Feminization of poverty is the phenomenon that women represent disproportionate percentages of the world's poor. UNIFEM describes it as "the burden of poverty borne by women, especially in developing countries". This phenomenon is not only a consequence of lack of income, but is also the result of the deprivation of capabilities and gender biases present in both societies and governments. This includes the poverty of choices and opportunities, such as the ability to lead a long, healthy, and creative life, and enjoy basic rights like freedom, respect, and dignity. Women's increasing share of poverty is related to the rising incidence of lone mother households. The term feminization of poverty itself is controversial and has been defined in many different ways. In 1978, Diana Pearce coined the term, "the feminization of poverty" after conducting research and noticing that a disproportionate number of women struggled with poverty within the United States, as well as globally. At the time of Pearce's research, two-thirds of the poor who were over age 16 were women.
Video Feminization of poverty
Causes
Several factors affect the feminization of poverty, and these factors place women at high risk of poverty. Multiple factors contribute to women's economic insecurity, including the gender wage gap, women's prevalence in low-paid occupations, a lack of work-family supports, and the challenges involved in accessing public benefits. Though low income is the major cause, there are many interrelated facets of this problem. Lone mothers are usually at the highest risk for extreme poverty because their income is insufficient to rear children. It then lowers their children's possibilities for good education and nourishment. Low income is a consequence of the social bias women face in trying to obtain formal employment, which in turn deepens the cycle of poverty. As the number of women in poverty increases, the diverse causes affecting their poverty must be examined. Poverty is multidimensional, and therefore economic, demographic, and socio-cultural factors all overlap and contribute to the establishment of poverty. It is a phenomenon with multiple root causes and manifestations.
Disparate income
Lack of income is a principal reason for women's risk of poverty. Income deprivation prevents women from attaining resources and converting their monetary resources into socioeconomic status. Not only does higher income allow greater access to job skills; obtaining more job skills raises income as well. As women earn less income than men, they are deprived of basic education and health care, which eventually becomes a cycle to debilitate women's ability to earn higher income.
Deprivation passes down from one generation of women to the next, leading to a perpetual feminization of poverty. The main reason behind this cycle of poverty is the lower earnings of women, due to having to care for their offspring. In many places, persistent gender discrimination in the work force does not allow the majority of women quality work.
Single mother households
Single mother households are critical in addressing feminization of poverty and can be broadly defined as households in which there are female headships and no male headships. Single mother households are at the highest risk of poverty for women due to lack of Income and resources. There is a continuing increase of single mother households in the world, which results in higher percentages of women in poverty. Single mothers are the poorest women in society, and their children tend to be disadvantaged in comparison to their peers. Different factors can be taken into account for the rise in the number of female headship in households. When men become migrant workers, women are left to be the main caretaker of their homes. Other factors such as illnesses and deaths of husbands lead to an increase in single mother households in developing countries.
Female headed households are most susceptible to poverty because they have fewer income earners to provide financial support within the household. According to a case study in Zimbabwe, households headed by widows have an income of approximately half that of male-headed households, and de facto female headed households have about three quarters of the income of male headed households. Additionally, single mother households lack critical resources in life, which worsens their state of poverty. They do not have access to the opportunities to attain a decent standard of living along with basic needs such as health and education. Single mother households relate to gender inequality issues as women are more susceptible to poverty and lack essential life needs in comparison to men.
Parenting in poverty ridden condtitions can cause emotional instability for a child and their relationship with a single mother.
