REVIEW

No Way to live: Poor Women Speak Out
by Sheila Baxter New Star Books, Vancouver, 1988 240 pages, $9.95 paper
Review by Georgina Marshall

• In 1985, 26% of all poor families in Canada had incomes under the poverty line, even though the family head worked for the full year.
  
  
• One in three female single parents relies on welfare as her primary source of income.
  
  
• Food banks have become an established part of making ends meet for the vast majority of people using them. ... Food banks help over 70,000 in B.C. each month. (1)

What does it mean to be a woman who is one of the people to whom these statistics refer? How do such abstract figures translate into real life experiences? There is no way of answering these questions if we haven't been poor ourselves or if we are not on the front lines working with low income people. We can't help but be distanced from the impact of poverty if we don't know what it is it live the daily struggle. Sheila Baxter's book gives first hand accounts of the problems, frustrations, disappointments, shame and anger suffered by women as a result of being female and poor.
    Sheila Baxter has lived and worked as a welfare advocate in the downtown eastside of Vancouver for some years. The research for the book took place in 1986, during which time she interviewed over fifty women of different ages in the eastside of Vancouver. The women were Black, Asian, white, and Native Indian; a mix of lesbian and heterosexual with various backgrounds of education and income levels. The published interviews, which range from a few words to a few pages in length, are interspersed with wonderful photographs and essays from noted Canadian women on issues of poverty. The intensity of the personal stories keep the women and children in focus when we skim the figures and read about the shortcomings of our social welfare programs.
    Each woman was asked three questions: Why are you poor?, What do you think could be done about it? and Do you think you will always be poor? The responses make evident that the many personal reasons for poverty, whether due to poor health or low wages or being a single parent, are directly related to our socio-economic structures which fail to provide adequate income security programs, enough jobs, decent wages, and so forth. The analysis that poses poverty as a social problem is voiced by virtually all of the women. But knowing this on one level and being confronted by prejudice on another means that they feel low self-esteem. Sheila notes lack of self-worth to be one of the most common problems encountered.
    The book is not easy to get through. The reader is exposed repeatedly to the sadness and the injustices of women who are "forcibly poor." The emotional charge inherent in this form of research is overwhelm- ing at times, but it is necessary to hear over and over again how women are systemically disempowered.
    The one criticism of the book I will put forth is the seeming hopelessness of the women's lives. This is effected by the presentation of events in the chapter on advocacy and is done in two ways. First, in the course of relating problems faced by women and the outcomes when advocacy was attempted, Sheila neglects to include the specifics of many cases. This results in the reader gaining little understanding of the welfare appeal system and ways in which a women or her advocate can challenge ministry interpretation. Secondly, a bleak picture is painted of the potential for women to take control of their lives when on welfare. In the advocacy chapter, woman after woman declines to appeal the denial of benefits. I agree that women are fearful of retribution by their welfare worker if they are "problem" clients but there are many, many women who do appeal or seek advocate intervention and who are successful in getting benefits. As Jean Swanson, the anti-poverty activist noted below, states, "When you become known as a fighter, no one wants to tangle with you."
    Jean Swanson, coordinator of a B.C. coalition of anti-poverty groups called End Legislated Poverty, affords analysis and strategy to overcome the debilitating effects of poverty. She illustrates how the market- oriented economic system works against women in poverty by such actions as eliminating rent control and keeping welfare rates and wages low so that people have to work for below-poverty wages. By connecting the personal to the political, she examines ways in which we can promote change rather than spend "energy adapting to situations others create."
    Another poverty rights activist and writer, Dorothy O'Connell, raises class issues in her essay, "Poverty and the Common Woman." Women separated from women by economic barriers, and contempt for women by women who stay in the home are just some of the issues leading to the examination of structured inequality as it relates to women.
    The voices recorded in this book are those of B.C. women and the welfare legislation dealt with is that of the B.C. government. But No Way to Live is a book for every Canadian because poverty is legislated across the country. As Dorothy O'Connell points out, "it is government policy to keep a certain portion of the population poor."

Georgina Marshall is a community worker for First United Church in Vancouver, B.C. She is involved in anti-poverty and advocacy issues.

1. Statistics are quoted from information in the book, pages 43,152 and 119.