was raising two children by herself without anybody's help and didn't even have health insurance until she started working for her lawyer. Her struggles with finding a job and health care and raising kids by herself are all things that the poor working women deal with today. Erin didn't have much options before she got a decent job and many poor woman today struggle in order to find shelter, food, health care, day care and jobs due to the fact that they either don’t have a job or don’t make enough money and like Erin they don’t have many options for help. With the poverty line being around 20,000 these women including Erin are left without any help from the government or many other agencies because if they make a cent over that poverty line they are determined to make too much for assistance when we all know they need the help. Welfare will deny them, food stamps might not be granted to them and health care such as access will deny them because they make over that poverty line. That poverty line can barely help a small family survive so a cent over that poverty line can’t either and that poverty line needs to be reevaluated so families can receive the assistance they deserve.

UNIT B - Blog 10

After welfare reform the women in Chaudrys study used other forms of adaptive survival strategies. Some of these strategies were options of day care, when they stopped receiving payments from the WEP program that helped them pay for day care they were forced to find other means of child care for their children. They chose options such as a family member or friend to watch their children. One woman worked at a school that had an after school program and she brought her kids with her to work and had them stay in the after school program which helped accommodate her through her long busy work schedules. Some of them even found agency type places that had cheaper rates but after a while it became too much to afford or handle because of their demanding work schedules. Agency based child care are only open certain hours and the women that worked after the hours the agency closed were left with no other choice but to find other means of child care. Some of these women also decided to go back to school to get a better education so they can acquire a better job and others chose unpaid internships and training courses to help their performance at their current job and help them gain the skills for a higher paid job in the near future.

These strategies point to the interrelations between work and care because these women are doing anything necessary in order to provide for their children whether it be working two jobs and still finding time to pick them up and drop them off at day care. Care can be quite expensive and these women need decent paying jobs in order to pick up the tab for this and it became very difficult but somehow like every good mother they managed to survive. You need to work in order to afford care and they did this and found ways to take care of their children while providing a roof over their heads and a paycheck in their accounts.

UNIT B - Blog 9

The relationship between children in poverty and the working poor woman is they both lack the main necessities of life which is food, shelter and health insurance. Both these women and children are struggling to survive in this world and it's lack of help from the right sources that are helping them fail. Both of these groups need better support and strategies to help the mothers find higher wage jobs that offer health care so that they and their children are covered under a good health plan. The children of poverty need better education systems so that they can learn and succeed in life and not stay or end up on the streets. Both of these groups are form low income families that are dealing with hardships and need to be pushed in the right direction and given some assistance so they can make it in this tough economy and move up from bad neighborhoods and living from paycheck to paycheck without health insurance just hoping to make it another day. The cost of living is so high and these mothers are making at the least minimum wage and that barely covers housing and child care and a child needs good child care in a safe environment in order to be happy and healthy. The working women and children in poverty are dealing with the drama of not having enough money and not enough support from the government and it’s breaking them down and making them helpless in society.

UNIT B - Blog 8

The problems urban poverty creates for poor working mothers are more crime in neighborhoods and most poor working mothers live in bad neighborhoods already so this is a threat to their children and even themselves. Urban poverty leads to poor schools so their children can get a poor education or possibly no education at all. There's also the problem of jobs because more jobs are being taken away or are letting people go and these women are left jobless and without an income to support their family. All of this differs from problems that poor women living in mixed income neighborhoods because the women living in mixed income neighborhoods don't have as bad of neighborhoods so their streets are a little safer and jobs are more diverse. Mixed neighborhoods also have more diverse atmospheres and their schools are a little better because they have a mixture of everybody and the children can learn better and not have to deal with so much crime that goes on in poorer schools and neighborhoods. Women will be able to find jobs better because there’s a lot more options for them than in a poorer neighborhood which harbors drugs and criminals at a constant rate. It seems that if a community is filled with all poverty that crime seems to accumulate at a much faster rate because people feel they need to resort to criminal and illegal activities in order to survive out there. In mixed neighborhoods you have people of different backgrounds and incomes and you can learn to understand them and maybe get advice on how to move up in a career or get information on schooling and day care options. In the video about a lady named Jessica she lived in poverty and she talked about how her neighborhood was unsafe to the point where her children weren't allowed to play outside because she was fearful they would get shot or killed.