Many factors contribute to becoming impoverished. Some of these factors are more prevalent in the lives of single mothers. When demographic attributes of single mothers are surveyed, a few factors showed up in higher rates. Marital status (divorced or widowed), education, and race correlated strongly with levels of poverty for single mothers. Specifically, very few mothers on the poverty line had a college degree and were having to "work to make ends meet". Not only do these demographic attributes affect parenting in poverty, emotional attributes provided an instability as well when viewed by Dr. Bloom. Mothers have been noted as the "caregivers" or "nurturer" of families. Some stereotypical things that are expected of mothers are harder to provide in a low-income household when a mother is the main provider. Dr. Bloom's example of a stereotypical mother job was bringing treats to school on birthdays and expected to go to parent teacher conferences. A researcher, Denise Zabkiewicz, surveyed single mothers in poverty and measured rates of depression over time. Since recent studies in 2010 had brought the idea that work was beneficial for mental health, Zabkiewicz thought to research if jobs were mentally beneficial to poverty line single mothers. Those results concluded to be true; mothers' rates of depression were significantly lower when one held a stable, long-term job. The likelihood of getting a full-time job decreases with certain factors. When these certain factors were surveyed in single moms they occurred at higher rates: co-inhabiting, college degree, and use of welfare. All of these factors are ones that the researchers, Brian Brown and Daniel Lichter, contribute to single mothers in poverty. In light of welfare reforms as of 2001, federal legislation required recipients of welfare (mainly aided to families) to participate in an educational or vocational school and work part-time in order to receive the benefits. Recipients attending a college now have 3 years to complete those degree in order to get people to work as quickly as possible. To try towards a system of reward, Mojisola Tiamiyu and Shelley Mitchell, suggest implementing child care services to promote employment. Women with children work in either low-paying or part-time jobs that are insufficient to raise a family. Single parenting in the United States has increased to 1 in 4 families being headed by a single parent. It is estimated that children living in single parent homes are as much as 4 times more likely to become impoverished (Juvenilization of poverty).
Social and cultural exclusions
Poverty cannot be defined only by statistics and reports, such as the poverty line, to see whether or not people are impoverished in their respective countries. The concept of social and cultural exclusion helps to better convey poverty as a process that involves multiple agents. Many developing countries have social and cultural norms that prevent women from having access to formal employment. Especially in parts of Asia, North Africa, and Latin America, the cultural and social norms do not allow women to have much labor productivity outside the home as well as an economic bargaining position within the household. This social inequality deprives women of capabilities, particularly employment, which leads to women having a higher risk of poverty. This increase in occupational gender segregation and widening of the gender wage gap increases women's susceptibility to poverty.
Maps Feminization of poverty
Measures of poverty
An important aspect of analyzing the feminization of poverty is understanding how it is measured. It is inaccurate to assume that income is the only deprivation that affects women's poverty. To examine the issue from a multidimensional perspective, there must first be accurate and indices available for policy makers interested in gender empowerment. Often aggregate indices are criticized for their concentration on monetary issues, especially when data on women's income is sparse and groups women into one large, undifferentiated mass. Three indexes often examined are Gender-related Development Index, Gender Empowerment Measure, and Human Poverty Index. The first two are gendered- indices, in that they specifically gather data on women to evaluate gender inequalities, and are useful in understanding disparities in gender opportunities and choices. HPI, however, focuses on deprivation measures rather than income measures. GDI adjusts the Human Development Index in three ways:
- Shows longevity, or life-expectancy of females and males
- Education or knowledge
- Decent standard of living
The aim of this index is to rank countries according to both their absolute level of human development and relative scores on gender equality. Although this index has increased government attention to gender inequality and development, its three measures have often been criticized for neglecting important aspects. Its relevance, however, continues to be integral to the understanding of the feminization of poverty, as countries with lower scores may then be then stimulated to focus on policies to assess and reduce gender disparities. GEM measures female political and income opportunities through:
- Analyzing how many seats of government are occupied by women
- Proportion of management positions occupied by women
- Female share of jobs
- Estimated female to male income ratio
HPI is a multidimensional, non-income based approach. It takes into consideration four dimensions:
- Survival
- Knowledge
- Decent standard of living
- Social participation
This index is useful in understanding and illuminating the differences between human poverty (which focuses on the denial of basic rights, such as dignity and freedom) and income poverty. For example, despite the U.S.'s high income stability, it is also ranked among the highest developed nations in human poverty. In her article, "Towards a Gendered Human Poverty Measure", Elizabeth Durbin critiques HPI and expands on the possibility of a gender-sensitive index. She argues that HPI incorporates three dimensions of poverty: life span measured by the proportion of the population expected to die before age 40, lack of knowledge measured by the proportion who are illiterate, and a decent standard of living measured by a composite index of access to health services, access to safe water, and malnutrition among children less than 5, that could specifically account for gender disparities. Despite its uses, however, it is important to note that HPI cannot be a true measure of poverty because it fails to examine certain deprivations, such as lack of property ownership and credit, that are essential to a stronger bargaining position in the household for women.
