WHEN WOMEN LOSE, WE ALL LOSE
SHOULD those of us who advocate women's empowerment be labeled radical feminists or enlightened economists?
Nobel laureate and economist Amartya Sen would agree with the latter description. In his commencement address to Harvard University's Class of 2000, Sen asserted "there is now overwhelming evidence that women's empowerment, through schooling, employment opportunities and economic development, has the most far-reaching effect in improving the lives of all - men, women and children."
Sen's statement has powerful implications for policy-makers in this country. Because women remain our primary caretakers, when women are better off, society as a whole benefits. Conversely, when women lose, we all lose.
If we use women's empowerment as a yardstick to measure or predict the relative health of a community, how does Memphis rate when we examine the status of women and children? The statistics are shameful.
The Women's Foundation for a Greater Memphis commissioned a study on the status of local women by the Center for Research on Women at the University of Memphis. The report found that more than 80 percent of Memphians who live in poverty are women and children.
Women have fewer resources than men do, yet they bear a disproportionate burden of caring not only for children, but also for parents and the elderly. Housing takes most of women's incomes, but it is often of poor quality, in neighborhoods with declining property values and greater threats of crime and violence.
In South Memphis, nine out of every 10 children live in poverty, while women head more than three of every four families. The median annual income of South Memphis households is $5,433, while 15 miles away in Germantown the comparable figure is $77,730.
This discrepancy is not merely a women's issue, though women feel its effects more directly and deeply. The harsh fact that the poverty rate among Memphis's women and children is nearly twice the nationwide rate casts a shadow on our community that has largely been ignored.
The nonprofit world and private philanthropy alone cannot bridge the equity gap for women. Only 5 cents of every local philanthropic dollar go to organizations that primarily support women and girls.
A look at the balance sheets of the Boys Clubs vs. Girls Clubs, Boy Scouts vs. Girl Scouts, YMCA vs. YWCA identifies that disparity of funding, when issues that affect women and children should be priorities for our local, state and national policy making.
A recent report by the Shelby County Election Commission makes clear that women dominate local voting. Women cast nearly 60 percent of the county's vote last Nov. 7.
Yet while twice as many women as men are voting in the county's African-American precincts, the poverty rate among these women is twice the national rate. It is only a matter of time before the strength of their voices is heard, demanding social justice.
Groups such as 10,000 Women for Memphis (formerly 10,000 Women for Herenton) are working to build a strong political voice on behalf of all local women, to make their empowerment an administrative and legislative priority. City, county, state and federal officials can no longer ignore the trend of women's voting power.
Women need better housing, economic development, educational opportunities and access to high-quality health care. They will elect leaders who understand that ignoring the empowerment of women results in overwhelming social costs, which will ultimately keep our community lagging behind.
This is not radical feminism. It's enlightened economics.
Monday, October 31, 2005
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
When Loan Sharks Are the Only Choice
When Loan Sharks Are the Only Choice
Rising bankruptcies and lenders that prey on our most vulnerable citizens are only symptoms of the more ominous issue of poverty in Memphis. For the past eight years, the Women's Foundation for a Greater Memphis has done significant research and has funded more than $1.4 million in grants to address the staggering statistics of poverty that undermines theMemphis economy. Women and children are the hardest hit. The poverty rate among them istwice the national rate, and it is not surprising that the foreclosure rate on Habitat for Humanity's homes in Memphis mirrors the poverty figures. Financial predators are but one of the many obstacles thousands of Memphis citizens face every day.
Consider the example of a single mother of four children who lives in the 38126 Zip Code in South Memphis. In her neighborhood, 98 percent of the children live in poverty. More than half the community's households receive less than $9,000 in income annually, and more than 75 percent of them are headed by single women.
Nothing about these women's lives is easy. To illustrate, let’s look at a hypothetical, but typical single mother who receives $9,000 in welfare assistance each year - $173 a week. She has few skills and when she seeks work, she settles for a job that pays $6 an hour - $240 for a 40-hour week. After she pays for childcare and transportation to work, she finds she brings home less by working than she makes staying at home. Such a woman is one of the many people in Memphis who cannot earn a living wage, and one way or another, we all pay for it.
When her car breaks down, she knows she'll lose her job if it's not fixed quickly. With nowhere else to turn, she resorts to a quick-cash lender, ignoring the costly fees and high interest rates itcharges. She feels she has no choice; with all her energy and income consumed by trying to survive, she's unable to plan ahead for emergencies.
