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Gendered poverty and social change
Razavi, Shahra
Razavi, Shahra
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dp94.pdf
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Abstract
"Although there are now relatively wide-ranging bodies of literature on gender and on poverty, it is arguable that the interlinkages between the two have not been adequately analysed.1 At one level, the relationship between gender disadvantage and poverty appears to be quite straightforward, as in the tendency to equate women, or female-headed households, with the vulnerable or the poor. Such a perception underpins development agency arguments about the feminization of poverty , and the frequent references to women as the poorest of the poor . In these policy discourses three strands of thinking stand out: first, the equation of female headship with poverty (Jazairy et al., 1992); second, assumptions about anti-female discrimination within the household and consequent female disadvantage in well-being (UNDP, 1995); and third, synergistic arguments positing a positive relationship between investing in women and meeting developmental objectives such as poverty reduction or fertility decline (World Bank, 1994). But at a deeper level, the gender analysis of poverty is not so much about whether women suffer more from poverty than men (in numbers and/or in intensity), but rather about how gender differentiates the social processes leading to poverty. Critics argue that in the process of assimilating gender into their policy discourse, development institutions have screened out the differentiated and highly contextualized understanding of poverty which has been central to gender analysis. As Jackson puts it, . . . feminization of poverty has come to mean not (as gender analysis would suggest) that poverty is a gendered experience, but that the poor are mostly women (1996:491). The question that arises with some urgency is: Why does gender appear in aid agency discussions of poverty in such generalized, and problematic, forms? One of the arguments of this paper is that there are both methodological and political reasons for this which need to be clearly understood because of their implications for future poverty measurement and analysis, as well as for policy formulation aimed at gender-sensitive poverty reduction. At the same time some new ways of problematizing the gender/poverty interface need to be elaborated which can illuminate the ways in which both the trajectories leading to poverty, and the escape from destitution, are gendered phenomena. A gendered understanding of poverty also raises some difficult questions about whether it can be assumed, as is often done, that the kinds of asset interventions that can strengthen the position of poor men are going to have much the same impact on poor women."(pg 1)
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1998-09
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With permission of the license/copyright holder