LOS ANGELES : Post-Riot Measures to Aid Women Proposed

Charging that rebuilding efforts since the 1992 Los Angeles riots have failed to focus sufficiently on women’s concerns, a coalition of women’s organizations issued a series of recommendations Tuesday including calls for expanded funding for child care and women’s entrepreneurial efforts.

If the cycle of poverty is not broken in neglected neighborhoods where female-led families live in desperate circumstances, additional riots are inevitable, said Abby J. Leibman, who helped prepare the study for the Women’s Coalition, an organization of more than 70 community groups drawn together after the riots.

Last year, the coalition held four public hearings at which more than 150 Los Angeles women testified about the impact on women of the riots and rebuilding efforts. The recommendations, gleaned from the hearings, also include calls for better street lighting, safer buses, fewer liquor stores and more affordable housing for single mothers.