Sowmiya (X-B) Topic: Poverty and Inequality
Key Question: To what extent do poverty and gender inequality affect each other?
INTRODUCTION:
Gender equality, women’s empowerment and good standard of living (financial stability) are important in their own rights. Today gender inequality is not only a cause of women’s poverty but also a barrier to tackling general poverty.Gender inequality impacts on whether women can benefit from development. Unequal distribution and control of resources between women and men, women’s social role as care-takers and the unequal distribution of household tasks and gender-based violence are a few cause of women’s poverty. Women’s poverty, when at a large scale, greatly influences the rates of general poverty. Also, there is another simple connection between gender inequality and poverty—gender inequality hinders progress across development outcomes (causing poverty); a high proportion of women come to live in poverty; poverty exacerbates gender gaps; thus gender inequality and women’s disempowerment increases and cycle continues. It is very much evident that poverty and women disempowerment is interdependent. I chose this topic to analyse how the extent of influence of poverty over gender inequality and vice versa varies at the global, national and local levels.
GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE:
Throughout the developing world, women are made responsible for all household chores. All
Poverty is a significant threat to women’s equality. In Canada, more women live in poverty than men, and women’s experience of poverty can be harsher, and more prolonged. Women are often left to bear more burden of poverty, leading to ‘Feminization of poverty’. Through government policy women inequality has resulted in more women and children being left in poverty with no means of escaping. This paper will identify some key aspects of poverty for Canadian women. First, by identifying what poverty entails for Canadian women, and who is more likely to feel the brunt of it. Secondly the discussion of why women become more susceptible to poverty through government policy and programs. Followed by the effects that poverty on women plays in
Another view of poverty is that is gender bias, that women are mostly like to live in poverty then men are, for this approach we going to discuss the Feminist Perspective. In 2006, 54 % of women lived in poverty ages 18 and over (NAPO 2006). This perspective uses the gender-based analysis, which works to understand the structures that contribute to women in poverty. Another interesting factor about this perspective is that it using the narrative analysis which focuses on women’s experiences with a symbolic approach which is put into data interpretation.
Extremes differ around the world but for fact in developed and developing countries the amount of women living in poverty is adamant. Looking at the developing countries Canada and India provides different ways of looking at poverty and how poverty is identified. Through Canada women deal with poverty when their income is below the poverty line or they are using over half of their income on necessities to live. In India women are encountering human poverty, which is being without basic needs creating factors such as illiteracy, malnutrition, early death, poor health care and no access to clean water. Despite some differences between the two countries’ economies, women in both Canada and India face similar issues with poverty “The poverty of women in Canada and India is increasing as a result of globalization, social policies that neglect women, inequality in employment, and existing gender-based social repression” (Argiropoulos and Rajagopal 2003:612). The inequality of employment is a major cause of poverty, once women have to enter the workforce an increase in feminization in the workforce has taken place. Women are then segregated into the certain areas in the workforce, which often pay less and demand a less amount of skill
Evidence in the Women in America report, published by the White House in 2013, show that women in the United States are more likely to live in poverty than men. This happens because of two main reasons. First, women who work earn lower wages than men. They are paid 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. Therefore, their families have fewer incomes and their challenges in making ends meet increase. In 2009, women earned approximately 75% of what men earned and 28% of women who were employed had incomes which were below the poverty level, which was $ 17.285. Second, they still maintain their traditional role as households and spend time caring for their husbands and children instead of working.
Women and poverty is one of the critical areas of concern from the Beijing Platform for Action. Unfortunately there is over 1 billion of who are women that are living in poverty. Most of the women who are living in poverty and in very poor condition are from developing countries, but we also have this problem here in the United States. Poverty has been a factor of little to no education, single mother raising their families, little resources, and pay gap. In the article of Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, Fourth World Conference on Women, one of the strategic objectives is, to analyze from a gender perspective, policies and programmers including those related to macroeconomic stability, structural adjustment, external debt problems,
Three main factors contribute to the feminization of poverty in the United States. Firstly, women are paid less than men at jobs that provide fewer benefits. Women make only 77% of a man’s salary, (Eitzen et al, 2007). This unequal treatment is due to the discrimination against women in the job market. Secondly, women are more likely to work part-time or not work at all in order to take care of their children. The cost of pregnancy and caring for a family is often the responsibility of the mother; these high costs can drive a woman and her family into poverty. Thirdly, victims of domestic violence are more likely to be female. These traumatic experiences can lead to developing a mental illness, which can then lead to losing a job and even becoming homeless. Women need and deserve access to high paying “male-dominated” jobs. “Poverty and low earnings are more common among certain types of workers. Single women head nearly one-half of all working poor families with children” (Iceland 255).
“Income inequality has no necessary connection with poverty, the lack of material resources for a decent life, such as adequate food, shelter, and clothing. A society with great income inequality may have no poor people, and a society with no income inequality may have nothing but poor people” - Robert Higgs. When people think of income inequality they picture poverty and people not having basic necessities. However income inequality is not just a connection to the poor. Income inequality is strongly affected by education attainment, technology, and gender.
