Walking on Eggshells: Abused Women's
Experiences of
Final
Report of Research Findings from the
Woman and
Abuse Welfare Research Project
Academics: Janet
Mosher,
Patricia Evans,
Community Partners:
Eileen Morrow (
and Transition Houses); Jo-Anne Boulding & Nancy VanderPlaats
(
Funding From the Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council
of
EXECUTIVE
SUMMARY............................................................................................ iv
PART
A – BACKGROUND TO THE RESEARCH PROJECT............................. 1
1.
Context of the Study................................................................................................ 2
2.
Key Thematic Findings........................................................................................... 5
a)
Feed the kids, pay the bills, play by the rules................................................... 5
b)
Required to work, but no ‘hand-up’; welfare as work..................................... 6
c)
Constant scrutiny, and walking on eggshells................................................... 8
d)
Trapped by abuse, trapped by welfare................................................................ 9
3.
The Research Partners........................................................................................... 9
4.
Conceptual Framing.............................................................................................. 10
5.
Methodology........................................................................................................... 11
PART
B – KEY RESEARCH FINDINGS................................................................ 13
1.
Inadequacy of benefits......................................................................................... 13
a)
Welfare Rates and the decision to leave or return........................................ 16
b)
OW and the clawback of the NCBS................................................................... 20
2.
The Intersections of Abuse, Paid Work and Workfare................................. 21
a)
Paid work as a site of abuse............................................................................... 22
b)
The realities of paid work in women’s lives.................................................... 27
c)
Workfare: “not busy in the right places”.......................................................... 27
i)
training/educational programs are hard to access.......................................... 28
ii)
workshops and unpaid placements.................................................................. 30
iii)
workfare, children’s needs and childcare........................................................ 31
iv)
workfare and health/disability issues.............................................................. 35
d)
e)
Women are not informed of the deferral.......................................................... 40
3.
Spousal and Child Support.................................................................................. 42
a)
Women are not informed of the waiver............................................................ 44
b)
Pressure to pursue support................................................................................ 45
c)
When support orders are not honoured.......................................................... 47
4.
Spouse in the House............................................................................................. 47
a)
Knowledge of the rules........................................................................................ 48
b)
Implications of the rules...................................................................................... 49
5.
Constantly Living Under Suspicion; Welfare Surveillance.......................... 50
a)
Walking on eggshells............................................................................................ 52
b)
Repeated demands for information.................................................................. 56
c)
Fraud as a weapon of control and domination............................................... 56
6.
Difficulties in Accessing Information................................................................ 59
7.
Parallels Drawn Between Welfare & Abusive Relationships...................... 64
8.
Lack of Knowledge of the Dynamics of Abuse.............................................. 65
a)
Disclosing abuse................................................................................................... 66
9.
Shelters and Access to Housing........................................................................ 67
10.
The Interconnections of Social Location, Welfare and Abuse ................ 71
a)
Immigrant and Refugee Women........................................................................ 71
b)
Aboriginal Women................................................................................................ 74
c)
Women with Disabilities....................................................................................... 76
d)
Rural Women ......................................................................................................... 77
PART
C – RECOMMENDATIONS ......................................................................... 79
References
.................................................................................................................. 92
Appendix
1 .................................................................................................................. 97
Appendix
2 ................................................................................................................ 105
Walking on Eggshells: Abused Women’s
Experiences of
EXECUTIVE
SUMMARY
Research
Partners
The research was undertaken by three
academics (Prof. Janet Mosher of York University (Principal Investigator),
Prof. Patricia Evans of Carleton University and Prof. Margaret Little of
Queen's University and two community partners: the Ontario Association of
Interval Houses (OAITH; Eileen Morrow); and the Ontario Social Safety NetWork
(OSSN; Jo-Anne Boulding and Nancy VanderPlaats).
The research partners were also greatly
assisted by an Advisory Committee, especially in the formulation of the key
research questions and in the development of the interview guides. We are
indebted to the members of the Advisory Committee for all of their assistance:
thank you to Jacqueline Bittencourt (
The Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council funded the research for a three-year
period (commencing February 2000, and extended for a one-year period). We are extremely grateful to the Council for
making this partnership and the research project possible.
Methodology
The primary
research undertaking was 64 in-depth qualitative interviews of 1.5-3 hours in
length with women who are, or have ever been, in an abusive adult intimate
relationship and are at present, or have been at some point since 1995, in
receipt of social assistance benefits through Ontario Works (OW) or the Ontario
Disability Support Program (ODSP). Of
these interviews, five were conducted in Tamil, five in Bengali, six in Spanish
and three through cultural interpreters in other languages. Of the 64 women
interviewed, 38 (60%) had immigrated to
A questionnaire was mailed to all area
administrators of Ontario Works (48).
Thirty-five completed questionnaires were returned, for a response rate
of 73%. The questionnaire is attached
as Appendix 2.
