Poverty and Gender in Developing Nations Research Paper

The poverty line is linked to a minimum standard within each country which varies by country, region, or culture. Attempts to compare income poverty across societies has led the World Bank to utilize the Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) that accounts for currency fluctuation and local consumption habits and is commonly referred to as the market-basket approach.

Although economic measures dominate the literature on poverty and on development, critics have objected to such sterile methods of accounting. Additional indicators of wellbeing have been combined into more textured indices of progress or poverty. The social aspects of poverty do not lend themselves to such aggregation. To understand the multidimensional nature of poverty, scholars are today investigating a broad range of social and cultural practices as well as governmental policies. Only with this comprehension of the causes of poverty can more effective programs for poverty alleviation be designed. This effort has taken on increased urgency in light of current economic trends which have exacerbated income disparity within countries and pushed more people into poverty (Lundberg and Milanovic 2000).

Differential patterns of poverty are experienced by women and men due largely to their social roles and responsibilities. The increase in the number of womenheaded households throughout the world, caused by rapid economic transition, migration, and urbanization, has led to the dissolution of many traditional support systems. As a result, women must both nurture and provide a livelihood for their children in an economy that privileges full-time work away from home. This double burden limits both a woman’s choice of jobs and her mobility, thus reducing her income causing the feminization of poverty.

Even within needy families, women may be poorer than their husbands because they have little control over how income or food are allocated. Food aid programs now deliver food directly to poor women who show more equity in feeding their children Pinstrup-Andersen et al. 1999. Similarly, development agencies have focused more of their income projects on women. While some critics argue that loading additional work responsibilities on women has created a crisis of time, others demonstrate that income increases women’s household bargaining power. Conservatives object to programs that provide women with jobs because they believe that upsetting the gender division of labor encourages further disintegration of families. In contrast, feminists argue that the focus on welfare programs to alleviate the worst aspects of poverty will do nothing to reduce the subordination of women. Recent approaches to alleviating poverty emphasize asset creation and housing rights to empower women.

The first section explores the broadening of definitions, measures, and social indicators of poverty. The second section presents arguments for a gendered approach to poverty alleviation and discusses studies that elaborate on, or question, earlier assumptions. The last section describes significant programs de-signed to assist women out of poverty and reviews salient criticisms of them.

1. Definitions And Causes Of Poverty

Defining poverty in economic terms alone raises issues of the accuracy of statistics in developing countries and encounters the range of moral objections to valuing life only in material terms. Development agencies are aware of the unreliability of data from developing countries yet cognizant of the demands by policy makers for easily replicated measures. To compare poverty globally, the World Bank uses estimates of local income expressed as U$1 and US$2 per day to identify levels of poverty, estimating that in 1998, 1.2 billion people worldwide had consumption levels below $1 a day and 24 percent of the population of the developing world and 2.8 billion lived on less than $2 a day (World Bank 2000).

1.1 Indicators Beyond Income

As the GNP became the common method of measuring progress, critiques appeared. Alternative measures, such as the Physical Quality of Life Index (PQLI) promoted by the Overseas Development Council in Washington DC in the 1970s, used indicators for life expectancy, infant mortality, and literacy for an index that often reversed ideas of improved life through increased income. For example, Saudi Arabia rated high for income and low for PQLI while Sri Lanka had a low GNP and a high PQLI. These indicators actually measure women’s status, though that was not the original intent, since poor health for women results in high maternal mortality that often also means high infant mortality while women’s literacy reflects educational opportunities and cultural openness.

Following this trend, the Human Development Index (HDI) refines these indicators into three indices based on life expectancy, education, and gross domestic product (GDP). Utilizing these and other indices, the Human Development Report makes explicit the need for gender analysis in the Gender Development Index (GDI) and the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM). Saudi Arabia is placed in the medium human development list but ranks low in GDI and has no entry for GEM. Three developing countries, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Jamaica, have a GDI rank that is more than 10 points higher than the HDI rank (UNDP 1998).

