With the dawn of President Bush's Healthy Marriage Initiative, the nation will soon revert back to seeing marriage as an ideal state for women, a speaker said in the Burkhardt building Tuesday night.
In celebration of Vagina Week, Kim Jones-Owen, director of the Women's Studies Program, emphasized the government's view toward women and marriage through a presentation titled "Money for Marriage: Domestic Violence and the Healthy Marriage Initiative."
Jones-Owen said the federal government is pushing for women to enter wedlock and to keep it intact at all costs.
"They're trying to make marriage something women should aspire for," Jones-Owen said. "To them, the perfect marriage is long-term regardless of circumstances, and it doesn't need social services."
Jones-Owen said according to the Economic Policy Institute, a third of single mothers in the United States are currently living in poverty.
Those who are living in poverty can receive some benefits from the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, or "welfare reform," she said.
She said federal legislation, however, is going through a system to change how welfare recipients are viewed, where the government is giving states the opportunity to receive bonus money if they increase the number of women who are married.
"The program encourages low-income mothers to get married, but the real solution is education, child care and better paying jobs," Jones-Owen said.
"If a low-income mother's problems will be solved by getting married, it implies dependence of women on men," she said. "They're assuming the man will bring stability and money, but there's no assumption that he will bring poverty into the household."
Jones-Owen said President Bush also signed a bill last October to award money to states based on the number of "out-of-wedlock" births and abortions they have, where states with the lowest numbers receive more money.
The government is shifting from allowing "illegitimate children" and unwed mothers to requiring marriage, Jones-Owen said.
"Reserving money for these bonuses is a prescription to make sure people fit the government's stereotypical guidelines of what constitutes a marriage," she said.
Jones-Owen said the national legislature simply doesn't know enough about what today's women value.
"Maybe we need to communicate with them more about who we are," she said. "It does make a difference, if not in our own individual lives, in the lives of women in our community," she said.
Fourth-year student Abby Albaugh said she enjoyed the presentation and has become more active in looking at how the government's decisions affect families.
"The presentation covered a lot of information," Albaugh said. "Many states feel they can keep families together if they can make it harder for them to break up."
Senior Jon Hendricks, co-coordinator of Feminists for Action, said he also liked how the presentation emphasized the government's influence on the nation's families and women.
"What struck me is how rich, white men from elite institutions make decisions that directly impact low and middle-class women," Hendricks said. "That's not real democracy."
Hendricks said the presentation also effectively showed how the government targets welfare recipients, who they usually see as minorities.
The presentation was a good way of bringing together feminism and the economy, he said.
"It's not just a women's issue but also a political, economic and race issue," Hendricks said.
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