Knight (2015) in her text focuses on pregnant, addicted, and poor women who reside in hotels in San Francisco district. The women are forced by circumstances to pay rent daily to the facilities. They are faced by numerous challenges among them violence, housing debts and drug addiction.
From a traditional perspective, individuals are expected to have personal responsibility of looking after themselves, and avoid indulging in immoral behaviors of prostitution and drug abuse. In that regard, the government entities employ inefficient methods of solving the problem, which is more focused on vilifying the addicted and pregnant women as opposed to offering them with the appropriate assistance that will help them recover and gain sobriety. The government policies are not geared towards offering them healthy social supports, but rather, they display them perpetrators of criminal activities.
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Notably, the normative gender roles especially the one surrounding motherhood and sexuality subject these women to more misery. Women are supposed to be polite, nurturing, and accommodating. They are supposed to look after children, ensure the homes are clean, and cook for their families. Considering the women in this case have opted to live their lives in the streets, engaging in drug abuse and prostitution, they are seen as failures and a disgrace to the society. By the virtue of being mothers due to their sexuality, they are supposed to eat well, remain clean, and avoid dangerous behaviors that would put the baby at risk (Knight, 2015). However, women such as Ramona cannot live up to the societal expectations. She is repeatedly looking for heroin and crack to satiate her addiction. Considering Ramona is an expectant mother, and she leads a dangerous life, which contradicts the societal expectations, she is deemed as immoral, irresponsible, and reckless (Knight, 2015).
In view of the harsh treatment accorded to the women in the text, sexism, classism, and ableism is clearly seen. Women are vilified due to their gender, and the societal expectations that come with womanhood. Owing to the category assigned to them, they are expected to be available for their families, and serve as role models in the society. Finally, ableism is evident in this case, as pregnant women addicted to drugs are expected by the society to change their dangerous lifestyle while no one is willing to offer a helping hand. The government entities are only vilifying the women, and displaying them as criminals as opposed to helping them gain sanity and somberness.
References
Knight, K. R. (2015). Critical Global Health: Evidence, Efficacy, Ethnography. London: Duke University Press.