When one of her children unexpectedly requires surgery, the hospital sends her a bill that may easily exceed $10,000. She's not insured, and when TennCare doesn't cover all the expenses for her child's care, the hospital turns the claim over to a collection agency. The collection agency first sends demands for payment, then files suit against her. The court places a lien on any property she owns and garnishees her wages. She must pay the hospital bill, plus court costsand attorneys' fees, or file bankruptcy and face losing her home to foreclosure. She can't turn to a bank for a loan to cover the hospital bill because she has no guarantor to co-sign and her credit isn't worthy. So where can she go for the money? To the quick-cash lender.
Unscrupulous lenders are sometimes the only alternative for Memphians like our single mother, who live in a world most of us cannot imagine. In fact, they once offered the only safety net for the mother of Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton, who years ago turned to a quick-cash lender for the $300 she needed to pay her son's tuition at LeMoyne-Owen College. If that resource had not been there for her, imagine the consequences for Memphis. The complexity of the issues that surround people living in poverty leads us to conclude that there is no magic bullet. Closing down predatory lenders will make us feel better, but it won't address the real problems. Women such as the one I've described do need instruction in financial literacy, but they - and we - also need to address deeper issues, including education, quality child care, affordable healthcare, efficient public transportation and the commitment to earning a living wage.
Over the past 20 years, research has shown that a critical factor in economic development for any community is the empowerment of women. The Women's Foundation works every day to open doors for women like I’ve described. We understand that the quality of their lives affects the future of their children's lives and the future of Memphis.
We would like to lead a discussion about organizing and mobilizing the nonprofit community, municipal government and local elected officials to consider poverty reduction as a priority, especially when making decisions about workforce and economic development. Through an integrated community effort, poverty reduction can be achieved. Then perhaps those whose livelihood depends on preying on our most vulnerable citizens will fall into infamous history alongside the traveling aluminum siding salesmen of days past
Rising bankruptcies and lenders that prey on our most vulnerable citizens are only symptoms of the more ominous issue of poverty in Memphis. For the past eight years, the Women's Foundation for a Greater Memphis has done significant research and has funded more than $1.4 million in grants to address the staggering statistics of poverty that undermines theMemphis economy. Women and children are the hardest hit. The poverty rate among them istwice the national rate, and it is not surprising that the foreclosure rate on Habitat for Humanity's homes in Memphis mirrors the poverty figures. Financial predators are but one of the many obstacles thousands of Memphis citizens face every day.
Consider the example of a single mother of four children who lives in the 38126 Zip Code in South Memphis. In her neighborhood, 98 percent of the children live in poverty. More than half the community's households receive less than $9,000 in income annually, and more than 75 percent of them are headed by single women.
Nothing about these women's lives is easy. To illustrate, let’s look at a hypothetical, but typical single mother who receives $9,000 in welfare assistance each year - $173 a week. She has few skills and when she seeks work, she settles for a job that pays $6 an hour - $240 for a 40-hour week. After she pays for childcare and transportation to work, she finds she brings home less by working than she makes staying at home. Such a woman is one of the many people in Memphis who cannot earn a living wage, and one way or another, we all pay for it.
When her car breaks down, she knows she'll lose her job if it's not fixed quickly. With nowhere else to turn, she resorts to a quick-cash lender, ignoring the costly fees and high interest rates itcharges. She feels she has no choice; with all her energy and income consumed by trying to survive, she's unable to plan ahead for emergencies.
When one of her children unexpectedly requires surgery, the hospital sends her a bill that may easily exceed $10,000. She's not insured, and when TennCare doesn't cover all the expenses for her child's care, the hospital turns the claim over to a collection agency. The collection agency first sends demands for payment, then files suit against her. The court places a lien on any property she owns and garnishees her wages. She must pay the hospital bill, plus court costsand attorneys' fees, or file bankruptcy and face losing her home to foreclosure. She can't turn to a bank for a loan to cover the hospital bill because she has no guarantor to co-sign and her credit isn't worthy. So where can she go for the money? To the quick-cash lender.
Unscrupulous lenders are sometimes the only alternative for Memphians like our single mother, who live in a world most of us cannot imagine. In fact, they once offered the only safety net for the mother of Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton, who years ago turned to a quick-cash lender for the $300 she needed to pay her son's tuition at LeMoyne-Owen College. If that resource had not been there for her, imagine the consequences for Memphis. The complexity of the issues that surround people living in poverty leads us to conclude that there is no magic bullet. Closing down predatory lenders will make us feel better, but it won't address the real problems. Women such as the one I've described do need instruction in financial literacy, but they - and we - also need to address deeper issues, including education, quality child care, affordable healthcare, efficient public transportation and the commitment to earning a living wage.
Over the past 20 years, research has shown that a critical factor in economic development for any community is the empowerment of women. The Women's Foundation works every day to open doors for women like I’ve described. We understand that the quality of their lives affects the future of their children's lives and the future of Memphis.
