Literature review

Numerous feminist scholars have analysed welfare cutbacks and the construction process of single-mother welfare in the 1980s and 1990s in the US (Abramovitz, Reference Abramovitz2000, Reference Abramovitz2006; Mink, Reference Mink1998; Morgen and Maskovsky, Reference Morgen and Maskovsky2003; Orloff, Reference Orloff, Hirschmann and Liebert2001) and have shown how ideological, cultural and social assumptions affected policy formation (Ashen, Reference Ashen1996; Fraser and Gordon, Reference Fraser and Gordon1994; Gordon, Reference Gordon1994; Hirschmann, Reference Hirschmann, Hirschmann and Liebert2001; Juffer, Reference Juffer2003; Naples, Reference Naples1997). These studies have pointed to sharp cuts in US welfare allowances in the 1990s, which particularly harmed single mothers.

The radical changes in US welfare policy were affected by an emergent neo-liberal ideology. As Orloff (Reference Orloff, Hirschmann and Liebert2001: 143) explained: ‘Also significant is the rise of (neo)liberalism as an ideological and cultural force – a preference for private provision and for minimising state interventions, reflected in pressures to keep taxes and social spending low.’ In neo-liberal governance, primary emphasis is placed on engagement in the market, self-sufficiency and individual responsibility (Pulkingham et al., Reference Pulkingham, Fuller and Kershaw2010). According to Orloff (Reference Orloff, Hirschmann and Liebert2001), ‘welfare to work’ reform removes a social right, eliminating caregiving as a basis for claims, expands the market's role in the provision of income and care and marks a shift toward gender sameness, in that both mothers and fathers are required to be employed. The assumption that every adult needs to earn wages ignores the unequal reality of the single mother, as she looks after the children and tends to hold unstable, part-time, low-paying jobs (Hobson et al., Reference Hobson, Lewis and Siim2002).

According to Fraser and Gordon (Reference Fraser and Gordon1994), this denial of women's rights is allegedly legitimised as an effort to reduce dependence. The definition of welfare recipients as dependent accords with a long tradition of ostensible opposition between autonomy, related to superior qualities (strong, moral, white, masculine) and reliance, associated with lesser traits (weakness, racial inferiority, femininity). Dependence on welfare is often considered a negative characteristic of women in general, and of single mothers and other underprivileged populations in particular. Importantly, men who have failed to ‘provide’ for their families (in US discourse, usually African-American men) have also been tagged as ‘dependent’ and attributed with pathological tendencies (Fraser and Gordon, Reference Fraser and Gordon1994). Thus, the US welfare cuts of the 1990s assisted in the devaluation of care-taking and the construction of dependence as pathological (Naples, Reference Naples1997). Supporters of welfare cutbacks argued that state allowances harm underprivileged families and undermine moral values and initiative (Mink, Reference Mink1998).

The denial of rights to single mothers was justified through negative imagery that deepened the women's delegitimisation, although there was a certain schism in their public image. On the one hand, they were viewed as lazy, immoral and exploitive welfare consumers; on the other hand, they were also considered victims of a destructive relationship that entrapped them and deprived them of sovereignty over their lives (Ashen, Reference Ashen1996; Morgen and Maskovsky, Reference Morgen and Maskovsky2003). However, over the years, public attitudes towards single mothers shifted from pity to blame (Fraser and Gordon, Reference Fraser and Gordon1994). Jarrett (Reference Jarrett1996) argued that this process intensified from the 1960s, with a change in focus from widows with children to African-American divorcees and separated or single mothers.

The demonisation of single mothers was enhanced by racial and gender stereotypes (Abramovitz, Reference Abramovitz2000, Reference Abramovitz2006; Fraser, Reference Fraser2001; Pulkingham et al., Reference Pulkingham, Fuller and Kershaw2010). The stereotypical ‘welfare mom’ was an impoverished, uneducated, black teenager. One common derogatory description was ‘welfare queen’, mainly attributed to non-working African-American mothers, whose children were said to be sponsored by the US taxpayer. Various allusions to these single mothers depicted them as sexually promiscuous and extortive, having children only to raise their income. The women were thus condemned for having children they could not afford (Jarrett, Reference Jarrett1996). Moreover, politicians often likened welfare recipients to junkies, perceiving them as irresponsible, unmotivated, irrational and ‘wedded to welfare’ (Hirschmann, Reference Hirschmann, Hirschmann and Liebert2001; Millar, Reference Millar and Silva1996). These images were promoted by the media, who ignored issues of racial discrimination and structural racism and tended to reinforce false stereotypes, inevitably blaming the victim (Abramovitz, Reference Abramovitz2006; Fraser, Reference Fraser2001). Even if these presumptions were never made explicit, they were at the core of policy making (Abramovitz, Reference Abramovitz2000, Reference Abramovitz2006; Mink, Reference Mink1998). Abramovitz (Reference Abramovitz2006) argued that a fear of the independence of women, achieved through allowances or paid labour, resides at the core of this approach.