In 1997 the Human Development Report introduced the Human Poverty Index (HPI) to emphasize that poverty is much more than a lack of material wellbeing, but also a denial of opportunities to live a healthy and creative life and enjoy both self-esteem and the respect of others. While the HDI measures national progress, the HPI measure the deprivations of those who are left out of progress (UNDP 1998 p. 25). Significant is the finding that the US has highest human poverty among the 17 developed countries listed although it has the highest per capita income measured in PPP.

1.2 Social Aspects Of Poverty

As world poverty increases, development agencies are searching for more accurate social indicators for education, health, access to services and infrastructure. Other nonincome dimensions of poverty are being studied to tease out and evaluate illusive patterns of vulnerability, social exclusion, and gender inequities. Analyses of poverty in terms of access to social capital, entitlements to food, income, land, and houses are being conducted. These indicators do not lend themselves to aggregation into a single index. Rather this broadening of research reflects the complexities of addressing social aspects of persistent poverty (Chambers 1995). Reports on urban poverty in cities around the world and programs that improve the lives of the poor have been published in three issues of Environment & Development. In preparation for the World Development Report 2000 1 on Poverty and Development, the World Bank commissioned a wide range of working papers (World Bank 2000). Gendered poverty is the concern of studies produced by the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD 1999). The Inter-American Development Bank on causes of intergenerational transmission of poverty has resulted in an initiate on early childhood programs.

1.3 Structural Influences On Poverty

Economic and political forces external to culture and community also contribute to the current trend of increased poverty and income disparity around the world. The rapidity of the present economic transitions toward global trade and largely unfettered markets is exacerbating income disparity and contributing to the increase in poverty. Economic prescriptions to improve creditworthiness of countries, such as the Structural Adjustment Policies (SAP) of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, are widely blamed for the reduction of health and education budgets in those countries. Subsequently, these financial institutions have instituted changes in conditionality to require governments to balance cuts in the social safety net with other measures to reduce expenditures by trimming bloated bureaucracies or eliminating inefficient industrial projects.

Governments privilege different groups through macroeconomic choices regulating trade, investments, and food policy, among others (UNRISD 1999). Urban poverty is much influenced by the actions of city and municipal governments. Inefficient and corrupt bureaucracies contribute to income inequality and limit the effectiveness of poverty alleviation programs. In 1999, research teams in 23 countries held Consultations with the Poor (Narayan et al. 1999). A large majority of the poor said they were worse off, had fewer opportunities, and were more insecure than in the past. Most had little good to say about government personnel or services and turned to their own networks and institutions for support. The presence of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) was uneven; their programs received mixed reviews, often seen as irrelevant because, despite the goals of participation espoused by NGOs, the poor do not feel that their voices are heard.

2. Poverty As Gendered

The gender division of labor traditionally allocated domestic production to women, activities that included providing subsistence as well as care to their families. The shift from labor exchange to a monetized economy tended to leave women with tasks and responsibilities that are not paid and therefore are excluded from national accounts. Opportunities for men to earn money are more plentiful but may require migration for short or long periods of time, weakening family cohesion and kin networks while changes in traditional status hierarchies as well as income paths increases insecurity. Once men earn money they often feel entitled to spend it on drinking, gambling, or women rather than on their families. These events, drinking, insecurity, and lack of kin supervision, have led to a worldwide epidemic of domestic violence and AIDS.

2.1 Women-Headed Households

The same transitions encourage the increase of households headed by women. Definitions of and data on women-headed households are contested, as are most statistics in developing countries. Estimates of 30 percent have been found valid since 1975, but studies have refined categories to note the numbers of widows, or of women with children returning to parental homes and becoming invisible. Women-headed households are perceived as the poorest, though regional and class variations are noted. The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) reported that women-headed households in more than half of the countries examined in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa are poorer than households containing adult men. Recent household studies link urban poverty not only to gender but to life cycle, age, and housing options. Food security is of prime concern in poor households; women are more likely than men to direct more resources to food and children (United Nations 1995, p. 129). These findings have important implications for poverty alleviation programs.

