Getting Me Cheap: How Low-Wage Work Traps Women and Girls in Poverty

Sociologists Freeman and Dodson (The Moral Underground) deliver a moving examination of how underpaid work, unsympathetic bureaucracies, and family survival strategies set working-class American women up for lives of hardship. Many of the 250 women the authors interviewed grew up in families struggling with poverty, and they were expected to contribute their time and earnings to help make ends meet. Funneled into easily available retail, service, and care jobs that offered irregular shifts, low wages, and no benefits or paid time off, these women had few chances to develop skills that would lead to more stable work. The mothers profiled—many of them single parents—constantly struggle to find and keep quality childcare and feel guilty about being unable to conform to middle-class parenting and professional ideals, even as they recognize that those standards were set by people with more money, benefits, and time. Also discussed are frustrations with welfare regulations and with educational programs that don’t provide the support necessary for women to be both a working mother and a student, as well as the fierce pride these women take in their abilities as mothers and caregivers. Though somewhat meandering, this empathetic and eye-opening study leaves a mark. (Nov.)