The process of cutting allowances led to pressure to enter the job market and reinforced family ethics, undermining the legitimacy of groups that threatened these values, such as homosexual couples and single-parent families. Abramovitz (Reference Abramovitz2000) argued that this emanated from conservative ideologies (see also Fraser, Reference Fraser2001; Mink, Reference Mink1998; Orloff, Reference Orloff, Hirschmann and Liebert2001). The stigmatisation of single mothers led to the call to regulate their births, marriages and parenting, and twenty-five US states indeed adopted marriage-strengthening programs (Abramovitz, Reference Abramovitz2006). These sanctions and incentives were designed to mold recipient behavior (Berrick, Reference Berrick2005). Thus, women who abandoned relationships were deemed unworthy of support and held responsible for their economic downfall, as well as the stigma attached to it. Women who did not fulfill the role of wife and mother were perceived as unworthy of assistance, and poor women were subject to policing in the areas of health care, contraception, religion and parenting. Underprivileged single mothers were not deemed fit to raise children; thus, they were not only considered a burden on the state, but also could not be trusted as parents (Abramovitz, Reference Abramovitz2000). In this sense, the welfare reforms reinforced the dominant cultural ideology through the glorification of two-parent families. This idealisation encouraged US society to pry into single women's sexual habits in the fear that they would bequeath their ‘perversion’ to their children (Seccombe et al., Reference Seccombe, Walters and James1999).

The discourse on single mothers in Israel is both similar to and different from that found in the US. While the concept of a ‘welfare mom’ does not exist in Israel, single motherhood is nevertheless a highly ambivalent social identity (Sa'ar, Reference Sa'ar2009). On the one hand, becoming a mother – notably, a Jewish mother – is a woman's ticket into society, enabling her to enhance her civil rights by contributing to the collective through birth and motherhood – for, among other things, mothers raise future soldiers, ensuring Israel's existence in terms of security and demographics (Berkovitch, Reference Berkovitch, Peled and Ofir2001). All single mothers – whether widowed, divorced, separated or unmarried – have rights anchored in the Single Parent Family Law (1992). Moreover, single women are entitled to artificial insemination in the same way as married women, which is by no means self-evident in other countries (Swirski et al., Reference Swirski, Kraus, Konor-Attias and Herbst2003). Thus, single motherhood is ostensibly perceived as legitimate and even worthy.

On the other hand, the legitimacy of single motherhood in Israel is hampered by the striking level of poverty that single parents experience (Fogiel-Bijaoui, Reference Fogiel-Bijaoui and Israeli1999); about one third of all single-parent families (91% of which are headed by women) live in poverty, as opposed to about one fifth of the general population (Endbald et al., Reference Endbald, Berkly, Gottlieb and Furman2011). Furthermore, single mothers in Israel are subject to a neo-liberal welfare discourse markedly resembling that in the US (notwithstanding the conservative socioeconomic Weltanschauung underlying American welfare policy, which is inherently different from the Israeli case). Thus, similar to the US, the neo-liberal discourse in Israel views a good mother as one who does not raise her children on welfare, requiring that she support herself and her family (Ajzenstadt, Reference Ajzenstadt2009). However, disadvantaged women are often integrated into the workforce on a part-time/seasonal basis, for a low income, and thus have no job security and poor working conditions (Benjamin et al., Reference Benjamin, Bernstein and Motzafi-Haller2010). Moreover, the welfare policy rooted in the Single Parent Family Law is based on meager social rights and particularly strict means and employment tests. These rights define single mothers as dependent and needy, and charity-based allowances by law tend to be more fragile and less self-evident (Herbst, Reference Herbst2009). According to Fogiel-Bijaoui (Reference Fogiel-Bijaoui and Israeli1999), ‘Israel loves motherhood but not mothers’ (cited in Berkovitch, Reference Berkovitch, Peled and Ofir2001: 208).

