Displaced Homemakers: Then and Now
In the 1970's, as the American divorce rate rose, women who performed unpaid work in the home and who relied on husbands for economic security increasingly found themselves displaced. With limited paid work histories, many ended up living in poverty and confusion, struggling to achieve independence in a culture that had dismissed them.
Two extraordinary women, Laurie Shields and Tish Sommers had experienced the “displaced” phenomenon themselves. They put together a national coalition of activists and successfully lobbied 39 states and the federal government to create programs to train and counsel women.
Tish Sommers came up with the term “displaced homemaker” because she saw parallels between the experiences of women who were ousted from the homemaker role they expected to play for life, and the experiences of people who are forcibly exiled from their homes through political upheaval. Women who were displaced as homemakers by death, divorce, desertion, or disablement of a husband could find themselves ineligible for Social Security benefits, for unemployment benefits, and for welfare benefits. With little paid work experience, they could appear unemployable. As Laurie Shields notes in her 1981 book, Displaced Homemakers: Organizing for a new life, “homemakers assumed that retirement benefits, health insurance, and economic security flowed from their…
