Exchanging sex for material resources: Reinforcement of gender and oppressive survival strategy Einat Lavee Center on Poverty and Inequality, Stanford University, Building 370, 450 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA 94305, USA article info synopsis Available online xxxx Scholars have argued that neoliberal welfare reforms aim to transfer women's reliance on the state for their economic survival to dependency on men's resources (Weigt, 2010). Mainly, research has addressed the issue of women who rely on men's resources for their survival as social support relations, struggling with whether these relations can be considered partnership or prostitution. Based on 50 in-depth interviews of Israeli mothers who provide for their families in poverty, the current study seeks to understand the meaning these women attribute to exchanging sex for material resources. I propose understanding this exchange as an oppressive survival strategy that stems from inequality in gender and class relations, and as the reinforcement of gender. I conclude that focusing attention on the “slippery slope of dependency” exposes yet another layer of the need for a policy that decreases gender differences and generates more equal gender and class relations. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Introduction Much research has focused on the implications of neoliberal welfare reforms in various Western countries for the lives of low-income mothers. Addressing the gender aspect of these reforms, scholars have argued that mothers living in poverty have lost gendered protection from a labor market that disadvantages them (Bernstein, Benjamin, & Motzafi-Haller, 2011; Edin & Kissane, 2010). Moreover, they have claimed that welfare reforms perpetuate gender inequality and poverty among women (Orloff, 1996), denying them the ability to de- familialize, i.e., maintain an autonomous household without having to depend on a male breadwinner (Christopher, 2002). Under such conditions, women, and particularly mothers, have to seek other routes of breadwinning, mainly social networks of support and agency-based support (Offer, 2010). In this context, many studies have addressed women's reliance on men as a main avenue to economic survival. Starting with Edin and Lein's (1997) classic research, such support has been described as a central survival strategy employed by low-income mothers. However, understanding the receipt of material resources from men as just another type of social support is problematic for two main reasons. First, such support usually involves sexual exchange, where the woman gives her body in order to gain material resources from the man, and thus cannot be understood as any other kind of social exchange. Second, considering such material support as just another form of social aid ignores the complex linkage between macro level structural constraints and women's daily struggles on the micro level (Morgen, Acker, & Weigt, 2010; Weigt, 2010). Under- standing this linkage is crucial in light of claims that (macro) welfare reforms encourage women to rely on (micro) partner- ships with men (Scott, London, & Myers, 2002; Weigt, 2010). A review of the literature on women's reliance on men for material survival reveals this survival strategy to be a “hot potato” issue, a phenomenon that, due to its complexity, has not been addressed properly up until now (Masters, Lindhorst, & Meyers, 2014). Welfare reforms that have severely reduced the ability of women to rely on state support for material survival, encouraging dependence on partnership rather than depen- dence on the state, are shaping low-income women's ways of economic survival (Weigt, 2010). Under these conditions, women employ the strategy of exchanging sex for material Women's Studies International Forum 56 (2016) 83–91 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2016.02.013 0277-5395/© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Women's Studies International Forum journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/wsif