In August 2000 The Public Interest Directorate of the American Psychological Association adopted a Resolution on Poverty and Socioeconomic status (http://www.apa.org/pi/urban/povres.html) urging more research, training, and public support. Much of the focus of that resolution emphasized the plight of women, children, and families. The effect of that call is evident in recent publications (e.g., DeAgelis, 2001; Lott, 2002; O’Connor, 2001). The DeAgelis and O'Connor articles appeared in recent issues of the APA Monitor. Bernice Lott's article "Cognitive and behavioral distancing from the poor" appeared in the American Psychologist.

Among its seventeen resolutions, APA asserted that it “Will encourage in psychological graduate and postgraduate education and training curricula more attention to the causes and impact of poverty, to the psychological needs of poor individuals and families, and to the importance of developing ‘cultural competence’ and sensitivity to diversity around issues of poverty in order to be able to help prevent and reduce the prevalence of poverty and to treat and address the needs of low-income clients.”

While that resolution addresses graduate and postgraduate education, it is our belief that undergraduate education should be encouraged to include poverty in its curricula. Undergraduate education reaches more students and is a prime opportunity for learning values and community service.

Ten-to-fifteen years ago, several important feminist reviews of the literature were critical of the shortage of scholarship examining the diversity of women’s lives so that many of the complexities and distinctions of their lives were unexamined. Theory and empirical research failed to recognize many distinctions among women (Spelman, 1988). Russo (1990) identified poverty as one of the major areas in need of more research for women. The voices of poor women were particularly absent. When poor women were included in publications, they were not included in all their diversity. They were depicted in stereotypical, homogeneous ways (Reid, 1993; Bing & Reid, 1996). If feminist teaching is to represent the true diversity of women’s experiences, it must include the variety of experience of poor women in multiple roles and contexts.

Results from several published computer searches lead the reader to believe that few resources exist for psychologists to address these problems. Reid (1993) reported only 86 publications. Saris & Johnston-Robledo (2000) reported 495. Their review indicated that nearly two-thirds of the research focused on health-related issues. Thus underrepresentation of the experience of women in areas outside health-related issues was substantial.

Unlike previous publications, the present program found a substantial body of research. Beginning in 1998, we conducted yearly searches. In addition to expanding the criteria to include additional keywords, we found books from friends and from internet searches of book dealer websites which were not included in academic searches such as PsycInfo. In 1998 Griffith and Bertilson (1998) found 479 books and chapters. As of January 2002, we have identified 772.

The sample of books we have reviewed includes a wide range of methodologies and topics. They have included, for example, theory about the causes of poverty (e.g., Paltiel, 1988), clinical work in multicultural communities (e.g., Piazza & delValle, 1992), homelessness (e.g., Jones, Levine, & Rosenberg, 1991; Shinn & Weitzman, 1990), the lives of single parent families (Hollyfield, 2002), and a number of other topics. Paltiel provided theory abut the causes of female poverty and suggested that work, family, and friendship are anchors for health. If one or two of these anchors are missing health degradation is likely. Piazza and delValle described a community-based family therapy training program. They provided two vivid case histories of working with leaders and advisors in a community empowering community volunteers to set up family therapy services. Shinn and Weitzman is a Journal of Social Issues issue on urban homelessness. Jones, Levine, and Rosenberg is American Psychologist special issue on homelessness. Hollyfield is a book about the lives of single parent families.

For the purpose of undergraduate teaching we found first person narratives to provide particularly meaningful teaching opportunities. The importance of personal stories in changing beliefs and behaviors is the theme in the developing clinical field of narrative therapy. The narratives that are people’s lives represent political, cultural, economic, and social influences (Sharf, 2000). The approach of narrative therapy is to look for themes and meanings in these stories and in the power of words to affect the way people see themselves and others. The purpose of narrative therapy is to help people “re-story” their lives—to change the narratives about what took place (Kottler & Brown, 2000). Similarly undergraduate students may “re-story” their understandings of people who are different from them, for women experiencing poverty. The importance of stories about personal lives is also emphasized by Romero and Stewart (1999). They argue that master narratives are the stories we are taught and teach us who we are, where we've come from, what we're likely to do, and how far we will get.

