Arpan Gelal

There is often contentious link between gender and poverty. But in most cases, women are the prime sufferers of poverty. Feminisation of poverty is often perceived in terms of women having greater prevalence of poverty in comparison to men and severity of poverty being greater in case of women. Many forms of disadvantage prevail against women, including various types of discrimination and denial of human rights regardless of class or race. And women are being viewed as incapable and inferior gender leads to the feminisation of poverty.

It is acknowledged that poverty affects men and women in different ways. Meanwhile, many scholars consider gender as a factor just like age, ethnic issues and geographical locations, among others. These influence poverty and increase women’s vulnerability to it.

Four dimensions
The United Nations Development Fund for Women has identified four dimensions responsible for heightened rate of poverty among women: temporal, spatial, employment segmentation and valuation. In temporal dimensions, women are often responsible for household duties and childcare without any pay and may participate in agricultural labour in developing countries to support family livelihood leaving no time to devote to paid employment though they work more than their male counterparts.

The spatial dimension limits women’s mobility in search of good income jobs away from their families and they engage themselves in taking care of children along with household tasks. Furthermore, due to segmentation of employment for women as caretakers, they are compelled to opt for works like teaching, caring for elderly people, factory workers such as textile and domestic servitude restricting higher income and job security. Moreover, unpaid responsibilities performed by women are considered less worthy, at least economically in comparison to jobs that require formal education or training, counts in the valuation dimension of women’s poverty.
Several factors feminise the poverty scenario. Constraints of women lie in their access to various types of asset. One indicator for such constraint is their access to material assets. The deprivation of women in various closely connected social spheres namely the labour market, the social protection system and household due to the sexual division of labour and social hierarchies built upon it which provides women limited space to labour opportunities and narrower access to resources.

The impact of feminised face of poverty can be found to be reflected on the life expectancy of women. It is demonstrated that women living in affluent countries have life expectancy of at least 79 years or more but in poverty-stricken countries women live 53 years or younger. Women are more vulnerable to global crises and are primary victims of the same. Female headed households representing the poorest household and lower purchasing power are most vulnerable to global food price crisis which leads to disfavour women and girls in intra-household food allocation and removal of girls from schools first to cut off expenses. In addition, women are the first victims of economic and financial crisis as they often represent the sectors that are mostly affected by decline in demand. Environmental crises also victimise women as their and girls’ poverty may increase as a result of climate change.

Though the widespread of ‘feminisation of poverty’ thesis has mainstreamed women in poverty debates, the concept has an implicit focus on monetary poverty and has overemphasised female household headships. However, if it is to be claimed, females are being poorer or poverty is being feminised. Is it necessarily that men are being richer and earning more than ever? What could be the explanation when there is so much of talk about ‘crisis of masculinity’ and men falling behind in educational attainment and job opportunities in various countries?

But it is widely accepted that increasing number of females headed households and lone mothers and their vulnerability towards poverty has significantly contributed to feminise the poverty scenario across various countries. However, the phenomenon of poverty itself lacks a clear-cut definition or approach and is multidimensional. Various approaches like monetary, capacities, social exclusion or participative can be liked with poverty. The trend on the use of term ‘feminisation of poverty’ symbolises either ‘among female headed households’ or ‘among women’ which are not indices of the same phenomena.

Major factors
However, various factors like existing wage gap among men and women, access to educational attainment and health services and lack of skills in different countries make women suffer more from poverty. Other factors include women’s limitation on mobility or informal or unpaid jobs, various superstitious beliefs and cultural setbacks, presence of gender-based violence such as sexual violence, child marriage, trafficking. Poor participation of women in power and decision making and discrimination towards them in access to resources also contribute towards women’s poverty compared to men, especially in the developing countries. Moreover, in many countries, including Nepal, low socio-cultural and economic status of women force them to suffer scarcities beyond income and monetary dimensions of poverty.

(Gelal is a faculty for Development Studies at National College. gelalarpan@gmail.com)