「 Laziness or Stigma?」A Group of Single Mothers in Poverty at Workplace

• Main Authors: Yi-Chu Chen, 陳怡曲
• Other Authors: Shang-Luan Yan
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2002
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/91299783279998044789

碩士 === 國立中正大學 === 勞工研究所 === 90 === Families led by single mothers have captured attention from the society as family structure continuously reforms and varies. When we look into our domestic studies on these single mothers, the researchers have been emphasizing the powerlessness and malfunctioning of these family or the negative impacts of growing up in a single-parent family. Moreover, these single-mother families still bare a bad name of “poor people” and “welfare queen”. On consideration of the situation, I tend to deconstruct and present how these single mothers are treated unfairly by the society and how they are discriminated when the government makes its policy, which is initially supposed to protect these people in need. The dilemma of being a mother and a worker at the same time has had a massive influence on these single mothers and I would like to conduct a thorough analysis on their work experiences, to completely present the dilemma they are faced with. My study is based mainly on text-analysis, to examine how our social welfare policies has followed the traditional male-dominated social values and seen these female workers not workers but mothers. However, when these mothers conduct their responsibilities as a mother, they are usually blamed for being lazy and receiving the limited welfare unjustly. These single mothers are accused of violating “work ethics” and rely too much on the financial aid from the government. Thus when I observed how the patriarchy mistreats these females as a participant, I saw social workers being used to pass on these social values and these females being controlled by different mechanisms to play the role of perfect mother. At the end, through in depth interview with these single mothers, I not only tried to break the false image of single mothers but also I obtained a more clear picture of how these females are rejected and discriminated at workplace. I am convinced, that this is the main reason, which has caused the dilemma mentioned above.