UNIT B - Blog 7

The factors that contributed to the instability of child care that Jacqueline and Julia experienced were a one income family which was still limited because Julie didn't get paid much or sometimes she didn't get paid at all since she did internships at times. Another factor was her welfare situation because she tried to receive subsidized day care but was put at the end of the list and this would take forever so she was forced to try and find means of payment on her own for this child care situation. Julie ended up joining the WEP which is the Work Experience Program and this program was supposed to help Julia afford day care by giving her a set amount of money to give to a child care agency but they slacked on payments. WEP would give Julia late payments which at one time were backed up so far that Julie had to pull her children out of daycare because she was behind in payments due to the WEP not paying reimbursing her for day care. Jacqueline was put in so many day cares that she didn't have time to form a real relationship with anybody which could lead to her having trust issues. The time Julia actually finds a steady day care for Jacqueline she has to pull her out after about two years due to financial troubles which was a shame because Jacqueline had finally gotten used to someone stable that she could trust.

Minimum wage jobs add to the poor working womans ability to find and maintain stable and safe childcare and make a better living because minimum wage barely pays the bills to begin with. A working mother needs to be able to afford housing, food, utilities, child care, transportation and much more and minimum wage just doesn't cut it. These minimum wage pay checks barely get these families buy and they are living paycheck to paycheck which doesn't even allow them to save up for a "rainy day" in case of emergencies. In one of the videos a woman worked as a bus drive and a janitor and she had been saving up nine months for a car and she ended up having surgery for her gull bladder and because she didn't have insurance it was pricey and she had to take that saved up money and put it towards the hospital bill instead of her much needed automobile. Instances like this causes for much unneeded stress and if these women would get paid better they would be able to save up for an emergency or just have a little extra income to maybe buy those shoes for work or maybe something nice for their house or children that's long overdue. One woman in the video said that she'd like to be able to buy her kids Nike shoes or take them to a fancy restaurant but given her unfortunate circumstances that won't ever be able to happen. Minimum wage barely helps teenagers save up for college so I don't understand how this is able to help out a single mother and her children.

UNIT B - Blog 6

Child care used by low-income mothers ranges from part time day cares to relatives. In the child care struggles video one woman received assistance from Syracuse for child care since her income was so low. They lowered her monthly charges from $360 to $205 but when she found a new job that gave her 6k more a year than before they raised her child care charges back to $360. Even with her six thousand more a year that still only gave her $20 extra dollars a paycheck than before which isn't much and raising her child care back up just put her right back where she started with her financial struggles. Another video said that nine months of child care for an infant can exceed a years tuition at the University of Mississippi and this is astonishing! It's awful that day care costs so much for these working mothers and families when they are already finding it hard to make ends meet and most families don't even have family members that can or are able to help babysit their children while they are at work.

In the second chapter of "Putting Children First" single working mothers are faced with hard choices when it came to providing child care for their children. Some factors that challenged these mothers were that they made very little income and couldn't afford child care. They were also put on waiting lists to earn financial support such as child care vouchers and subsidies that offered them help with paying for the child care. Other circumstances for one woman was trust because she took her daughter to two different places and the women watching her child became untrustworthy and she had to take her child out of that situation. These women also are left with minimal choices for babysitters if they are unable to afford day care for their kids. Some women have family members that are too old or sick to watch their kids or maybe family or friends are just too irresponsible to watch over their kids so they are stuck in a bind. The child care these women want and need is a stable place that can watch over their kids, teach them and feed them within a safe environment but their costs are just too high for most single mothers. Therefore these women are left with unreliable choices for their kids that leave them struggling for help constantly.

These women are having to jump through hoops just to find someone to watch their children and they are doing this while juggling a full time job which require them to be gone numerous hours of the day. It's a tough life for these women and they'd be better off if day care cost less or they were able to receive more public assistance from the states.

UNIT B - Blog 5

When chaudry said "we are asking the less fortunate to strive and work harder, we are deeply discounting our public responsibility for the children born into poor families and disadvantaged communities” (p. 14) I think he meant that the working poor or people at or below poverty line are having to work extra hard in order to make ends meet and that more public assistance should be available to help out their children who are also in need. There really isn't alot of assistance out there for poor families and their children and the programs that are out there seem to have certain standards that make it hard for families to even receive their help. The videos support his statement because in Katherine Newmans video she was talking about health insurance being an issue because most people work for companies that don't offer health plans and they sometimes don't qualify for programs such as axis or medicare because they make too much even though what they make still isn't enough to even fully support them and their families. Also in the video poverty in America, it stated that according to the government the poverty line for a family of four is at $21,614 and when shelter, utilities, transportation, food, health and child care were calculated the family was left with a negative balance of $2,121 which is ridiculous. This is appalling to claim that this yearly salary is enough to cover a family of four, i make more than that and can barely afford myself and all my bills and i have no children or anybody else I need to support. In no way is this solely a personal problem for the working poor, as a community and a world we need to come together to form some programs that can help this situation because if life continues this way then everybody will be left on the streets unless they are considered middle class or rich.