Plight of Women in Poverty Told : Conference Looks at an Anomaly: Poor May Go Unnoticed in County

They often are invisible amid the affluence--working in factories or cleaning houses, raising children alone or struggling to survive on the streets.

Their numbers are relatively few: Poor women in Orange County accounted for 4% of the total population of 1.9 million in the 1980 census, the latest for which figures are available. Their level of poverty varied according to family size and, to a certain extent, the age of the head of the family. The annual income for a family of four was $7,382.

Because of the nature of poverty, coupled with the image of Orange County women as upwardly mobile or even wealthy, poor women may go unnoticed, say those who in the helping professions who work with them.

As part of Women’s Week at Rancho Santiago College in Santa Ana, women from four distinct ethnic and social backgrounds who are noted for their work with poor women will make up a panel today at 11 a.m. to address “The Politics of Poverty: A Woman’s Perspective.” (They will meet in room U201A of the Johnson Campus Center.)

The topic was chosen by the Women’s Coalition of Orange County, co-sponsor of today’s Women’s Day activities, because poverty was a common denominator for women “that superseded color,” said Paula Werner, coalition chairwoman. “We knew we had differences in some cultures, in religions, in family structures, but we found that poverty was something common among all types of women.”

The panelists say, as with all urban and suburban poverty, the solutions lie in more--more low-cost housing, more and cheaper child care, more accessible education, more and better jobs, more long-term shelters for the homeless and finally more recognition of a problem that seems at variance with the image of Orange County.

The panelists and highlights of their messages:

Sister Carmen Sarati

Pastoral Minister,

St. Joseph’s Parish, Santa Ana

In her work with poor Latin women, primarily in the Santa Ana area, Sister Carmen Sarati, a Catholic nun, said she has seen a hierarchy develop among them.

The conditions of their poverty usually vary only in degree, she said. In her grouping of three types of poor women, many are likely to live in overcrowded conditions, receive welfare or Aid to Dependent Children and have little or no sources of transportation or child care. “The first group are the ones who work and try to be self-supporting or who work along with a husband to be self-supporting,” Sarati said. “They usually work at very unskilled labor, mostly in factories on assembly lines and don’t usually get further than that unless they learn English.

“The second group are single, unmarried women who can’t find jobs and only work sporadically because of the limitation of their transportation. The third group never tries to work. . . . They may be married or not and may have four or five children. Some are abandoned. They may take care of other people’s children for money.”

Most of the women don’t drive, “and they have to get up very early to take the bus to go to Irvine or Laguna Niguel to do domestic work or factory work,” Sarati said. “And if they’re taking care of someone else’s children, it’s ironic, because they in turn have to find someone to take care of their own children.”

The poverty cycle often is strengthened by the fact that many Latino women live in overcrowded conditions, she said. Because of prohibitively high rents, many live with other families or with several members of their own family in a small apartment. Along with other poverty groups, Latinos have found a lack of low-cost housing in Orange County to accommodate them, and in some low-cost housing the rent still is too high, Sarati said. “Latinos do not have a fear of overcrowding. The need for privacy is an Anglo trait. They believe that if they make room for one more, they will benefit by that goodness, that God will bless their generosity. Many recent arrivals from Mexico come from a very rural, rough life where sharing a one-bedroom apartment was a luxury. Here it’s a violation, and the owner may raise the rent if there’s overcrowding. “You take a woman who’s cleaning houses. She tries to clean five a week at $40 apiece. Her children are getting Aid for Dependent Children, so she’s got to hide the fact that she’s working. There are very few places that are friendly to women like that. It’s a trap, really, to try to find decent housing in Orange County for these people.

The cycle of poverty among Latin women is difficult to break, Sarati said, and few women advance beyond low-paying jobs. “It would require them to change skills,” she said, “and most immigrants don’t have any marketable skills. It would also require a change in attitude about themselves, a big dose of self-esteem. A lot of them just don’t think they can learn English, for instance. “Many try to go to language schools at night, but as soon as there’s an emergency at home--say someone gets sick--they drop out.”