Multidimensional approach
The feminization of poverty is analysed from a multidimensional perspective to understand different facets of gender inequality, and investigate potential solutions. The capability approach studies different aspects of poverty that can enable people, to become agents in their own lives. Studies are also made of opportunities and personal choices available to women.
Health
Women in poverty have reduced access to health care services and resources. Gender inequality in society prevents women from utilizing care services and therefore puts women at risk of poor health. Women in poverty are specifically more vulnerable to sexual violence and risk of HIV/AIDS, because they are most often not able to defend themselves from influential people who might sexually abuse them. In Korea poor health is a key factor in household poverty.
A form of sexual violence on the rise in the United States is Human Trafficking. Poverty can lead to increased trafficking due to more people on the streets. Women who are impoverished, foreign, socially deprived, or at other disadvantages are more susceptible to being recruited into trafficking. Many laws stated in Kelsey Tumiel's dissertation, have recently been made to try to combat the phenomenon, but it is predicted that human trafficking will surpass illegal drug trafficking amounts in the US. Women that are victims of these sexual violence acts have a difficult time escaping the life due to abuse of power, organized crime, and insufficient laws to protect them. There are more people current enslaved in trafficking than there were during the African slave trade. "Branding" of human trafficking brings awareness to the issue claims Tam Mai, the author. This allows for public assertion and intervention. A claim made in Tam Mai's article states that by reducing poverty, thus may lead to a decrease in trafficking from the streets.
Education
The education of women and children, especially girls, can create greater opportunities for women to lift themselves out of poverty and increase their social position. Countries with strong gender discrimination and social hierarchies limit women's access to basic education. Even within the household, girls' education is often sacrificed to allow male siblings to attend school. An important aspect of capabilities is the freedom to make informed choices and have opportunities to achieve goals, and a basic requirement to actively use resources and information is basic education. This enables not only women to reduce household poverty, but as well increases children's chances of education, and enhances maternal health and freedom of movement.
Decision-making power
Decision-making power is central to the bargaining position of women within the household. It is how women and men make decisions that affect the entire household unit. However, women and men often have very different priorities when it comes to determining what is most important for the family. Factors that determine which member of the household has the most power in decision-making vary across cultures, but in most countries there is extreme gender inequality. Men of the household usually have the power to determine what choices are made towards women's health, their ability to visit friends and family, and household expenditures. The ability to make choices for their own health affects both women and children's health. How household expenditures are decided affects women and children's education, health, and well-being. Women's freedom of mobility affects their ability to provide for their own needs as well as for the needs of their children.
Gender discrimination within households is often rooted in patriarchal biases against the social status of women. Major determinants of the household bargaining power include control of income and assets, age, and access to and level of education. As women's decision-making power increases, the welfare of their children and the family in general benefits. Women who achieve greater education are also more likely to worry about their children's survival, nutrition, and school attendance.
Studies of dual-income couples in Spain have found that many decisions are contingent on social norms, and not all decisions are negotiated or decided by consensus.
Employment
Employment opportunities are limited for women worldwide. The ability to materially control one's environment by gaining equal access to work that is humanizing and allows for meaningful relationships with other workers is an essential capability. Employment is not only about financial independence, but about higher security through an established legal position, real world experience, deeply important for sheltered or shy women, and higher regard within the family, which gives women a better bargaining position. Though there has been major growth in women's employment, the quality of the jobs still remains deeply unequal.
There are two kinds of employment: Formal and Informal. Formal employment is government regulated and workers are insured a wage and certain rights. Informal employment takes place in small, unregistered enterprises. It is generally a large source of employment for women. The burden of informal care work falls predominantly on women, who work longer and harder in this role than men. This affects their ability to hold other jobs and change positions, the hours they can work, and their decision to give up work. However, women who have University degrees or other forms of higher learning tend to stay in their jobs even with caring responsibilities, which suggests that the human capital from this experience causes women to feel opportunity costs when they lose their employment. Having children has also historically affected women's choice to stay employed. While this "child-effect" has significantly decreased since the 1970s, women's employment is currently decreasing. This has less to do with child-rearing and more with a poor job market for all women, mothers and non-mothers alike.