We would like to lead a discussion about organizing and mobilizing the nonprofit community, municipal government and local elected officials to consider poverty reduction as a priority, especially when making decisions about workforce and economic development. Through an integrated community effort, poverty reduction can be achieved. Then perhaps those whose livelihood depends on preying on our most vulnerable citizens will fall into infamous history alongside the traveling aluminum siding salesmen of days past
Sunday, October 16, 2005
Hope for Our Public Schools
For the first time in our nation’s history, public schools are required to demonstrate that all of the students they serve are learning. The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) passed in January 2002 is a significant achievement in advancing the discussion about public education. It begins to address the national crisis in which one-third of the children in the United States are enrolled in urban public schools—many of which are regarded as some the worst schools in the nation. NCLB will significantly increase the Federal government’s role in failing local school districts but it is unlikely, as written, to provide the help that is needed. The legislation does nothing to address the abhorrent conditions present in and around many failing schools today.
I believe that it is impossible to improve public education simply by applying greater pressure on schools. The NCLB act primarily identifies the problems within our schools as internal issues, where, it is implied, teachers are not working hard enough. The Act also contributes to the myth that if these schools just tried harder they would succeed. Schools need help, not humiliation. External issues such as inadequate housing, inaccessibility of basic health and dental care, and few employment opportunities for parents, profoundly impact the quality of our children’s lives and also of our public schools.
Children cannot learn at school if they are hungry, ill, homeless, or lack adequate childcare in their earliest development. Those charged with educating low-income children generally agree that it is impossible to address their academic needs without simultaneously addressing their basic need for health, safety, and stability. Memphis students often come to school with a variety of unmet social, material and emotional needs that affect their ability to learn. Addressing these needs will require the development of a more comprehensive social policy because it is neither fair nor reasonable to expect schools to serve these needs on their own. I maintain that until there is a genuine commitment to address the “social context” of education and until we confront the issue of poverty, any significant improvement in public education will be impossible.
The intractable issues of poverty are complex. They involve families, communities and peer relations and, as such, are generally beyond the scope of our schools. To be ready to learn and meet new academic standards, some children need much more than a typical school can provide.
We must devise school-based policies that respond to the nonacademic problems, which ultimately impact the academic performance of our children. A debate is waging over the appropriate role of the Federal government in our local public schools. I believe that the Federal government has the primary responsibility to identify the national interest in education. It should also help fund and support efforts to protect and promote that interest. It must provide the national leadership to ensure that the Nation's public and private resources are marshaled to address the problems identified with the urban condition in America as it relates to the education of our children.
Local governance of public schools is an important means to insure that our schools are responsive to the needs of students, parents and the community. Yet, inequities among school districts are often extreme as is the case in Memphis and Shelby County where officials have great difficulty addressing the problems of our neediest children. Local financing of public education intensifies educational inequality when the community is unable to generate sufficient revenue and support for the special needs of urban schools.
A genuine commitment to public education will require redirected Federal and State dollars and well as significant private investment and local philanthropy. Heretofore, social policy to address poverty has proceeded from a premise that poverty is a consequence of compounded problems including substandard housing; lack of job opportunities at a living wage; fragile family relationships, and inadequate health care to name a few. As a result, programs have been designed to attack each of these causes one by one. Hence housing programs to transform public housing projects, workforce investment to address employability and training, case management to strengthen families, and programs to address access to affordable healthcare have been designed. In combination these initiatives are intended to remove the causes of poverty. And while none of these solutions are in and of themselves flawed, all have an insurmountable disadvantage. The programs have never proceeded on a coordinated basis or at a similar rate of development.
The most successful national model of coordinating federal, state, and local dollars to stimulate private investment and philanthropy in restoring urban neighborhoods is the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s HOPE VI Program. The Memphis Housing Authority under the leadership of Robert Lipscomb has successfully attracted over $100 million of federal funding to Memphis to transform and rebuild the neighborhoods surrounding two public housing projects. A third $20 million proposal to revitalize the Lamar Terrace neighborhood with a strategic connection to the Memphis Bio-Tech initiative is pending approval. Hope VI effectively coordinates the efforts to fight poverty of the Federal and State government, private investment, public and private philanthropic services with our local housing authority and the residents themselves.
Lipscomb’s vision for the future is to replicate the HOPE VI model into other neighborhoods and expand the emphasis to include public education. He hopes to accomplish this by bringing together three key federal agencies: the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Education, as well as local investment partners and lead nonprofit organizations like the Women’s Foundation to create a new model of cooperation between all available resources.
