Effective Protest is about Location, Location, Location

A new CBP report, Falling Behind: The Impact of the Great Recession and the Budget Crisis on California’s Women and Their Families, looks at the economic downturn’s effect on the state’s women, especially low-income women and single mothers.

The report finds that:

Employment and earnings among single mothers have dropped significantly during the economic downturn. In just three years – from 2007 to 2010 – the share of single mothers with jobs fell by more than 10 percentage points to 59 percent, its lowest point in almost 15 years, while the percentage of single-mother families living in poverty jumped to 36 percent.

The state cut a total of more than $3 billion from CalWORKs between 2008-09 and 2011-12, equal to about $3,000 for each of the 1.1 million children in the program.

The state has cut child care and preschool funding by a total of $1.5 billion over the past three years, eliminating services for tens of thousands of children – including 35,000 children in the current year alone.

Since 2007-08, state support for community colleges has dropped by almost one-fifth. Community college enrollment has dropped by almost 130,000 during this period, with women accounting for more than 80 percent of the decline.

Again, note that none of these problems start on campus.