Religion
Religious Discrimination from Within
Women's choice to identify with a particular religious sect or creed can negatively affect their participation in the labor market, thus leading to the feminization of poverty. This conclusion is supported by a 2004 report by the Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research that found that Muslim women were more likely to work part-time jobs than Muslim men because of their religion's emphasis on the role of women as caregivers and housekeepers. The study found that these women are more likely to be financially dependent than men because of their choice of decreased participation in the labor market. High levels of financial dependency among women is not unique to the Islamic faith, according to Raphael Cohen-Almagor in a 2016 report, Jewish women are also considered to be household providers rather than breadwinners within the tradition of Halachic law. The report highlights this point by referencing the Jewish text, the Mishnah and pulling out lines such as , "she should fill for him his cup, make ready his bed and wash his face, hands and feet," when describing the role of women under Jewish law. The Christian faith also regards women as more demure and family-oriented than men. For this reason, women in certain sects of Christianity, namely Pentecostal women, are often forced to leave their faith traditions in order to escape the cycle of poverty bred by their religion's view of women.
Religious Discrimination in Society
Aside from the expectations placed on women by their own religions, society also holds certain biases against women of certain religions that causes them to have less success in the job market. This is seen most often among Muslim women who express their religion by wearing modest clothing and traditional female Muslim accessories such as henna and hijabs. This was proven by a study by the Bristol school of Sociology that showed that Muslim women were 70 percent more likely to be unsuccessful in looking for work than Christian and nonreligious women. These numbers stem from discriminatory actions on various levels of society that often lead Muslim women to lose their jobs or have trouble finding jobs. For example, on the local level, a woman was fired from a Jiffy Lube for wearing her hijab to work because it apparently violated the company's "no hat" rule. The company suffered no repercussions for this action. On the federal level, the court case Webb v Philadelphia ruled that an officer wearing her hijab with her uniform, which is a requirement for women in her religion, was in violation of the states' standard of neutrality and therefore could be terminated for her choice to wear it. This ruling makes this type of discrimination precedent for similar situations and makes it harder to traditional Muslim women to find and hold professional careers. There are laws against this type of discrimination, such as America's Title XII of their Civil Right's Act of 1964 which makes it illegal for businesses to discriminate against their employees based on their sex, race, color, national origin, and religion, but even so this sort of religious and gender discrimination often intersect and lead to the feminization of poverty within certain communities.
Racialization
Minority women in the United States, specifically Black and Latina women are twice as likely as white women to be living in poverty.
Family structure
More women are living in poverty due to changes in the traditional family structure. The increase in divorce rates and single parenthood are two major contributing factors to change in the family structure. Female-headed families have the poorest economic outcomes, with economic well-being dependent on the mother's marital status and race/ethnicity. White women generally have access to other income, through marriage or relationships with the highest income earners: white men. Whereas black women, in comparison to white women, are less likely to have white men as partners, and tend to have partners who earn less than white males, even when equally employed. The absence of second income-earning adults is what, in some cases,impedes the well-being of minority women and children.
Education
Education is considered a contributing factor to why women are more likely than men to live in poverty. 63% of female households who have children under the age of 18 do not complete high school. However, for minority women, socioeconomic factors contribute to them receiving less of an education than whites. There is a high concentration of minorities in poverty living in urban areas; this contributes to poor quality of education as there is a lack of funding in inner-city schools.
Access to higher paying jobs
Residential segregation by race and economic class prevent low-skilled workers, especially minorities, from moving closer to suburban jobs. Female minority householders are twice as likely as their white counterparts to live in central cities. As more businesses have retreated to suburban areas, the inner-city, where most low-income minorities reside, often face a decline in employment opportunities.
Case studies
Many developing countries in the world are exemplars of the feminization of poverty. Many countries in Asia, Africa, and parts of Europe deprive women of access to higher income and important capabilities. Women in these countries are disproportionately put at the highest risk of poverty and continue to face social and cultural barriers that prevent them from escaping poverty.