Over the past several years we moved from assigning students readings about the effects of poverty on women (e.g., Lott, 1996), to reading first person voices of women in poverty (Miedzian & Malinovich, 1997), to a readers'-theatre style of sharing voices of women from resources cited in this paper, to establishing course incentives for service learning experiences in community agencies for women experiencing poverty. The Lott chapter is "Global connections: The significance of women's poverty" in Chrisler, Golden, and Rozee's Lectures in the Psychology of Women. Among other things the Lott chapter discusses the poverty, absence of health care, and terrible working conditions of women in factories in less regulated countries around the world. One of the articles we have used in the Miedzian & Malinovich book is titled "Men always made the big decisions." It is about abuse, not seeing her husbands paycheck, poverty, her husband leaving her, learning to cope, and learning to make decisions on her own. In the readers'-theatre approach we give students different paragraphs to read in class from the personal experiences of these women. For a discussion of how we use interviews and first person narratives to engage students in issues of class, see Griffith and Bertilson (2001; http://frontpage.uwsuper.edu/psychology/wpoverty.htm).

Interviews and voices of women experiencing poverty that we found effective in teaching our Psychology of Women class may be found from the following sources: (Allison, 1997; ATD Fourth World Publications, 1995; Dujon & Withorn, 1996; Gore, 1997; Holloway et al., 1997; Liebow, 1993; Polakow, 1993; Romero, M. & Stewart, A. J.; Schein, 1995; Seccombe, K., 1999; Sidel, R.). Allison's essay "A question of class" my be found in several edited books. She speaks of growing up in a desperately poor family, her struggle to know herself, feelings of rejection as someone of lower SEC by the lesbian community, and grief from physical, emotional and sexual abuse. Gore (1997) tells of about being on welfare and the ridicule she experiences using food stamps. Holloway et al wrote about their findings and analysis and the voices of fourteen low-income women they visited in their homes and workplaces over a three-year period. Elliot Liebow was chief of the Center for the Study of Work and Mental Health of the National Institute of Mental Health. In 1984 he learned that he had cancer and a very limited life expectancy. He did not want to spend his last months on the 12th floor of a government office building. He retired as an anthropologist and first began volunteering at a soup kitchen and subsequently at an emergency shelter for homeless women. His book Tell the who I am, a participant observer study of single, homeless women in emergency shelters, was published in 1993. Liebow describes the conditions of the lives of these women, the hassles, the hardships, and their survival needs and includes their voices. Elliot Liebow died in September 1994. Romero and Stewart framed their work as capturing "master narratives" of women's lives. It includes 16 chapters. We have used "From Black middle class to homeless and (almost) back" in our readers'-theatre classroom approach. In this approach brief sections of a narrative are distributed to students. They are asked to read these snippets out loud and then write reaction papers to hearing these stories. Virginia Schein's (1995) book Working from the margins: Voices of mothers in poverty is based on interviews with 30 women. The eleven chapters are organized around the themes that emerged from these interviews. Karen Seccombe (1999) "So you think I drive a Cadillac?" is the stories and perspectives 47 women who are welfare recipients.

Allison, D. (1997). A question of class. In R. Bresdin (Ed.). Perspectives: Women Studies. Boulder Colorado: Courseware Publishing, 58-72.

ATD Fourth World Publications. (1995). This is how we live: Listening to the poorest families.

Bing, V. M., & Reid, P. T. (1996). Unkown women and unknowing research: Consequences of color and class in feminist psychology. In N. Goldberger, J., J. Tarule, B. Clinchy, & M. Belenky (Eds.). Knowledge, difference, and power. New York: Basic Books.

