Poverty, “Feminization” of

The feminization of poverty is a concept developed and popularized by Diana Pearce and other gender scholars to capture the alarming increase in the proportion of U.S. women with minor children living in poverty in the post–World War II years. In 1960, female heads of household with no husband present were about one-fourth of poor families; by the 1980s, women with minor children were a majority of America's poor, with three-fifths of poor families headed by women and nearly half of single-mother families classified as poor.

Feminist scholars have emphasized the relationships among the family, the state, and the labor market in the feminization of poverty. They argue that the gendered division of labor—reproductive and productive work, both paid and unpaid—is deeply embedded in welfare state policies. Thus, trends in the feminization of poverty must be understood in relationship to the welfare state, which can reinforce traditional gender ideologies or offer resources that can potentially empower women. Global comparisons in welfare state policies, work inequality, and family demographics reveal that the feminization of poverty is not a universal phenomenon. Countries with family-friendly social and economic policies have lower rates of poverty and do not display the same trends in female poverty.

Women's Poverty in the United States

Transcript

• Three years ago Nelizwe[?] was just a typical 14 year old; she went to school, hung out with her friends and helped out her grandmother whenever she could. But then one day her life was turned upside down. She was abducted from her home in the Eastern Cape in South Africa and forced to marry a man 30 years older than her. On their first night alone, he raped her.
• He kept quiet and lifted me up and put me on the bed. He pulled down my skirt and took down my underwear and we struggled. But he overpowered me and forced himself on me.
• A pattern that would repeat itself throughout their marriage. Eventually she fell pregnant and gave birth to a baby boy.
• Every time I asked him for money to buy milk formula for the child he only gave me 10 rand, which didn’t cover anything.
• Nelizwe is one of the lucky ones. She managed to escape and ended up here at this women’s refuge centre deep in the Eastern Cape countryside where she’s safe. Eight other teenagers here also escaped from their husbands but they can’t return home. In many cases it was their parents who organized their abduction.
• This abduction and first marriage thing is aligned with the traditional practice that is within our culture. So, there is more – there’s much that needs to be done.
• Local police are trying to crack down on this illegal tradition. They’ve recently run a campaign urging any girls forced to endure a marriage against their will to come forward. Several men were arrested, as were some of the parents of the girls.
• Seemingly they were not aware that they were also committing a crime. But because they are also now added to the cases that we have opened as accomplices, then that is why they do understand now that they have committed a crime.
• The arrests and upcoming court cases seem to be having an effect. Police say the number of abductions has dropped dramatically since the campaign started, but they admit there may still be many girls out there who live their lives in fear.

Heidi Hartman's Women, Work, and Poverty (2005), written for the Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR), documents the changing impact of family, marriage, motherhood, work, and welfare reform on trends in women's poverty. Marital dissolution and the burdens of single parenting have played a key role in the feminization of poverty since the 1960s.

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