A draft of the key findings from our
analysis of the interviews and the questionnaires was circulated to a group of
approximately 40 women, including women who participated in the interviews,
front line shelter workers, women's equality advocates and social justice
advocates. We held a full day forum on February 6th in
RESEARCH FINDINGS
Overview
The findings from
our research project make clear that women who flee abusive relationships and
turn to welfare seeking refuge and support frequently find neither. Women's
experiences of welfare are often profoundly negative. Women struggle to survive with their children
on little income, often going without adequate food, shelter and clothing. They encounter a system that is less than
forthcoming about their entitlements, and about the multiple rules with which
they must comply. Their hopes of
training and employment through workfare participation are almost invariably
dashed. They are often subjected to
demeaning and humiliating treatment from workers within a system in which
suspicion and the devaluation of recipients are structured into its very
core. For many the experience of
welfare is like another abusive relationship.
And virtually every woman with whom we spoke was caught in one or more
double binds as she struggled to be a good mother, good worker and good
citizen. Disturbingly, the decision to
return to an abusive relationship is often the 'best' decision for a woman, in
a social context of horrendously constrained options.
Simultaneously
and very importantly, the welfare system is also misused by abusive men to
enhance their power and control over women.
Their power and control is enhanced when women return to, or can't
leave, the relationship because they are unable to adequately provide for themselves
and their children on welfare. Abusive
men's power and control is also shored up when they are able to call
anonymously to welfare snitch lines, and when they can readily set women up for
fraud prosecutions. And their power and
control is further strengthened when they can manipulate systems because of
better English language skills.
This picture of
abused women's experiences on welfare stands in sharp contrast to the state's
promise of zero tolerance of domestic violence so frequently trumpeted in the
criminal justice context. The 'deserving'
recipients of criminal justice protection (and we hasten to add that this
protection does not always materialize in practice) are, as our report details,
recast within the welfare regime as undeserving and untrustworthy. In the welfare context abused women are
subjected to another zero tolerance policy -- zero tolerance of welfare fraud
regime -- a regime abusive men readily exploit.
Genuine respect
of women's right to safety, and to live free of violence in their lives means
creating the social conditions -- adequate welfare, access to safe housing,
access to childcare, access to employment that pays a living wage, etc. -- that
would truly make it difficult for men to "get away with it". As is clearly revealed by our interviews,
access to meaningful social supports is absolutely essential to women's
safety. A responsive, supportive,
adequately funded welfare system could play a fundamental role in securing
women's safety and women's equality.
What is needed
most urgently and most profoundly is a fundamental paradigm shift; a shift from
viewing poverty as the failing of individuals, and those who are poor as lazy,
unmotivated and deceptive. To the extent
that the welfare system in
1.) Inadequacy of benefits
Virtually all of
the women interviewed reported that the amount of money that they had to live
on while receiving social assistance was inadequate to meet their basic needs
and those of their children. Many women
had to spend all, or nearly all, of their monthly allowance to cover their
shelter costs. Many reported regularly
going without meals, having inadequate shelter (unable to heat their dwellings,
units in very bad disrepair, overcrowding, etc.), inadequate clothing
(especially during winter months); and lack of access to transportation. Several women reported medical problems as a
result of inadequate nutrition. Many
women were without phones, a gravely dangerous situation for abused women.
In the complex
decision-making process of whether to stay in or return to an abusive
relationship it is clear that the adequacy of welfare rates plays a significant
role: nine of the women we interviewed remained in abusive relationships
because they knew how much they would receive on welfare and felt that they
couldn't provide adequately for themselves and their children on the rates;
seven women reported returning to the abusive relationship in situations where
their struggle to survive on welfare was the
reason, or one of the main reasons, for returning; and six women were
contemplating returning to the abusive relationship at the time of the
interview or had contemplated returning because of the difficulties they were
experiencing on welfare.
In our survey of
area administrators, 17 of 35 responded affirmatively when asked, "Are you
aware of any cases where a woman has left welfare and returned to an abusive
relationship because she found that she was unable to adequately support
herself and her children on welfare?".
2.) The Intersections of Abuse, Paid Work and
Workfare
The voices of the
women reflected in this report speak forcefully to the many ways that OW
workfare policy is not working. The requirements are being applied in ways that
almost always ignore the abuse they have experienced, discount the needs their
children have for care, and their own health problems. Women are not receiving
information about deferrals from workfare requirements, and the provisions in
place to respect restrictions on childcare are very often disregarded. Women
also found that their OW workers paid little attention to their own career
goals. The experience of workfare is
rarely viewed as positive; most often, women are unable to access the supports
they need, whether it is modest costs associated with training, or programs
such as ESL. It is ‘not busy in the
right places’. Women are not receiving a
‘hand up’ -- on the contrary, they tell us that it is more like an obstacle
course.
Women spoke
powerfully about their need for real opportunities and good jobs. They do not believe that the shortest route
to employment is the best route or that any job is a good job. They have been, or are, in precarious
employment and they know that they need to find decent jobs to be able to
provide adequately for themselves and any children they may have. The workfare requirement does not further
their opportunities for decent employment.
