Life Perspective From a Woman Living in Poverty
March 4, 2011
by Helen McCombs
|The opinions expressed herein are those of the author, and not necessarily those of The New Agenda.
I am a poor woman who has been poor all of my life. I make under 10,000 dollars a year and have had to rely on both government aid and charity. This is often seen as a racial issue but no one sees it as a gender issue. The majority of people who are living in poverty are female and it is the female who must deal with everything that goes with living in poverty.
A poor woman is often the ONLY wage earner in the household. She can be a single mother either divorced or never been married. Many times she is employed working many hours in a job such as a Nurses Aid or working with the disabled. I work as a Mental Health Aid. To me I have a perfect job but it is underpaid. It is a female dominated field and the pay is low. Many women living in poverty work in child care or they clean office buildings. My paycheck is often enough to pay for my expenses such as rent or utility bills but there is very little available for emergencies or for savings. I receive food stamps but for a week every month I am low on food and must go to a food bank.
Being on food stamps is also not easy mainly because people feel they can look in your grocery cart and they feel they have the right to judge you. They will be annoyed that you are actually being waited on line before them. They say things like “You should wait on the working people first.” I usually turn around and say “They are. I worked 60 hours taking care of your mother.” They then look surprised that I had the nerve to defend myself. I pay my taxes the way I look at it. They take money out of my pay check and even though it is a small amount, that little bit hurts me. I don’t understand why people think its OK to insult the poor because most of the time it is a woman who is dealing with this issue.
I participate in my children’s education, I love them and want them to succeed. I have sat across from teachers who informed me that because my first grader is not learning how to read at the same rate as some of the other children that I should consider signing my child up for SSI so that they would “help” me. I didn’t want my child to get a check and stigma just because these teachers didn’t want to teach her how to read.
We are often used as a political ball for both parties. The Conservatives insult us and the Liberals patronize us which is also very insulting. We are told we are lazy. We are treated like we are puppy dogs or children. I may not be an educated woman but I am not stupid. I work in a field with a lot of educated people they respect my opinion and my best friend is a college professor. I must be able to hold my own since I excel at my job and educated people are always seeking my opinion.
I appreciate the job you do and it is underpaid. I sympathize with you on the children not reading issue. My son couldn’t read AT ALL until he was 8 and it became clear to me that school society people see reading as the only indicator of intelligence. I know this sounds weird but sometime around fifth grade he quit struggling and overnight read like an adult. So don’t worry, I think it is just a brain development issue unrelated to intelligence and it seems to correct itself. Meanwhile you will be exhausted providing support to your daughter.
My daughter overcame her reading problem and is now 15. She had seizures when she was young and when the school incident happened.
It took me several years to have her placed in special ed to help her catch up.
She is now in High school and doing quite well.
Awesome Helen! I know of which you speak! And you are correct! People LOVE to JUDGE (on both sides) and until you’ve walked in someone’s shoes – you really have no right to say DIDDLY! I pray someday you find a way to get out of poverty. Me too! I have been above it before and it’s pretty nice! I miss it!
Thanks for sharing your LIFE with us! Matey!
Thank you LadyDawnelle Poor women have no voice people in the media choose to portray us as either pitiful, as fools, or they demonize us.
Helen good to hear you’re stressing that poverty is a gender issue much more than racial or working class. I experienced the wage discrimination very young. not even a teenager. all the kids in the family had work in summer. my brothers in the business getting money in comparison to the workers there, I as older sister had to help in the household and my payment was according to household help. I complained heavily and received “equal pay” which of course was not equal being a few years older then the boys. So i turned a feminist before being a teenager.
I think the problem starts early on, when girls are shut out of feeling competent on anything. there is a connection to girls graduating more and with better grades from schools, but finding themselves on lower wage scales. I always compare “handymandy” with “Dora the explorer”. there you have it, the little guy is already the boss of his tool guys and she is just curious.