Many women don’t keep all the money they earn, Sarati said. They have families in Mexico or Central America to whom they send part of their wages.

Dr. Son Kim Vo

Consultant, Refugee Services ,

California Department . of Social Services

Like many Latin women, Asian immigrant women who arrive in Orange County must try to adapt to a bewildering culture in addition to trying to get a job and a place to live, said Dr. Son Kim Vo, who represents the interests of poor Asians with the California Department of Social Services office in Santa Ana.

Asian women in Orange County, however, often face an additional hardship in that they are frequently single mothers, Vo said. “With Cambodian women, some of their husbands were killed under the Pol Pot regime. Others died in concentration camps or were killed by pirates trying to escape (by boat).”

The widows and other single Asian mothers--many unskilled and unable to speak English--face a lack of jobs, transportation and affordable housing as well as a sense of family that Asian husbands and fathers traditionally bring to the home, Vo said. “There isn’t the mental support. Usually the father is the one who sets up guidelines for the family. That’s the Indochinese tradition. These women haven’t been trained to do that job. Their children are in a transition period now in American society, and these kids are taught that they should be given as much freedom in the family as American kids. The single mothers are confused.” This places an additional burden on poor mothers who must try to work at any job they can get and therefore spend much of their time outside the home. “Probably they will have to wait for their kids to get older so they can then go to school and improve their careers,” she said. “Now they have to support them and take what jobs they can get.”

Dr. Fran Marabou Williams

Professor, Human Development,

Rancho Santiago College

Blacks in Orange County often face a type of poverty unique to them and to the area in which they live, said Dr. Fran Marabou Williams, who specializes in multicultural education. “With blacks here, you’re looking at poverty from a broader perspective than economic poverty,” she said. “Blacks in Orange County are poor socially. There are a lack of things here that are necessary to maintain a cultural identity that some of us might take for granted, such as particular restaurants and entertainment that cater to a certain culture, theater--things of that nature.”

Of the estimated 30,000 black people in Orange County--only 1.5% of the population--few live in economic poverty, Williams said. Most moved here because of job offers or were stationed here with the military and decided to remain after being discharged, she said. “But most of the black community still goes outside of the county to fill that void of social involvement,” she said. “They need that kind of enhancer or emphasis on black life style and black heritage that has been lacking in Orange County. There’s certainly more room for quality performances in art and music in the county--particularly now with the Performing Arts Center--that would appeal to the black population.”

Bobby Lovell

Chair , Orange County

Coalition for the Homeless

Studies of the homeless in Orange County have shown that nearly half of the 6,000 to 10,000 people are single women or women with small children, said Bobby Lovell, whose coalition supports advocacy for the homeless and education in matters relating to their plight. They are, she said, the poorest of Orange County’s poor--unskilled, unsupported and without the requisite first and last month’s rent required by many landlords. “You take a woman who’s been married for a number of years,” Lovell said. “She has a traumatic divorce or for some other reason she’s alone . . . so she’s got no one. She’s on the street, and she tries to get a job as a waitress or a file clerk, but nobody wants to hire her.”

It is difficult to determine the exact number of homeless women in the county because they hide, Lovell said. “They hide because of rapes and muggings, and a woman alone is usually defenseless. We look at Orange County, and we like to think we don’t have a problem, but our most vulnerable population are these women who up until a couple of years ago didn’t have any place to go.”

Today, she said, there are approximately 20 shelters in the county for homeless people of both sexes, including children. But because the shelters are meant to be temporary emergency housing, they don’t offer a permanent solution to the homeless problem. And, she added, an old problem continues to surface: People are in favor of shelters but not in their neighborhoods. “You have to look at ideas like renovating old buildings or putting together communal arrangements with joint cooking facilities. You have to get creative in throwing around ideas,” she said. “What we’re talking about is real low-income housing or some mechanism to provide first and last month’s rent. It’s beginning, but it’s going very slowly. “People have to realize that we’re not talking about a romantic vision of living out on the road. It’s very, very brutal out there.”