We must understand that the future of our society will ultimately be determined by the quality of our public schools. There is no single approach to “fixing” the problems of our public educational system in the United States. Only when we address the total needs of the child, will our public educational reform efforts be effective and sustainable. In the life of every child, the family, the school and the community play a crucial role in shaping its future prospects. It is these relationships that socialize, inculcate values and norms, as well as anchor the child. They educate, train and shape the young both formally and informally into a valuable adult. Our nation, our democracy, and our public interest depend on the education of every child. Finding ways to fulfill the great promise and potential of American education is the task before us.
I believe that it is impossible to improve public education simply by applying greater pressure on schools. The NCLB act primarily identifies the problems within our schools as internal issues, where, it is implied, teachers are not working hard enough. The Act also contributes to the myth that if these schools just tried harder they would succeed. Schools need help, not humiliation. External issues such as inadequate housing, inaccessibility of basic health and dental care, and few employment opportunities for parents, profoundly impact the quality of our children’s lives and also of our public schools.
Children cannot learn at school if they are hungry, ill, homeless, or lack adequate childcare in their earliest development. Those charged with educating low-income children generally agree that it is impossible to address their academic needs without simultaneously addressing their basic need for health, safety, and stability. Memphis students often come to school with a variety of unmet social, material and emotional needs that affect their ability to learn. Addressing these needs will require the development of a more comprehensive social policy because it is neither fair nor reasonable to expect schools to serve these needs on their own. I maintain that until there is a genuine commitment to address the “social context” of education and until we confront the issue of poverty, any significant improvement in public education will be impossible.
The intractable issues of poverty are complex. They involve families, communities and peer relations and, as such, are generally beyond the scope of our schools. To be ready to learn and meet new academic standards, some children need much more than a typical school can provide.
We must devise school-based policies that respond to the nonacademic problems, which ultimately impact the academic performance of our children. A debate is waging over the appropriate role of the Federal government in our local public schools. I believe that the Federal government has the primary responsibility to identify the national interest in education. It should also help fund and support efforts to protect and promote that interest. It must provide the national leadership to ensure that the Nation's public and private resources are marshaled to address the problems identified with the urban condition in America as it relates to the education of our children.
Local governance of public schools is an important means to insure that our schools are responsive to the needs of students, parents and the community. Yet, inequities among school districts are often extreme as is the case in Memphis and Shelby County where officials have great difficulty addressing the problems of our neediest children. Local financing of public education intensifies educational inequality when the community is unable to generate sufficient revenue and support for the special needs of urban schools.
A genuine commitment to public education will require redirected Federal and State dollars and well as significant private investment and local philanthropy. Heretofore, social policy to address poverty has proceeded from a premise that poverty is a consequence of compounded problems including substandard housing; lack of job opportunities at a living wage; fragile family relationships, and inadequate health care to name a few. As a result, programs have been designed to attack each of these causes one by one. Hence housing programs to transform public housing projects, workforce investment to address employability and training, case management to strengthen families, and programs to address access to affordable healthcare have been designed. In combination these initiatives are intended to remove the causes of poverty. And while none of these solutions are in and of themselves flawed, all have an insurmountable disadvantage. The programs have never proceeded on a coordinated basis or at a similar rate of development.
The most successful national model of coordinating federal, state, and local dollars to stimulate private investment and philanthropy in restoring urban neighborhoods is the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s HOPE VI Program. The Memphis Housing Authority under the leadership of Robert Lipscomb has successfully attracted over $100 million of federal funding to Memphis to transform and rebuild the neighborhoods surrounding two public housing projects. A third $20 million proposal to revitalize the Lamar Terrace neighborhood with a strategic connection to the Memphis Bio-Tech initiative is pending approval. Hope VI effectively coordinates the efforts to fight poverty of the Federal and State government, private investment, public and private philanthropic services with our local housing authority and the residents themselves.
Lipscomb’s vision for the future is to replicate the HOPE VI model into other neighborhoods and expand the emphasis to include public education. He hopes to accomplish this by bringing together three key federal agencies: the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Education, as well as local investment partners and lead nonprofit organizations like the Women’s Foundation to create a new model of cooperation between all available resources.
We must understand that the future of our society will ultimately be determined by the quality of our public schools. There is no single approach to “fixing” the problems of our public educational system in the United States. Only when we address the total needs of the child, will our public educational reform efforts be effective and sustainable. In the life of every child, the family, the school and the community play a crucial role in shaping its future prospects. It is these relationships that socialize, inculcate values and norms, as well as anchor the child. They educate, train and shape the young both formally and informally into a valuable adult. Our nation, our democracy, and our public interest depend on the education of every child. Finding ways to fulfill the great promise and potential of American education is the task before us.
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