The twenty-first century saw a gradual decline of social security rights in Israel, as well as of the legitimacy of allowance seekers, especially those receiving a minimum income guarantee (Doron, Reference Doron2003; Filc, Reference Filc, Filc and Ram2004; Gal, Reference Gal2005). Like the rationale underlying US welfare reform in the 1990s, the welfare cuts introduced in Israel were justified by depiction of single women as ‘unworthy’ of allowances, as they serve as inferior role models of family and work ethics (Paz-Fuchs, Reference Paz-Fuchs2004). The protest awakened by the 2003 cutbacks led to a demonising counter-reaction by the authorities, which labeled the single mothers as dangerous and perverse and justified the regulations imposed on them (Azjenstadt, Reference Ajzenstadt2009). Israel's policy makers, led by the Finance Ministry, represented the allowance cuts as an unavoidable decree aimed to rescue women from continued dependence and at the same time salvage the economy from the damage which the allegedly reliant welfare seekers inflicted on it (Paz-Fuchs, Reference Paz-Fuchs2004). These cutbacks left single mothers with very little social support.

The primary victims of the cuts were those who relied mostly on income support and child support (payment assurance): underprivileged single mothers from Israel's peripheries and Israeli-Palestinian single mothers. The number of Israeli-Palestinian single-parent families is relatively low compared to that of the Jewish population, but their rates of poverty are far higher. The economic distress among Israeli-Palestinian single-parent families is related to exclusion from employment, welfare allowances and housing (Rosenhek, Reference Rosenhek1999). Whereas 71.5% of Jewish single mothers are employed, only 31.7% of non-Jewish single mothers hold jobs (Toledano and Eliav, Reference Toledano and Eliav2011). The poverty rate among non-Jewish families with children is also greater – 47.8% compared to 14.9% among Jewish families with children (Endbald et al., Reference Endbald, Berkly, Gottlieb and Furman2011).

Single mother welfare policy review

The examination of historical trends in Israeli welfare policy pertaining to single mothers first requires a look at US welfare trends, which had a major impact on the design of Israel's welfare structures and reforms. From 1908 to 1935, the majority of US states provided financial assistance to widows, often referred to as the Widow's Pension. In 1935, US Congress passed the Social Security Act that united social insurance and public assistance based on means tests. Responsibility for the provision of ‘dependent children’ (Aid to Dependent Children: ADC, and later Aid to Families with Dependent Children: AFDC) thus shifted from the states to the federal government. The decades in which the aid program was implemented gave rise to growing criticism of welfare policy. This led to the 1996 reform, Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF), a semi-coercive program helping single mothers join the work force (Abramovitz, Reference Abramovitz2006).

Studies examining the outcomes of US welfare-to-work programs, aimed at women in general and mothers in particular, found that the women's income remained below the poverty line, even though they held full-time jobs. These jobs were mainly short term and did not entitle the women to medical insurance, sick leave or paid leave. The positions were not only poorly paid, but also did not enable mothers to both work and care for their children (Albelda, Reference Albelda2001; Cancian, Reference Cancian2001).

Israeli welfare policy developed in a similar manner. Israel gives legal recognition to the single-parent structure in various laws. For example, the 1953 Social Security Act – Survivors' Insurance was designed to ensure means of subsistence to the widow/er and orphans of the deceased. The next law pertinent to single-parent families was the 1972 Child Support (Payment Assurance) Law. Legislators sought to ensure minimal livelihood to poor single mothers who did not receive child support payments from the debtor, while the National Insurance Institute would be responsible for the collection of child support. This allowance is dependent on strict means tests, but not on employment tests. The 1980 Income Support Law ensured a minimum subsistence allowance to all poor residents who could not obtain sufficient income. Entitlement to this allowance is dependent on both means and employment tests. The income assurance benefit offered two rates: regular and enhanced. Only widowed single mothers received the enhanced allowance automatically, whereas other single mothers were only offered the larger sum after two years of income assurance. The Single Parent Family Law of 1992 offered the enhanced allowance to those single mothers who received income support, thus creating equality before the law of widows, divorcees, unmarried and separated women.

At the turn of the twenty-first century, in Israel and other welfare states, a transition was made from mothers entitled to receive assistance from the state due to their role as caretakers of children, to a group that had to be reintegrated into the job market (Herbst and Benjamin, Reference Herbst and Benjamin2012; Millar, Reference Millar and Saunders2005; Millar and Ridge, Reference Millar and Ridge2008; Skevik, Reference Skevik and Saunders2005). Active integration in the job market came to be viewed as welfare; indeed, it was considered the most beneficial and desirable form of assistance from the state (Millar, Reference Millar and Saunders2005). This approach was reflected in Israel's 2003 Omnibus Law, which drastically reduced child support and income support allowances (as well as the minimum income guarantee for paid employees), leaving single mothers with extremely limited social support. The cutbacks created a drastic decrease in allowances, amounting to an average reduction of 25%−35%. The cuts inflicted on paid workers were even more severe, through the diminution of the ‘disregard’ – that part of the allowance not impacted by income. Exemption from employment tests was reduced from having children aged seven to aged two, suggesting that allowing underprivileged single mothers to care for their children was no longer perceived as legitimating state assistance. As a result, and similar to the above-mentioned case in the US, joining the job market ceased to be economically rewarding for many single mothers: their wages were offset by a sharp decrease in allowances, so that working had a marginal economic effect on their families (Naon et al., Reference Naon, Haviv, Ben Shoham, King, Fishman, Berkly, Galia, Shmelzer, Hielbron and Gotlieb2010).