DeAngelis, T. (October 2001). Those who remain on welfare often have disabilities. Monitor on Psychology, 32-9, 76.

Dujon, D., & Withorn, A. 1996). For crying out loud: Women’s poverty in the United States. Boston: South End Press.

Gore, A. (1997). Mother courage. In V. Cyrus (Ed.). Experiencing race, class, and gender in the United States. Mountain View, California: Mayfield Publishing, 144-146.

Griffith, S. C., & Bertilson, H. S. (1998). Where is the voice of women in poverty in the psychology classroom? In K. A. Rhoades & A. Statham (Eds.). Speaking Out: Women, Poverty, and Public Policy: Proceedings of the Twenty-Third Annual Women's Studies Conference, University of Wisconsin Women’s Studies Consortium, 183-190.

Griffith, S. C., & Bertilson, H. S. (2001). Inclusion of class and poverty in women’s studies. Twenty-Sixth Annual Women’s Studies Conference, University of Wisconsin Women’s studies Consortium, UW-Waukesha, http://frontpage.uwsuper.edu/psychology/wpoverty.htm.

Holloway, S. D., Fuller, B., Rambaud, M. F., & Eggers-Pierola, C. (1997). Through my own eyes: Single mothers and the cultures of poverty. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Hollyfield, L. (2002). Moving up and out: Poverty, education, and the single parent family. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Jones, J. M., Levine, I. S., & Rosenberg, A. A. (1991). [Special Issue]: Homelessness. American Psychologist, 46, 1108-1252.

Kottler, J. A., & Brown, R. W. (2000). Introduction to therapeutic counseling: Voices from the field. Brooks/Cole. Fourth Edition.

Liebow, E. (1993). Tell them who I am: The lives of homeless women. New York: Penguin Books. (Paper).

Lott, B. (1996). Global connections: The significance of women's poverty. In J. C. Chrisler, C. Golden, & P. D. Rozee (Eds.). Lectures on the Psychology of Women. New York: McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Lott, B. (2002). Cognitive and behavioral distancing from the poor. American Psychologist, 57, 100-110.

Miedzian, M., & Malinovich, A. (1997). Generations: A century of women speak about their lives. New York: The Atlantic Monthly Press.

O’Connor, E. M. (October 2001). Psychology responds to poverty. Monitor on Psychology, 32-9, 81.

Paltiel, F. L. (1988). Is being poor a mental health hazard? Women and Health, 12, 189-211.

Piazza, J., & deValle, C. M. (1992). Community-based family therapy training. An example of work with poor and minority families. Journal of Strategic and Systemic Therapies, 11, 53-69.

Polakow, V. (1993). Lives on the edge: Single mothers and their children in the other America. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Reid, P. T. (1993). Poor women in psychological research: Shut up and shut out. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 17, 133-150.

Romero, M., & Stewart, A. J. (1999). Women’s untold stories: Breaking silence, talking back, voicing complexity. New York: Routledge.

Russo, N. F. (1990). Overview: Forging research priorities for women’s mental health. American Psychologist, 45, 366-373.

Saris, R. N, & Johnston-Robledo, I. (September 2000). Poor women are still shut out of mainstream psychology. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 24, 233-235.

Schein, B. E. (1995). Working from the Margins: Voices of mothers of poverty. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Seccombe, K. (1999). “So you think I drive a Cadillac?” Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Sharf, R. S. (2000). Theories of psychotherapy & Counseling: Concepts and cases. Brooks/Cole. Second Edition.

Shinn, M., & Weitzman, B. C. (1990). (Eds.). Urban homelessness. [Special issue]. Journal of Social Issues, 46, 1-219.

Sidel, R. (1998). Keeping women and children last: America’s war on the poor. New York: Penguin Books.

Spelman, E. V. (1988). Inessential woman: Problems of exclusion in feminist thought. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.