Anti-Poverty Activism in the News

Mainstream media coverage of anti-poverty activism

Feb 24, 2007 Kate Butler

The gendered nature of anti-poverty activism makes the coverage of women in poverty campaigns an important issue at play.

In this final segment on poverty in the news, we turn to look at those who are fighting for the North American poor. When we look at these social activists, it is incredibly important to note that those who are most often trying to do something about poverty on this continent are female, thus creating further problems for the anti-poverty movement.

As discussed in earlier articles in this series, media stories about poverty usually focus on women as victims or as undeserving recipients of welfare. Women living in poverty who are attempting to create change for themselves and others do not receive much attention.

Heavy female involvement in anti-poverty activism should come as no surprise: due to the fact that women are so often the ones raising children on small salaries or welfare monies, these individuals are the ones who realize the importance of fighting for the rights of the poor. Although many men also live in poverty, it is often women, and particularly mothers, who have borne the brunt of extreme measures imposed by governments in North America in recent years.

In terms of specific anti-poverty battles, we can see this manifested in the number of women attending rallies, protests, and demonstrations. As well, shelters, women’s centers, and other organizations have been at the forefront of the war against welfare cuts.

Activism for issues surrounding poverty, therefore, has become an area where women are often the ones leading the way. The battle that many poverty activist groups engage in with welfare bureaucrats plays out in a particular manner due to the gendered nature of women in activism and government policies as a whole.

This has, unsurprisingly, led to a situation in which activists have had to rely on alternative media, direct action techniques and their own media releases in an attempt to be heard by the mainstream press and public which have so often marginalized these attempts to create change. Due to the feminized nature of the fight against poverty, the mainstream media is that much more likely to ignore attempts by these activists to affect change, and therefore, stories about anti-poverty activists remain a rarity.

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