ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author begins with an analysis of the women's experiences of cultural, institutional, and material exclusion. The women felt stigmatized, surveyed, and punished in their day-to-day lives. The control wielded by the major institutions in the women's lives - the welfare, health care, and community recreation systems - perpetuated their stigmatization and excluded them; they encountered inadequate services and material deprivation. The chapter conceptualized the women's experiences of living in poverty as a "trickle-down" of cultural, institutional, and material exclusion. The younger women suggested that they were stereotyped as "welfare single mothers". The chapter examines how the practices and policies of the welfare, the health care, and community recreation systems institutionally excluded the women through viewing them as dependent, discriminating against them, and limiting their access to resources. In these multi-faceted and interconnected ways, exclusion had a deep and serious impact on poor women's health.
