Women and Poverty

POVERTY IS A GLOBAL problem that is receiving a lot of attention in the media and in scholarly circles. Often the focus of analysis is on Third World countries, and rightly so, because the majority of the world's poor live in Third World countries. But when we shift the focus and examine the incidence of poverty from a gender perspective, we are confronted with what has become known as the feminization of poverty. Whether in First or Third World countries, rural or urban areas, literate or illiterate, women are generally poorer than men. According to United Nations figures, 70 percent of the poor people in the world are women.

There is no common ground on which to make generalizations about women because of the diversity and complexity of women's lives worldwide. And when this problem is compounded with the fluidity in the definition and interpretation of poverty, it becomes even more difficult to make generalizations about women and poverty. Thus, generalizations in this article should be understood in what Ruth Sivard characterizes as “simplifications of a variety that is virtually infinite.”

Some experts have examined the problem of universal female poverty through the lens of the resources that are available to women in various countries, and there is a consensus that women do not have the same access to resources as men do. Women live in a patriarchal world where men define values, actions, and expectations and women act within those definitions. Women do not participate equally with men in major areas of decision-making.

The types of work that women do, the education they receive, their access to medical care, and their participation in social and political life reflect social prescriptions and expectations that do not necessarily apply to men. Since these indicators also define the level of well-being, lack of access or limited access to them makes women poor. Female poverty can thus be seen as the consequence of sociocultural and political practices that define women as second-rate citizens. Simply put, society makes women poor. Benazir Bhutto, former prime minister of Pakistan, expressed this notion at the United Nations' Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995. She said that social prejudice, not religion, denies women their rightful place in society. Of course in an Islamic country such as Pakistan, drawing a line between social prescription and religious practice can be a tricky exercise. The Beijing Conference was a defining moment in understanding the constraints that society puts on women to make them poor.

We can examine female poverty from many different perspectives, but work is a pathway to money and things that people can do with money. Under normal circumstances, people with money can feed, accommodate, and clothe themselves and their dependents; they can educate children, have access to quality medical care, and not live in fear of deprivation. The good news is that women have always worked. Whether in foraging, [Page 1174]agricultural, or industrial-technological societies, women have performed tasks that have ensured the survival and progress of their communities. The bad news is that women's work has not given them access to the kind of money that will keep them out of poverty.

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