Upon its founding in 1966, one of the National Organization for Women's first actions was creating task forces to begin work on women's issues. The Task Force on Women in Poverty was one of the original NOW task forces. Headed by Anna Arnold Hedgeman, the poverty task force reported its initial findings in 1967.
Here are some of the details of the task force's 1967 report.
Recognizing the Plight of Women in Poverty
The poverty task force report began with an acknowledgement that women in the worst economic circumstances were also the most serious victims of sex discrimination. These women included:
- Women who were single mothers or heads of families with no support
- Unemployed women who could not find work
- Women who worked at low-paying, marginal jobs
- The increasing number of female high-school dropouts
Federal Poverty-Related Programs
The 1967 NOW Task Force on Women in Poverty called for the Job Corps and other federal programs to be administered without discrimination on the basis of sex. This meant:
- Provide serious training for disadvantaged girls and women, as well as boys and men
- Abolish the practice of ignoring the women in such programs
- Provide girls and women with training beyond beauty care and unskilled clerical work
(Read more about women stuck in the pink-collar ghetto, who could get only certain low-paying jobs.)
The Goal: More Meaningful Economic Opportunity
The goal of the task force was to find new ways to alleviate poverty. The 1967 report explained that there was no opportunity for women to escape the "bottom of the heap" economically if there were no job opportunities to move into.
The task force also cautioned against moving women into fierce competition against one another for an already limited number of jobs, demanding instead that more economic opportunities be created.
The report concluded that full employment was essential to "any decent plan" for economic development for women. The poverty task force called for:
- Job training
- Job creation
- Education for potential jobs
- Regional and city planning
- Job innovation in every predominantly female area of work
- The use of women's existing skills (such as child care, nursing, foster parenting and recreation work) to meet unmet needs in society