Feminization of Poverty

Behind heart-breaking photographs of starving children living on next to nothing around

the world, there is always another person one who isnt usually in the picture but is following
closely behind making sure the children are as safe as possible. This person can be considered
the strongest in their family, able to bear loads much heavier than any human being should have
to. And though this person is not always thought of, she makes up an increasingly large
proportion of the worlds population. She is a girl, a woman, a mother, living in poverty. All
around the world, women are living in the depths of poverty, and their plight is often overlooked.
Their children tug on the heartstrings of the general public, and many people know the statistics
of the younger generation nearly eleven million children under the age of five die in
developing countries each year; malnutrition causes sixty percent of these deaths.1 What most
people arent aware of is that many of these childrens mothers are sacrificing their own
wellbeing to make sure their children can survive another day. In fact, women make up just over
half of our planets population, but they make up over sixty percent of the worlds hungry.1
Women are the true faces of poverty, and deserve to receive the help they so desperately
need. Nearly seventy percent of all people living in poverty throughout the world are women2,
and that inequity is only increasing. Women make up a high percentage of the impoverished
people of the world, and so efforts need to be made to help them improve their situations. They
are the key to absolving poverty throughout the world.

1
World Food Programme. N.p., n.d. Web. 9 Dec. 2012. <http://www.wfp.org/hunger/
stats>. This website has interesting statistics regarding world hunger
rates.
2
Ferraro, Gary, and Susan Andreatta. Cultural Anthropology: An Applied
Perspective. 9th ed. N.p.: Thomson Wadsworth, 2006. Print.
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Poverty is a term that many people are familiar with but they arent always clear on what
it means, precisely. Poverty is defined by the Merriam Webster Dictionary as the state of one
who lacks a usual or socially acceptable amount of money or material possessions; a scarcity.3
This is the little that most people do understand about poverty, but it goes a lot deeper than just a
lack of money or possessions.
There are two main types of poverty absolute and relative. People often question how
there are families in the United States who can be considered impoverished when they still have
a refrigerator, a television, electricity; it can be hard to still consider them poor in comparison
with people in Africa who have never experienced running water or lights. This is the difference
between absolute and relative poverty. A family in Africa, or India, or Mexico, or anywhere
else in the world, who is truly destitute and is poverty-stricken by any measure of the term is
considered to be in absolute poverty. They may not be much worse off than their neighbors, but
by the worlds standards, they are incredibly lacking materially. A good example of relative
poverty is that of a family who, while they might have electricity and running water, dont
necessarily have what is considered to be minimally adequate in their society. The children of
these families might go to school with neighbors who live in nice homes and neighborhoods and
have toys and electronics that the impoverished children could never dream of experiencing
themselves. Women in poverty undoubtedly fall under one of these two categories, depending
on where they live. Absolute versus relative poverty is a pretty particular difference, but one that
needs to be fleshed out and fully understood before delving further into issues of poverty.
Sociologists have begun to recognize a recent trend among the impoverished population
that they have termed as the feminization of poverty. The feminization of poverty can be

3
"Poverty." Merriam Webster Dictionary. Merriam Webster. Web. 9 Dec. 2012.
<http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/poverty>.
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defined as the trend of women making up the worlds poor; refers to the high proportion of
female-headed families that live below the poverty line, which may result from the high
proportion of women found in occupations with low prestige and income. 4 UNIFEM (United
Nations Development Fund for Women), an organization that provides financial and technical
support to programs that promote womens rights, political participation and economic security
describes the feminization of poverty as "the burden of poverty borne by women, especially in
developing countries".

Between these two definitions, one clearly understands that the term

feminization of poverty refers to the phenomenon in which women represent disproportionate

percentages of the worlds poor. In 1978, Diana Pearce coined the term, the feminization of
poverty after doing years of research and seeing the vast number of women who struggled with
poverty within the United States, as well as globally. According to Pearces research, two-thirds
of the poor that were over age sixteen were women.

