Currents in Development and Gender

Is poverty female?

It has become common in development circles to talk of the 'feminisation of poverty'. The phrase implies that poverty is becoming a female phenomenon, or that women are becoming poorer relative to men. This trend is often linked to an increase in the number of female-headed households, to the informalisation of labour markets and, generally, to the economic crises and adjustments of the 1980s in Latin America and Africa.
Because many studies on poverty do not look inside the household, evidence is lacking to show a feminisation of poverty. Moreover, the evidence we do have does not always show that more women than men are poor, or that their proportion among the poor, relative to men, is increasing. Certain groups of women - including some but by no means all female heads of household - may be particularly vulnerable to poverty. Women are discriminated against within the household, in legal and property rights, in access to financial resources, in labour markets and by public sector institutions. But not all women are poor and not all poor people are women. It does not advance attempts to combat gender discrimination, or assist in poverty alleviation efforts, if women and the poor are treated as synonymous.

A new BRIDGE Report explores in detail the complex relationship between gender discrimination and poverty.

From BRIDGE Report No. 30: Gender and Poverty, S. Baden with K. Milward, commissioned by SIDA, January 1995 in http://www.gdrc.org/gender/gender-and-envi.html