What it does do, however, is to further stigmatize women on welfare as
individuals who, in the absence of a requirement to participate in work or
work-related activities, would prefer ‘scrounging’ to working. Such a policy is
profoundly dissonant with the aspirations and realities of the lives and
experiences of women in this study.
3.) Spousal and Child Support
"It's crazy to have women track men down (for
support), you're running from him for God's sake."
This quote from one of the woman interviewed for our study captures
vividly the problems that arise when women are required to pursue abusive
spouses for support as a pre-condition to welfare eligibility. In addition to well-grounded fears of violence,
many women are reluctant to pursue support because they want to move on with
their lives and have no contact with their abusive partners, or because they
worry that a claim for support will launch a counter-claim for custody or
access that would be harmful for both them and their children.
Although a temporary waiver may be granted in cases of domestic
violence, several problems were identified with this regime: almost no women
were told of the waiver; no definition of domestic violence is provided and no
guidelines exist as to when further extensions are warranted; standards for
verification are vague; and many women (often those who are most marginalized)
do not have access to the forms of verification requested. These difficulties with the waiver regime
are compounded by the reality -- described so vividly by the women in this
study -- that many women do not disclose the abuse to their welfare workers.
4.) Spouse in the House
The definition of
'spouse' and of 'same sex partner' create great difficulties for many
low-income women and unfairly discriminates against women. Our report shows, not surprisingly, that the
present definition lead some women to be very wary of forming relationships at
all, preclude some living arrangements which could help reduce costs, and
subject women to a great deal of scrutiny of their intimate lives. The definition is so complex and ambiguous
that it is virtually impossible for women to know when a spousal relationship
will be found. Our report also shows
some abusive partners threaten, and act on the threat, to call the welfare
fraud line to falsely accuse women of living in 'common-law'
relationships. Women described how such
threats further the abuser's power and control, leaving them feeling trapped
with no where to turn.
Lack of access to
full and comprehensible information creates many problems, one of the most
significant of which is the constant fear that one might be in violation of a
rule that one doesn't even know exists.
The difficulty of ascertaining the rules -- which are complex, often
discretionary, and frequently counter-intuitive (loans count as income, e.g.)
-- combines with the fear of extreme and negative consequences if one breaks a
rule (being cut-off and/or charged with fraud), to lead many women to the
conclusion that it is simply not safe to talk to their workers, including about
the abuse in their lives.
Many abusive men
threaten to report and/or do report their current or past partners to welfare,
alleging fraud. As noted above, the
alleged fraud often is based on a claim that the woman is living with her
'boyfriend', or 'common law partner'.
Sometimes the man calling claims to be the person living with her,
sometimes he points to another man. In
most of the instances of this in our interviews, the allegations were
baseless. Nevertheless, more often than
not, benefits were immediately terminated.
One woman had her benefits terminated four times; each time it was her
former abusive partner who called, and the welfare office was aware of the
history of abuse. Threats or actual
calls to welfare by abusive partners occurred for roughly 20% of the women
interviewed.
We note too that
in the survey completed by area administrators of welfare, 20 of the 35
respondents that answered this question answered affirmatively when asked,
"Are you aware of any cases where an abusive partner has reported to the
welfare fraud hotline or elsewhere that his former partner is living with
another man?"
Women told us of the
extraordinary difficulties that they have had in accessing accurate and timely
information that might be of benefit to them.
General prohibitions and obligations seem to have been rather well
communicated to women, such as the obligation to report income and to pursue
child support. However, very few women
knew about the availability of special benefits and the possibility of
deferrals or waivers of some OW requirements.
Importantly as well, many
of the rules are so complex -- e.g. the definition of spouse -- that is
extraordinarily difficult for anyone (even with full access to the relevant
policies) to confidently discern what is/not permissible. Women during our February 6th
forum also noted that the sheer terror of going into the office and the gravity
of the many issues women face when they leave the abusive relationship make it
exceedingly difficult to take in information.
Trying to access
information was incredibly frustrating and it took women many attempts to
contact their workers. And, when contact
was made, they often discovered that the information they had received was
inaccurate. Women also found it very
difficult to get a timely response from workers when they needed immediate help
or information (cheque not arrived, emergency travel, e.g.).
Some women did identify
helpful workers, but they were far more likely to receive information and
support in navigating the welfare system from workers in shelters and other
community organizations. Agencies providing culturally-based services proved to
be a vital source of information for women recently arrived in
7.) Parallels Drawn Between Welfare & Abusive
Relationships
Many women drew
explicit parallels between their experiences on welfare, and their experiences
of abuse. And in several other
instances, although the women did not draw the explicit parallel, there were
many similarities in their descriptions of their abusive relationships and of
their experiences of welfare.
Four predominant
parallels emerged in the interviews: