Welfare queen

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Welfare queen (from English welfare , welfare , and queen , "Queen") is a pejorative term used especially in the English-speaking world. It is applied to women who have received social benefits over a long period of time; the designation usually implies that the reference is to be regarded as intentionally brought about or unjustified. The term is used in particular for

  • a single parent receiving social assistance. The person designated as the welfare queen is assumed to have intentionally gotten pregnant in order to receive more welfare, possibly following a sexually immoral lifestyle or habitually taking drugs;
  • a woman who receives social benefits and is believed to be lazy;
  • a woman who is receiving benefits for fraud.

Sometimes the term welfare queen is also used in relation to companies whose existence is permanently dependent on government funding or subsidies.

History of origin

The phrase was coined by Ronald Reagan in 1976 . In the election campaign, he cited the case of an unnamed woman from Chicago who is said to have received social assistance and survivor benefits from the army for four non-existent spouses under 80 different names and 30 different addresses. Although the details of the story turned out to be exaggerated in retrospect (for example, the woman had used four different identities, not 80), Reagan shaped the image of a woman who, with government aid, could live a comfortable life without having to work.

Charles Murray took up the word again in his 1984 book Losing Ground . He describes a welfare queen as a lower-class woman to whom working-class morality no longer applies. She cultivated a sexually dissolute lifestyle and was work shy and had many children. They teach their children to behave in a similar way.

According to Pulitzer Prize winner David Zucchino, the image of the lavish, Cadillac-driving welfare queen was deeply rooted in "American folklore". According to Franklin D. Gilliam, Jr.'s analysis, the image of a welfare queen has two central elements: that the majority of welfare recipients are women and that a large number of them are African American. According to Gilliam, both lack a statistical basis, but correspond to US American stereotypes with regard to some women (unbridled sexual and reproductive behavior) and African American (laziness). According to the results of an experiment carried out by Zucchino, published in 1999, showing an article about a welfare queen in the manner of a journalistic report had the effect of reducing support for welfare programs on participants of white skin, increasing the stereotyping of African-Americans and the approval for receipt to enlarge traditional gender roles.

See also

literature

  • David Zucchino: Myth of the Welfare Queen. A Pulitzer Prize-Winning Journalist's Portrait Women on the Line . Scribner, New York 1997, ISBN 0-684-81914-7 .
  • Vivyan Adai: From Good Ma to Welfare Queen: A Genealogy of the Poor Woman in American Literature, Photography and Culture . Garland, New York 2000, ISBN 0-8153-3651-9 .
  • Norbert Finzsch: Governmentality, the Moynihan Report and the Welfare Queen in a Cadillac . in: Jürgen Martschukat, (ed.). Make history with Foucault. Frankfurt / Main: Campus; 2002; pp. 252-277.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c welfare queen Download on January 13, 2008
  2. ↑ see e.g. B. Arkansas' Real Welfare Queen , Doug Monroe, AlterNet , July 26, 2005 (accessed January 13, 2008)
  3. ^ "'Welfare Queen' Becomes Issue in Reagan Campaign", New York Times, February 15, 1976, p. 51 ( Memento of August 31, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ fundamentals of economic life , Lutz Frühbrodt , information on political education (issue 268), Federal Agency for Civic Education (download on January 13, 2008)
  5. ^ Murray, Charles A. 1984: Losing ground: American social policy, 1950-1980. New York: Basic Books
  6. ↑ a b c Franklin D. Gilliam, Jr .: The 'Welfare Queen' Experiment, Nieman Reports, Summer 1999.