NOW Supports Real Assistance for Women Escaping Family Violence and Poverty

By Communications Staff and Interns

NOW Interns Elisabeth Crum and Anne Ryder helped put together the clothesline display.

June 24, 2005

On June 22 NOW joined other groups working on economic justice and violence against women to deliver a report to Wade Horn, the assistant secretary for children and families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Following a policy briefing to Congressional staff on the report's findings, representatives from the groups displayed a clothesline of t-shirts with handwritten accounts from domestic violence survivors outside Horn's office. Women who had been on welfare and survived domestic violence brought their children to chant and sing as we awaited a response from HHS' Administration on Children and Families.

Horn's office refused to accept the report in person and ignored requests to at least look at the dozens of t-shirts.

The two-year study found welfare case workers have been silent on the fact that victims of domestic and family violence can receive a temporary waiver from the time deadlines while they receive counseling and assistance to address the violence. NOW and allies succeeded in adding this Family Violence Option (FVO) as a later amendment to the 1996 welfare law.

"By not telling these women about the Family Violence Option, they're robbing poor women of a chance to escape the violence in their lives," said Action Vice President Olga Vives.

Activists from Families United for Racial and Economic Equality (FUREE) march to Wade Horn's office.

Almost two-thirds of women on welfare have been subject to domestic violence at some point in their lives. Women who want to flee violent situations often cannot because they lack the financial independence to do so. The FVO serves as a way to help women get out of poverty, as well as out of a violent situation, by providing services while not counting this time as part of the two-years-at-a-time limit for a person receiving welfare assistance.

While failing to promote the FVO, officials instead are promoting marriage as the key to women ending the poverty in their lives. Instead of equipping women with the tools actually needed to escape poverty and violence, the government is pushing women to marry the father of their children—who most likely is the abuser—which only continues the cycle of violence. Studies show that abused women are often prevented from obtaining and keeping jobs by their abusive husbands, taking away their means for escape for both themselves and their children.

"Marriage promotion is not the solution to helping women off of welfare," Vives said. "Marriage for money instead of love sends the message that women are not valued as people, but as possessions. It also tells women they are only worth the government's time if they are on the arm of a man."

NOW worked for years to add the FVO to the 1996 welfare bill, and hopes that the Bush administration and Congress will provide oversight and encouragement to states so that they can help women escape the double cruelty of poverty and violence. NOW is working with Senator Patty Murray, D-Wash., in her effort to include a more comprehensive version of the Family Violence Option in the welfare bill that is due to be reauthorized in the months ahead.

NOW Intern Michelle Kline stands outside Wade Horn's office with the clothesline display of t-shirts bearing messages from domestic violence survivors.