Lisa Dodson, PhD '93
Worthy of a Voice
As a kid growing up in New York City, Lisa Dodson took to heart parental encouragement to engage in social change. So perhaps it was just happy fate that, as an adult, Dodson found herself preparing to do just that, encouraged once again, this time by her dissertation chair Professor David Gil, to take ethical positions on issues – and stick to them.
"What challenges my work is the belief that there is no way to overcome poverty, that there will always be a segment of people who must live poor," says Dodson. "This leads to passivity about poverty. Still, national polls show that most Americans would raise wages and ensure all people a decent living."
Dodson gives voice to the traditionally invisible in our society. Beginning with her doctoral dissertation, "Worthy of a Voice," Dodson has presented her findings to interpretive focus groups that help keep her research rooted in the words, opinions and perspectives of low-income people.
"Part of my commitment is to shed light on the reality of how hard people are trying," says Dodson. "Also, if you are going to represent people who live on the margins they must be the ones naming the issues."
A research professor at Boston College, Dodson’s current focus is low-income work and the economic and social challenges facing families, in particular single mothers who are trying to raise families. She examines the strategies mothers devise to take care of their families while working in traditionally low-paying care-taking and service jobs.
Ironically, these mothers spend their days caring for others while barely making enough to take care of their own families. "Poverty in America is about wage poverty, not about joblessness," says Dodson. "People who work should make a living wage." Dodson recently completed a chapter on this research published in Unfinished Work: Building Democracy and Equality in an Era of Working Families, published in April 2005. (Bradley Googins, PhD '79, also contributed to this book).
Dodson’s research recently brought her back to Heller to collaborate with Professor Christine Bishop on low-wage workers, and they are embarking on a 2006 study about low-wage health care workers with the Service Employees International Union.
Before coming to Heller for a doctorate, Dodson worked as an obstetrical nurse, and then created the nation’s first Women’s Health Division while working at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. But she felt that examining social issues through the lens of health problems alone was too narrow. "I wanted to know more about the fundamental issues of inequality for women, particularly women raising children," says Dodson.
After graduating from Heller in 1993, Dodson became a Research Fellow at the Radcliffe Public Policy Institute and Harvard Law School. During that time, Dodson contributed significantly to the literature on low-income or impoverished women raising families, publishing a book in 1999 with Beacon Press - Don’t Call Us Out of Name - about the live of poor women in America. Next Dodson is setting her professional sights on how teachers, health-care workers, and others who work with the poor manage to hold onto ethical positions.
"How do we as a society reconcile the growing inequality between the working poor and the middle class?" asks Dodson. "We talk about bringing democracy around the globe, but we need to take a look at it here in our own country."
Still, Dodson is hopeful society’s acceptance of inequality will reach its limit. "Middle-class people do care about the village green," says Dodson, quoting Deborah Stone, one of her favorite Heller professors. "History has shown that when enough people find a situation intolerable there will be change."