In developing these new programs and analyzing and creating the new strategies, women's organizations in the United States are beginning to pay attention to research, analysis and project development that is already taking place in Third World countries. There is a growing consciousness on the part of women working in economic development projects that unacceptable conditions exist for women and their families regardless of national boundaries. In Appalachia, on Native American reservations and in the urban ghettos of some of the biggest U.S. cities, for example, women are realizing that a Third World existence is possible anywhere in the world as long as women lack economic choices. At the same time, such women are aware that there are still major differences that cannot be ignored in the poverty, culture and in public policy. Until recently, however, the idea that there was any similarity at all between the work that women in the United States and women in Africa or Latin America were doing to increase economic choices for women would have been ridiculed.
Many women agree.
In recent years, individual women and women's organizations in the United States have begun to explore new kinds of economic interventions into the lives of low-income women, substituting economic development projects for social service projects. This is a major change for these organizations which have traditionally been involved with social welfare programs or concerned with equity issues such as assuring women equal rights under the law. This trend is a product of the considerable frustration that institutions serving women have encountered while attempting to address the economic restrictions U.S. women face. The staff of domestic violence shelters note, for example, that a battered woman might return to the abusive situation, because there simply is no viable way for her to support herself independently. And finding a salaried job is not the only problem.