A Woman's Issue

Minority groups should not be asked to bear the burden on their own. Women's groups also need to pick up the mantle of economic reform. Middle-class financial distress may sound like a gender-neutral issue, but it is not. In just two decades, the number of single-filing women declaring bankruptcy has grown by more than 600 percent. Women with children are more likely to lose their homes and more likely to be late on their bills. And single women with children are now three times more likely to go bankrupt than men without children.

The notion that women should fight for economic reform is hardly new. From the early days of the struggle for "Equal Pay for Equal Work," women's groups have protested for financial justice. But the issue of economic reform for middle-class women is often shunted aside by other priorities. For example, the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund vigorously opposed the credit industry-backed bankruptcy bill, doing the painstaking legwork to convince nearly thirty other women's groups as disparate as Church Women United, Hadassah, and the YWCA to join the fight.

Yet NOW Legal Defense also offered its very public support to Senator Joseph Biden, featuring him as women's strongest ally in the Senate because he supported the Violence Against Women Act. Apparently, his support of this bill trumped any concerns the group might have had over the fact that Senator Biden is "the leading Democratic proponent" and "one of the . . . strongest supporters" of the very bankruptcy bill against which NOW Legal Defense had fought so hard.
Women's groups have too few dollars and too little (wo)man power to fight every injustice. But there is another lesson in the tale of the bankruptcy bill. Women's issues are not just about childbearing or domestic violence. If it were framed properly, middle-class economic reform just might become the issue that could galvanize millions of mainstream women to join the fight for women's issues. The numbers are certainly there. This year, more women will file bankruptcy papers than will receive college diplomas. More women with children will search for a bankruptcy lawyer than will seek subsidized day care. And in a statistic with special significance for Senator Biden, more women will be victimized by predatory lenders than will seek protection from an abusive husband or boyfriend.

The point is not to discredit other worthy causes or to pit one disadvantaged group against another. Nor would we suggest that battered women deserve less help or that subsidized day care is unimportant. The point is simply that family economics should not be left to giant corporations and paid lobbyists, and senators like Joe Biden should not be allowed to sell out women in the morning and be heralded as their friend in the evening. Middle-class women need help, and right now no one is putting their economic interests first.

Political groups on the conservative end of the political spectrum should step up as well. Groups such as the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family organize their political and educational activities around the family. But economics are nestled at the core of family values. Any group that is serious about lowering divorce rates should focus on reducing the economic stress that strains a marriage. Any group that cares about children should be vitally interested in how home mortgages are marketed and how tens of thousands of kids are getting kicked out of their houses. And any group that thinks Mom ought to have the option to stay home with the kids should be powerfully concerned about the debt trap that chains millions of middle-class women to their offices.

A few religious leaders have involved themselves in family economics. In a recent letter to Congress, several faith-based organizations, including Catholics, Jews, and Unitarians, joined to argue that "[s]ocial justice for the socially and economically disadvantaged is part of the cherished moral tradition shared by all of our religions." Citing a passage from the Bible about forgiveness of debts, the group called on Congress to abandon the proposed bankruptcy bill because the hardship it would impose on families was out of line with their religious beliefs. When they saw that the vitality of the family was at stake, these groups mobilized their moral authority against those who would rob families of their economic independence. Other faith-based organizations should heed the call and follow their lead.

Liberal or conservative, faith-based or secular, any group that sees its mission as families should have interest rate regulation and bankruptcy protection at the very top of its agenda. Predatory lending is a family issue. Usury is a family issue. Bankruptcy is a family issue. These laws affect families-people with children-more than anyone else. There is likely no other issue -- divorce, welfare reform, child custody -- that will directly touch more middle-class families than the mortgage and credit card interest rates that drain away their economic viability and sap the intimacy and joy from family life.