Methodological framework

Discourses are sets of ideas, definitions and interpretations which yield a certain understanding of our social world (Foucault, Reference Foucault1972). Critical discourse analysis is rooted in the presumption of unequal power relations in society. Based on the assumption that social practices, including the use of language, are dependent on elements and influences that are not necessarily conscious (Fairclough, Reference Fairclough1993; Van Dijk, Reference Van Dijk, Wodak and Meyer2001), the objective of the analysis is to expose such social inequality as it is generated, brought forward and legitimised through the use of discourse.

Following De Goede's (Reference De Goede1996) study of the implications of the development of neo-liberal discourse on allowance cuts in the US, which showed how welfare and poverty images are reproduced by the media, I applied critical discourse analysis to a variety of texts on the 2003 struggle of the Israeli single mothers. Data were gathered from a number of sources. First, I interviewed eleven women who either participated in the struggle or were members of women's organisations and other NGOs supporting the protest, such as Achoti, Kol HaIsha and Shatil. Second, as the popular media reflects and constitutes public discourse (Misra et al., Reference Misra, Moller and Karides2003), I examined coverage of the protest by the four newspapers with the highest circulation in 2003: Globes, Ha'aretz, Ma'ariv and Yediot Ahronot. Specifically, I systematically surveyed articles from the day the struggle began (1 July 2003) until the end of September 2003, when it ceased to play a prominent role on the public agenda, analysing a total of 342 articles. Finally, I read all Knesset and Knesset Committee Protocols over the period that dealt with the allowance cutback debate, the budget, the 2003 law that instituted the cuts and the struggle against them.

In applying critical discourse analysis to the texts, I extracted central themes, interpretative frameworks and cultural references and examined how these were advanced or marginalised by the various players. Data were analysed through the creation of categories, selected in accordance with relevant bodies of knowledge and expanded and altered through the contents brought forward in the texts.

Specifically, the discourse developed in two contrasting directions: at the beginning of the protest, the single mothers received an honorary place as ‘soldiers’ fighting for their children (the warrior mom), but as time progressed, the mothers were increasingly associated with pathological dependence on welfare, lack of initiative, exploitation of the system and threats to traditional family values (the welfare mom).

The cry of the warrior mother

Viki Knafo, the leader of the single mothers’ struggle, claimed that she embarked on her march when she realised there was no other way to fight for her reduced social rights. She stated that the protest aimed to convince authorities to reverse their decision and reinstate the allowances that had preceded the cutbacks. Knafo argued that a single mother, employed part-time and requiring minimum income guarantee, would not be able to cope with such drastic allowance cuts. Knafo's march did not constitute an affront on the state. In fact, the opposite was true – with the Israeli flag in her hand and wearing her ‘The Cry of a Mother’ t-shirt, Knafo chose to remain within the framework of the Israeli consensus. In her words, she acted on behalf of motherhood, nationhood and Zionism:

The cry of the single mothers, led by Knafo, generated an unprecedented public response; it was embraced by various branches of Israeli society: artists, social movements, the press and Members of Knesset (MKs). It seemed to have succeeded in awakening new sentiments within Israeli society. The mothers led a struggle of the weakened social peripheries – those very groups in Israeli society that social organisations had unsuccessfully attempted to recruit in the months preceding Knafo's march. In an interview two and a half years after the struggle (2006), Yehudit Oppenheimer, Director General of the Kol HaIsha women's organisation in 2003, expressed the feelings evoked by Knafo and her friends:

The social organisations thus remained in the background, leaving Knafo in the foreground, both due to their failure to ignite social struggle and mobilise the public prior to the budgetary cuts and because they viewed Knafo as an authentic representative of underprivileged single mothers.