East Asia
Although China has grown tremendously in its economy over the past years, its economic growth has had minimal effect in mitigating the feminization of poverty. Economic growth did not reduce gender gaps in income or provide more formal employment opportunities for women. Instead, China's economic growth increased its use of informal employment, which has affected women disproportionately. In the Republic of Korea, low wages for women helped instigate an economic growth in Korea since low-cost exports were mostly produced by women. Similar to China, Korean women mostly had the opportunity for informal employment, which deprives women of financial stability and safe working environments. Although women in East Asia had greater access to employment, they faced job segregation in export industries, which placed them at a high risk of poverty.
China is a country with a long history of gender discrimination. In order to address gender inequality issues, Chinese leaders have created more access for women to obtain capabilities. As a result, Chinese women are granted greater access to health services, employment opportunities, and general recognition for their important contributions to the economy and society.
Morocco
The female population, especially in rural areas, dominantly represents the face of poverty in Morocco. There have been two major methods to measure poverty in Morocco, which include the 'classic approach' and a second approach that pertains more towards the capabilities approach. The 'classic approach' uses the poverty line to statistically determine the impoverished population. This approach quantifies the number of poor individuals and households but does not take into account how the impoverished population lacks basic needs such as housing, food, health and education. The second approach focuses on satisfying this lack of basic needs and emphasizes the multidimensional nature of poverty.
Moroccan women represent the most economically insecure social group in the country. One of six Moroccan households are lone-mother households, which represent the most impoverished households in the country. Women are categorized to have the highest levels of socio-economic and legal constraints, which exclude them from obtaining their basic needs. Although recent surveys show that women actively help in providing for their families economically, Moroccan legal texts discourage women's participation in economic productivity. Article 114 of the Moroccan Family Law states, "every human being is responsible for providing for his needs by his own powers except the wife whose needs will be taken care of by her husband." The patriarchal social structure of Morocco puts women as being inferior to men in all aspects. Women are denied equal opportunities in education and employment before the law, as well as access to resources. As a result, the female population in Morocco suffers from deprivation of capabilities. Young girls are often excluded from educational opportunities due to limited financial resources within the household and the burden of household chores expected from them.
Over time, Moroccan women have gained more access to employment. However, this quantitative increase in labor participation for women has not been accompanied by higher qualitative standards of labor. The labor of rural women in Morocco remain unacknowledged and unpaid. Women are put into a higher risk of poverty as their domestic workload is added onto their unpaid labor. This balance of domestic labor and work outside the home imposes a burden on rural women. Since the socioeconomic exclusion of women deprive them of the capabilities to be educated and trained for certain employment skills, their susceptibility to poverty is heightened. Low educational skills of women directly relate to the limited employment options they have in society. Although both men and women are affected by unemployment, women are more likely to lose their jobs than men. Recent research in Morocco shows that economic recessions in the country affect women the most.
United Kingdom
An investigation of the feminization of poverty between 1959 and 1984 discovered a substantial increase in the percentage of female poor in the 1960s, but not in the 1970s or 1980s. The percentage remained relatively constant between 1969 and 1979, and then decreased between 1979 and 1984. The principal source of feminization of poverty was the proportion of women in one-sex households. This was more adverse for blacks than whites.
In a 1990 study conducted in the United Kingdom (UK), nearly half of the employees in the study were women but these women counted for less than a third of the total weekly earnings. There was no trend towards increasing feminization of poverty over the sample period (1968-1990). Women's weekly earnings were less than half of those of men. Although more women began to actively participate in providing for their families, over half of people in poverty were female and over 40% of impoverished households were lone-mother households. Lone-mother households were twice as likely to be poor as male-headed households.
Women's earnings in family income decrease as men's incomes increase. Inequality tends to be lower in households in which women gain access to full-time formal employment. Although married women's involvement in the labour market helped to keep their families out of poverty, their relatively low earnings were overall ineffective in moving their families up to the highest level of income distribution.
