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In October 1993, a group of welfare researchers and activists gathered on Capitol Hill to discuss the impact of welfare and welfare reform on women's lives. Missing from the proposals floated by the Clinton administration to "end welfare as we know it" were consideration of the economic realities that force single mothers to turn to welfare, concern for the consequences of punitive reforms for women and children, and an examination of the myths that lay behind popular calls to move welfare mothers into the labor force. Central to the welfare reform proposals that controlled the agenda was the concept of time-limited welfare, based on the expectation that after two years women on AFDC could earn self-sufficiency in the wage-labor market. With the goal of expanding the welfare reform debate through a process of policy education about welfare, the Institute for Women's Policy Research sponsored an all-day conference following the initiative of Congresswoman Patsy Mink. Congresswoman Mink chaired the conference and was joined by co-chairs Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey, Congresswoman Maxine Waters, and Congressman Ed Pastor.

The proceedings of the conference, published in this volume, include the ideas and policy recommendations of advocates, activists, and scholars. Speakers contributed insights into welfare's history and current policies, as well as into women's work, women's wages, and social supports for families, all of which Congress and the Clinton administration should consider as they pursue a transformation of the welfare system. Assistant Secretary David Ellwood, from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and co-chair of the administration's Working Group on Welfare Reform, Family Support, and Independence, also addressed the conference.

Most of the issues raised by conference speakers remain on the table today. On June 14, 1994, President Clinton unveiled his welfare reform plan. The plan calls for a two-year lifetime limit on welfare benefits; provides for training and childcare while a family is on welfare; requires recipients born after 1971 to join a work program; eliminates cash benefits to recipients who do not join a work program; requires hospitals to establish paternity; creates a national clearinghouse to track child support cases across state lines; denies occupational and drivers' licenses to fathers who fail to pay; allows states to deny additional benefits to women who bear children while on welfare; and provides $400 million in grants to schools and neighborhoods to discourage teenagers from having children. The plan does not address such issues as job opportunities, the minimum wage, or the cost of childcare to families who leave welfare. In the Congress, the president's proposal will square off against a series of alternatives offered by the Mainstream Forum (a caucus of moderate and conservative House Democrats), by Republicans, and by liberal cosponsors of childcare, job training, and child support legislation introduced separately by Congresswomen Patsy Mink and Lynn Woolsey. Conservatives advocate swifter, more sweeping reform. The Republicans, for example, would exempt fewer people from the work requirement and finance the work program by cutting more deeply into services available to immigrants. Liberals voice strong misgivings about time limits on welfare benefits and about proposed cuts in social programs that would "pay" for the president's plan. Some liberals are also concerned that the debate is skewed against welfare, rather than against poverty, thus obscuring both pivotal labor market issues like unemployment and the low minimum wage, and pivotal family issues like the affordability of childcare for low-wage workers and the value of caregiving performed in the home.

Conference speakers raised questions and presented research on issues feminists and other progressives continue to grapple with in the ongoing welfare reform debate. Shifting the emphasis from welfare to poverty, they brought women into sharper focus as the subjects of welfare and welfare reform. Moreover, shifting the emphasis from the welfare recipient to her social supports and economic opportunities, they illuminated the structural bases of the single mother's need for welfare. These contributions will, I hope, encourage broad public dialogue about welfare reform, especially about the implications of current proposals for women and children.

Thanks to Kereth Ami Frankel and Sandra Meucci, both of the University of California, Santa Cruz, for helping prepare these proceedings.