The disparity in power between the struggling mothers and the state reflects the Zionist leitmotif of the few who triumph against the many. The fact that the struggle was imbued with contents of heroism, courage and survival helped keep it on the public agenda and deepened its legitimacy. Knafo's construction as the heroine of the single-parent struggle was also expressed in a poem written and dedicated to her by renowned poet Haim Heffer. This poem was read by MK Ran Cohen in one of the Knesset debates:

The poem reflects the aspirations of segments of the Israeli public: finally, the Amazons, the strong mothers who give life to children and build the Israeli nation, are rising. They are the ones to salvage the welfare state which is perishing before our very eyes. The poem expresses hope and the victory of good over evil – an expectation that justice will prevail and that this time, against all odds, the poor and deprived will rise above those who rob them of their just deserts. It is notable that Heffer, whose poetry has documented numerous wars and their military-masculine experience, chose to address Knafo's action and thereby construct her image as a female warrior.

It should be noted that both Heffer and Knafo constructed the struggle as a Jewish-Zionist one. In her battle, Knafo embodied the ultimate Jewish mother, who adds to the ‘Jewish demographic majority’ and who raises future soldiers. The suffering of Palestinian single mothers, who endure worse poverty and greater exclusion, was absent from Knafo's explicit agenda.

The newspaper headlines of the time also reflected Knafo's perception of the protest as a struggle for motherhood: ‘In the name of mothers’ (David, 13 July Reference David2003); ‘The mother of all protests’ (Goldstein, 10 July Reference Goldstein2003). The news stories described the battle through the eyes of the protesters, who called on the state to resume its responsibility to maintain its children through minimum income guarantee and child support payment assurance: ‘“I want to live. I want to feed my children”, cried Viki Knafo, a single mother. In the scorching heat . . . she marched from Mitzpe Ramon to Jerusalem’ (Binder, 6 July Reference Binder2003). This plea to the state to pay its debt was rooted in Israel's unique model, which ties Jewish motherhood to citizenship and views childbirth as a means to advance demographic goals, thus justifying the single mothers’ demands for their civil and social rights (Berkovitch, Reference Berkovitch, Peled and Ofir2001). Elements of social exclusion can be seen here – it is, importantly, a struggle of Jewish single mothers and not a solidarity struggle in which the Palestinian mother is awarded a place and due recognition.

The struggling mothers of the summer of 2003 thus held two prestigious roles: mother and warrior. Indeed, journalists, legislators and intellectuals borrowed heroism metaphors from the battlefields and projected them on the leaders of the protest. As stated in an article in Ma'ariv entitled ‘The war of the women citizens’ (Kapra, 14 July Reference Kapra2003):

The emphasis was on the maternal aspects of warfare. Great significance was attached to the ascent to Jerusalem: the mothers were depicted as reconquering the city, much like the Six Day War paratroopers at the Wailing Wall. The ascent to the Holy City gave the women special powers and, markedly, ones that are traditionally masculine. Thus, the single mothers played the desired role of patriotic Zionist soldier.

Rogel Alper's news article, ‘Working class heroine’ (11 July Reference Alper2003), presented Knafo as a social heroine, a soldier in the people's army:

From 10 July 2003, Ma'ariv dedicated a special daily section to Viki Knafo, entitled ‘The diary of a warrior’. On these pages, Knafo described her goals and the manner in which she planned to achieve them, in her own language. The discourse of battle was apparent both in the press coverage and in the imagery she evoked: ‘Knafo's physical and mental endurance would not shame special commando warriors. Her ardor and zest are remarkable’ (Keshet, 11 July Reference Keshet2003).

By thus appealing to the Israeli-Zionist consensus, Knafo overcame her exclusion as a woman and as a poor single mother residing in a poor development town. The press not only responded to Knafo's attempt to flow from the margins into the mainstream, but also suggested ways to upgrade the battle:

This text employs various cultural motifs, such as the four biblical mothers of the Jewish people, the Arba Imahot movement (whose name derives from those biblical mothers), the 400,000 protest, and the revolt of Spartacus. The actions taken by Arba Imahot have been engraved in the Israeli collective memory as the primary force in the withdrawal from Lebanon. Knafo's battle is therefore compared to the struggles of other mothers who reached center stage wishing to improve the position of weakened populations. The 400,000 protest, following the massacre at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, is also tied to a turning point in Israeli public opinion concerning the Lebanon war and was one of the biggest demonstrations Israel has seen since its establishment. An additional allusion is Spartacus, whose actions inspired numerous modern revolutionaries. The interesting analogy drawn between the struggle of the mothers and other significant battles – as well as the title, ‘A struggle against despair’ – indicate clear encouragement of Knafo and her friends to save Israeli society.

This message was echoed in the speeches of Knesset Members who advocated the women's struggle, addressing Knesset committee Members:

According to MK Pines-Paz, Knafo derived strength from her emotions, as well as from her maternal responsibility, and therefore had greater chances of success.