2.2 Time Pressures Of Women’s Double Day

In order to purchase needed commodities or pay school fees, women are pushed to earn income as well as carry out domestic production. The dual responsibilities of women tend to limit their income opportunities and have generally resulted in women earning less than men in most of the world. Statistics on women’s work, along with a discussion of problems of the definition of work and the imprecision of much data, are frequently published by the UN’s Statistical Division (United Nations 1995). Time-use studies underscore the fact that women work longer hours than men in a large number of countries. This has led feminist scholars to promote appropriate technology to reduce women’s work burdens (Tinker 1987). Others deplore the labor-intensive poverty programs since heavy physical work, called for in such poverty alleviation projects as road building, reduce the already limited nutritional reserves of poor women (UNRISD 1999). Government cost reduction programs that cut social spending generally add to women’s time pressures as they increase hours of care-giving to children and relatives and often sacrifice income activities in the process (Moser 1996).

3. Poverty Alleviation Programming

Poverty reduction has been a major goal of economic development since the thrust toward basic human needs and redistribution with growth identified in the Second Development Decade, 1970–80 documents. The focus on basic needs encouraged development programs to address the concerns of people not just countries and promoted the women in development movement. Pressures from the growing global women’s movement forced the debates over structural adjustment and free trade to consider their impact on women. At the end of the twentieth century, a New Policy Agenda emerged which considered market-led growth as the primary engine for reducing poverty. In developing countries, agriculture and labor-intensive activities were expected to provide employment. The role of the state was limited to service delivery, assisted by NGOs and other civil society organizations. The fact that the unfettered global market economy has led to more poverty has forced rethinking of poverty and its alleviation as noted above.

3.1 Programs To Alleviate Poverty

In the 1970s poverty alleviation programming was focused on rural areas. Appropriate technology was introduced to reduce women’s energy and time required for subsistence activities such as collecting water and fuel, and processing food. Improved cookstoves and water-seal toilets also reduced the needs for water and fuel. Time saved became available for literacy programs or income activities which at first were ill-adapted to poor women’s skills.

3.2 Microcredit And Microfinance

Most current poverty alleviation programs focus on savings, credit for microenterprise, and the organizing home-based workers through NGOs. In combination these programs assist the poor women and men to accumulate assets and expand ties within the community which in turn encourages investments in human capital and creates social capital. The impact is more dramatic for women than men in those traditional societies where women and men are segregated socially, where women’s mobility is severely limited, and where women’s work is largely unremunerated. Not surprisingly, two of the most successful microcredit programs are in Bangladesh, the Grameen Bank, and India, SEWA (Self-Employed Women’s Association). Savings are a prerequisite for credit which is utilized to start or improve tiny entrepreneurial activity from raising a goat to selling street foods to marketing fish. All programs require frequent attendance at group meetings which function both to break down caste, ethnic, and kin barriers and provide mechanisms for wide-scale organizing. SEWA has spearheaded the rapid expansion of Homenet, a worldwide organization for home-based workers which advocates for the extension of pensions, health benefits, and childcare to these workers. Meetings of these organizations promote the sharing of information on health, contraception, nutrition, and dealing with domestic violence as well as on business techniques. Women learn the benefits of investing in the health and education of their children, especially daughters. The Grameen Bank is proud of the number of children of members now attending secondary schools and colleges.

Profits from microenterprise and the savings programs have allowed women to purchase more durable assets such as a house or agricultural land. Many urban NGOs support programs by which the poor obtain housing through sweat-equity and credit. Women as the primary family caretakers need the security of shelter. Most laws or customary practices in developing countries still privilege male ownership of house and land. Registration for these assets remains an obstacle though laws and traditions are changing, often under pressure from NGOs (Tinker and Summerfield 1999). The surplus of widows from war and AIDS has recently convinced both Uganda and Rwanda to allow women to inherit land. Globally, the rise of women headed households and absentee partners, now exacerbated in postconflict regions, and their critical need for shelter has prompted the Gender Unit of the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements to mount a campaign for security of house tenure for women (UNCHS 1999).

Programs to provide income and housing to women empower them and enhance their household bargaining position. The social capital gained through membership in organizations enhances women’s community presence and provides them with a voice in elections. Such power addresses gender inequalities and provides ways for women to rise out of poverty.

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