Poverty Is a Policy Choice—and Women Deserve More
Gaylynn Burroughs saw those systems at play when she was an attorney at the Bronx Defenders, representing poor women of color whose children were in the child welfare system simply because they couldn’t make ends meet. “We could’ve just provided the food,” she said. “We could’ve just helped people get medical care. Why don’t we just provide the support people need? Why do we have to traumatize these families?” Now the vice president of education and workplace equality at the National Women’s Law Center, Burroughs is leading strategic work to build a better economy. “There is this trend that we have seen that women are just more likely to live in poverty and to experience hardship,” she asserted. “It’s not like this is inevitable. The fact that women are disproportionately more likely to live in poverty is a choice that we have made as a society.”
