Bridging Disciplinary Boundaries (January 11 - 14, 2007)

Purpose: Since the passage of welfare reform, considerable research has been conducted to determine the effects of domestic violence on low-income women's employment. The great majority of studies focus on whether or not women are employed after or while experiencing abuse, and/or measure the impact of abuse on hours worked. Although initial concerns and anecdotal evidence suggested that such abuse is a significant barrier to employment and economic advancement, actual empirical findings have been mixed. Overall, the research indicates that partner abuse is linked with instability in employment rather than a lack of work participation or overall reduction in hours. Understanding and quantifying the impact of domestic violence on women's ability to obtain employment sufficient for the survival of their families has been critical to the development and effective implementation of public policies and interventions. However, the variation in outcomes observed in this research and the consistent link with employment instability suggest that research in this area must shift its focus and approach. Specifically, we need more information about the conditions under which particular women are more or less likely to experience negative employment effects, and better understanding of what employment instability means in real terms for women over the course of their lives. Questions of this nature are best addressed through longitudinal and qualitative methods.

Method: This paper reports findings about the complex relationship between domestic violence and employment in the lives of 44 low-income African American, Latina, and Euro-American women. Using longitudinal ethnographic data from the Boston subsample of the Three-City Welfare, Children, & Families Ethnography, an investigation of family well-being conducted in the wake of welfare reform, I describe how early experiences of domestic violence resulted in a range of negative consequences for respondents' long-term educational and career paths. During a series of interviews over 12 months women disclosed their personal feelings and experiences about struggling against poverty. In our coding we crossed statements about intimate partner violence, about early experiences of child sexual abuse and dating violence, and about goals and accomplishments in education and employment.

Results: Across racial and ethnic groups, such abuse caused respondents to drop out of school and training programs, greatly diminished their ability to learn and utilize educational and vocational skills, and permanently derailed them from white collar and professional careers into lifetimes of low-wage work and welfare receipt. These effects accrued both from direct experiences of domestic violence in adult and adolescent intimate relationships and from exposure to domestic violence against their mothers in childhood and adolescence. By interfering in respondents' educational attainment and economic mobility, domestic violence effectively trapped them in socioeconomic circumstances in which they continued to experience heightened vulnerability to abuse and a range of other negative outcomes associated with poverty.

Implications: The analysis presented here, though based on a limited number of cases in a single city, indicates that a full understanding of the relationship among domestic violence, women's employment, and poverty requires examining women's experiences with abuse in the context of their lives over time.