The culture of poverty is the belief that a country’s dominate culture is what determines the level of industrialization. For instance, in third (and some second) world countries, families that are barely able to farm out an existence are less likely to experiment with new techniques. Since they are unable to buy better equipment they are left with sticking to the way that has worked for generations. Some cultures also teach that if a person is satisfied with this life, then they will receive a higher status in the next life. Feminization of poverty is a condition in the U.S where low income households are often headed by females. This is often contributed to unwed pregnancy, divorce, and the fact that women usually get paid less than men.
The term “feminization of poverty” was first created in 1978 in an article that analyzed the economic statuses of women. “In 1976, nearly two out of three of poor persons over 16 years of age were women” (Pearce; 1976). The feminization of poverty describes a phenomenon in which women represent a disproportionate percentage of the United States poor. This trend is not only a result of lack of income, but also a lack of opportunities due to gender biases and fixed gender roles in some societies (DeNavas-Walt; 2012). Gender biases often deprive women of opportunities to independently pursue education or careers and are often linked to the expectation that women are responsible for childbearing and caring for them as well. To better
In the reading, there were a ton of definitions and clarifications being made. There was a breakdown of each economical class, poor, middle, and wealthy class. Americans tend to focus on “racial and ethnic groups, but not for economic groups,” but there is so much more (Payne pp. 37-43). There are two types up poverty generational and situational. Generational is where there are more than two generations that are poor, and situational has to do with a life-altering event (Payne pp. 47).
The gender income inequality in Australia does not only place a significant stress upon Australian women and their families but can also damage the economic growth rate of a nation as a whole. Having ethical rights to income, employment and opportunities for women will not just increase personal independence and security but will decrease the dependency on government support including reduction of child poverty rates.
Poverty has increasingly become a noticeable issue worldwide over the past couple of decades. With the middle class steadily decreasing, considerable amounts of people are becoming part of the lower class, and even more of our world’s population are beginning to live in poverty. It is important to understand there are different definitions of poverty, and that is largely determined by what each country’s government determines as the cut off of poverty, otherwise known as the ‘poverty line’. Although some people could live above the poverty line, and still be struggling financially, it goes unrecognized by most research collection. However, what was initially noticed around the 1970’s is that there was a significant rise in women’s poverty statistics. More female-headed households were living in poverty, and a majority of those women belonged to a minority. This recognizable trend has been deemed the ‘feminization of poverty’, which according research is not only a growing problem in North America, but several other countries around the world. Information gathered about this issue in the United States shows that female-headed households is by far the fastest growing type of family structure, and due to the fact there is a growing poverty level amongst this group, it now means that approximately half of the all the poor in the United States live in a women-headed family and household. (Gimenez, 1999, p. 336) The biggest question when is comes to this particular topic is why?
To address and answer the question being asked in this paper, I could use the same methodology Low talks about in his paper. To be able to answer how much the feminization of poverty trend and black and white inequality trend can explain the U.S wealth distribution, I would use the same regression model lows uses. Instead of just looking at blacks versus whites, I will look at female headed households versus male headed household too. Similar to Low’s paper, I will use the Binder-Oaxaca decomposition to document the difference in wealth earnings if male headed households receives the female variables and vice versa. I hope to find that some of the wealth distribution can be explained by the variable differences between the male and female headed household. I expect the difference will only be noticeable towards the bottom of the distribution, probably below top 50%.
The feminization of poverty is the increase in the number of women who had family suffering. It is very important that a women get equal rigth as a man in the work force. There many woman, who support there family on there own. Those most severely affect by poverty are women who are responsible for both the care and financial support of children (page 269). Like the glass ceiling, woman are inability to move up in the work force, I believe a woman can do anything a man can do. It take a strong women to raise a family on her own. A person should be judget on there work ability for the job not there gender. There are many single mother in America. They need to have eqaul rights in the work force, to be able to provide for there family. At the
Poverty is an issue that is faced by multitudes of people around the world. Poverty itself is defined as, “the state of being poor” (Merriam Webster). According to Sara S. McLanahan, of Princeton University, “In the United States, poverty is defined as not having enough income to pay for basic needs, such as food, clothing and shelter. Poverty is a family attribute. In other words, if a family is classified as poor, all the members of that family are also poor” (McLanahan, n.d.). The U.S. Census Bureau, in 2013 shows, “there were 45.3 million people in poverty” just in the United States (U.S Census Bureau, 2013). From those living in poverty, in the same year, “the ratio of the female poverty rate to the male poverty rate was 1.2---women were 20 percent more likely to be poor than men” (Mykyta, 2013, p. 2). Also, “of all people categorized as in poverty in 2011, approximately 56 percent were women” (Mykyta, 2013, p. 2). Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, director of the Human Development Report, portrays a simple truth, “women are poorer than men” (Fukuda-Parr, 1999, p. 99).