Dominican Republic
The cycle of the feminization of poverty in the Dominican Republic is a direct result of cultural biases and systematic oppression. Dominican women make generally forty-four cents on the dollar as compared to men. This wage gap often leads to a high level of food insecurity among women in the Dominican Republic. Food insecurity often leads to an increased rate of dangerous behaviors such as unprotected sex and drug use. These behaviors put women at a greater risk for contracting HIV. There is a grand stigma around HIV positive women in the Dominican Republic. For this reason, women are more likely to be subjected to health screenings when applying for a job. If the screening reveals that a women is HIV positive, then they are almost guaranteed to be denied any position. Unemployment furthers the issue of food insecurity and because the HIV stigma is so prevalent in that culture, women are often ostracized from their families and forced to fend for themselves with no job prospects or support. One woman's doctor told her upon announcing her diagnosis, "What you have to do now is die," because he realized the severity of the cultural implication of the news. HIV positive women are also more likely to suffer domestic abuse. Children of HIV positive women are also affected. One women shared the story of her sister refusing to adopt her child when she was unable to provide for him after her diagnosis because the sister was afraid the child was tainted by virtue of his mother having the disease. The cycle runs deep of women suffering from HIV and therefore poverty within the country and the stigma disenfranchises citizens from wanting to address the problem.
United States
The United States has the largest number of homeless women and children among the industrialized nations. Seventy million women and their dependent children are living in or on the brink of poverty. While women earn on average seventy-seven cents for every dollar earned by men, they are disproportionately concentrated in the lowest-paying fields. Furthermore, the majority of the pay gap between men and women actually comes from differences within occupations, not between them and this gap widens in the highest-paying occupations such as business, law, and medicine. Intra-household bargaining and "threat points" have also been described as affecting women's poverty levels.
Femonomics
In addition to earning less, women suffer from Femonomics, or gender of money, a term created by Reeta Wolfsohn, CMSW, to reflect many of the inequities women face that increase their likelihood of suffering from financial difficulties. Women are more likely than men to shoulder the fiscal and physical responsibility for their children. Women also have unique healthcare problems/access problems related to reproduction increasing both their healthcare costs and risks. Women are also more likely to be financially illiterate and thus have a harder time knowing how to manage their money.
Longevity
Females tend to live five years longer; i.e. their funds need to last five years longer than men's funds. In addition, women face gender specific challenges resulting from how they are socialized. For example, they must follow rules of negotiating for a higher salary from a mutually-beneficial framework to avoid suffering from a negative employer backlash. As a result of all of the above-mentioned inequities, women face a more complex money management situation than men in which they earn less but will be living longer and incurring higher expenses.
In 2009 Gornick et al. found that older women (over 60) were typically much wealthier than their national average in Germany, US, UK, Sweden and Italy (data from 1999-2001). In the US their wealth holdings were four times the national median.
See also
References
Further reading
- Allard, Scott W.; Danziger, Sheldon (January 2002). "Proximity and opportunity: how residence and race affect the employment of welfare recipients". Housing Policy Debate. Taylor and Francis. 13 (4): 675-700. doi:10.1080/10511482.2002.9521461. Pdf.
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- Also as: Allard, Scott W.; Danziger, Sheldon (September 2001). Proximity and opportunity: how residence and race affect the employment of welfare recipients (pdf). National Poverty Center, University of Michigan.
- Palmer, Phyllis (Fall 1983). ""The Racial Feminization of Poverty": women of color as portents of the future for all women". Women's Studies Quarterly. The Feminist Press via JSTOR. 11 (3): 4-6. JSTOR 40004218.
- Rowe, Audrey (Fall 1991). "The feminization of poverty: an issue for the 90's". Yale Journal of Law and Feminism. Yale Law School. 4 (1): 73-79. Pdf.
- Starrels, Marjorie E.; Bould, Sally; Nicholas, Leon J. (December 1994). "The feminization of poverty in the United States: gender, race, ethnicity, and family factors". Journal of Family Issues. Sage. 15 (4): 590-607. doi:10.1177/019251394015004005.
- Snyder, Anastasia; McLaughlin, Diane K.; Findeis, Jill; Coleman, Alisha; Demi, Mary Ann (2005). Race, residence and family structure: race / ethnic differences in poverty among female-headed families (pdf). Population Research Institute.
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