The fact that poverty is talked about as a racial issue makes little sense to me and it leaves out the majority of the people living on or below the poverty. The true face of Poverty is white and female.
“She had seizures when she was young”
Interesting, my son had seizures also, fever seizures that is. He passed almost everyone in reading by 6th grade but there was nothing incremental about it. One month he couldn’t read, the next month he read far above grade level. Catholic school doesn’t have special ed so I read everything to him until that point. It was exhausting but rewarding. Strangely he could always do math, but in school intelligence is defined by reading early.
“The true face of Poverty is white and female.”
Glad you said it — and from the shoes you wear! Government does not portray it this way. I’ve known poverty without a roof or food stamps or money. Had to pick food out of garbage cans. Of course, this was in Greece, in the 70′s, and I was only 5 years old, but it was a harsh reality for all of us.
I love your guts — to come here and tell it like it is — and to stick up for yourself to people who dare judge you and your circumstances. It speaks poorly about them. You are a woman to be celebrated this month.
Thanks for writing this Helen – and for pointing out that this is a gender issue – not some political football which both parties seem content to make it!
Great comment Marina. I’m hitting “like” button!
Great article Helen. Really well written and to the point.
Yes Amy… you need a like button.
Helen,
Thank you for sharing your story. I completely agree, so many people have preconceived notions of who is the face of poverty. Thank you for speaking up, and bringing light to the issue that women are underpaid for jobs that need to be done. It sounds like you love your job, and are very good at it. Hopefully we will be able to achieve more equitable pay in the near future. I agree with Marina, we celebrate you this month!
That’s a great article! I also get really tired of the relentless stereotypes about poor people. I can’t stand the way people are used as political footballs by both sides of the aisle.
One of the worst stereotypes is that poor people are going to raise dysfunctional kids. Apparently people have never heard of the Menendez brothers or all the other wealthy rich kids on the TV every night caught up in the latest Hollywood scandal. Growing up with money doesn’t mean you’re going to have a good head on your shoulders.
Helen I just want to throw this out as an idea to you but I realize it is none of my business. I know you said you are happy in your job but it occurs to me you would make a good tutor for slow to read children. Tutors are very well paid and few people have the skills and demeanor to do the job. You are a good writer, have experienced the problem, like to help people and being a Mother you can probably easily “motherize” kids into submission and cooperation.
The woman I know who did this sort of thing had two or three children who would come to her house after school. The kids sat at her kitchen table and she would cook dinner for her family(so as to not be standing there just staring at them) and break their homework down into 2 or 3 minute tasks that they could better cope with. She fed them a snack and made the experience pleasant so the kids wanted to go see her. She called their teachers so she knew ahead of time what they needed to get done. She charged $20. an hour (15 years ago)for the time the kids were at her house but didn’t charge for contacting the teachers.
Of course this would be too much at the end of a hard work day but if your hours ever get cut…..
Helen thank you for writing this and pointing out how poor is a gender issue, and that poor doesn’t equal lazy. What really gets to me when I’m in the grocery store being ‘judged’ for what I purchased for my family with food stamps – is that the person criticizing me is ALWAYS a woman. We have to stop tearing each other down and realizing the example we are setting to society when we demean one another. Great job!!
Great article, Helen! I love your writing and how you see the forest through the trees.
Yes poverty is a woman’s issue and yes, I agree that conservatives judge while liberals patronize. I’d like to also add that the fear of poverty is a woman’s issue too. How many women stay in horrible marriages because they fear an impoverished life while they will be the ones to take care of the children? I’m not sure what the answers are, in how to pull women out of poverty, but there is no way to defeat poverty without respecting the work that women are already doing.
The work that you are doing as a Mental Health Aid is hard and incredibile work. The work that mothers do taking care of their children every step of the way is also hard and incredible work. The work that teachers do educating children is hard and incredible work. How women help the world to grow should be respected on the deepest levels.
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