This data proves that this trend is in fact

very real women are consistently the population most often struck by poverty.
The question that is most frequently asked is why why are women so much more likely
to be impoverished than their male counterparts? Researchers have found that feminization of
poverty is a direct result of the deprivation of capabilities and gender biases present in both
societies and governments around the world today. Disparities have been found in every single
country today, whether they are considered developed or not.
One of the biggest problems facing women today is the large wage gap between male and
female professionals. Even in the United States, where men and women are generally

4
Ferraro, Gary, and Susan Andreatta. Cultural Anthropology: An Applied Perspective. 9th ed.
N.p.: Thomson Wadsworth, 2006. Print. p. 273.
5
Chen, Martha; Vanek, Joann; Lund, Francie; Heintz, James; Jhabvala, Renana; Bonner,
Christine (2005). Progress of the Worlds Women 2005: Women, Work and Poverty.
6
Pearce, Diana. 1978. The feminization of poverty: Women, work, and welfare. Urban and
Social Change Review 11:28-36.
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considered equals, this is a problem. The wage gap has been closing at a very slow rate since the
Equal Pay act was signed in 1963. In 1963, women made fifty-nine cents to every dollar a man
made; today, for every dollar that an American man makes, his female counterpart (in the same
job, with same qualifications, producing the same quality of work) makes only seventy-seven
cents.7 That adds up to less than half a cent per year for nearly the last fifty years hardly able to
be considered progress. There should be no difference in the pay that the different genders
receive. If this is the case in such an industrialized nation as the United States, imagine how
much bigger this disparity is in countries like China or India, where even more cultural
stigmatisms work against women.
Another significant issue that is aiding in the growing number of women in poverty in the
modern world today is the increasing amount of single-mother households. The novel, American
Dream by Jason DeParle focuses on the stories of three women whose stories intersect as they
struggle through the American welfare system. Each womans story is different, but all three
struggle with being single mothers or having unstable male relationships in their lives. The
women get sucked into a variety of relationships with everyone from pimps to drug dealers. It
seems to make it easier to have at least someone living with them, though in the long run the men
in this book rarely help them better their situations. It is very difficult for a mother to work and
care for her children, which is actually the reason that the American welfare program was
brought about. If there are no parents present in the home life, as is the case in many single
mother households, the children are much more likely to get into trouble or have bad influences
on their lives; they are also less likely to take their education seriously, thus letting go of future

7 "The Wage Gap over Time: In Real Dollars, Women See a Continuing Gap." National
Committee on Pay Equity. National Committee on Pay Equity, n.d. Web. 9 Dec. 2012.
<http://www.pay-equity.org/info-time.html>.
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opportunities. DeParle explains in his book that the number of children born into single mother
homes has seen huge increases in the last half-century. In the 1950s, only five percent of
American children were born into single mother homes, but by 1990, a whopping twenty five
percent of families faced that problem. Two-thirds of black children were born to single
mothers, and half the nations poor lived in single mother households.8 These numbers are
enormous and the increase compared to previous years is unheard of. These women, generally
speaking, are working so hard to support their children, and are frequently giving up comforts of
their own so they can make sure their children remain healthy and have a better chance in life
than they themselves did. When they have children out of wedlock, a man who doesnt have
much money is likely to leave the woman and their new child, leaving her to support him or her
on her own. For this reason, maternity, while a blessing for nearly all women, tends to be
viewed as an extra burden for many impoverished women of the world (not implying that they
love their children any less, of course).
Probably the biggest cause for the high percentage of women in poverty, however, is
cultural practices and beliefs of various countries. Gender stratification, defined as the
hierarchical ranking of members of a society according to gender9, occurs in various cultures.
The status of women is never static it fluctuates with political changes in a society, just as the
role of any demographic does. However, in many civilizations, there is an extreme disadvantage
to being a female. In the Hindu and Muslim beliefs, the word purdah refers to the religious
system of sex segregation, which keeps women in seclusion or requires clothing that conceals
their bodies completely. For example, in Iran during the 1960s and 70s, women began to

8 DeParle, Jason. American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids, and a Nation's Drive to End
Welfare. N.p.: Penguin Books, n.d. Print. p. 95.
9 Ferraro, Gary, and Susan Andreatta. Cultural Anthropology: An Applied Perspective. 9th ed.
N.p.: Thomson Wadsworth, 2006. Print. p. 269.
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abandon the traditional purdah; they sought to obtain higher education and enter traditionally
male professions. They were soon forced back into these traditional roles, however. The
American invasion in 2001 helped to alleviate some of these harmful cultural practices. In
societies like these, women are at an extreme disadvantage.
In many cultures, to have a boy baby is something to celebrate, but a girl is something to
mourn. Particularly in a country like China, where each family is allowed only one child, the
male to female ratio is extremely high. In India, as well, the ratio is hugely unhealthy at 92.7
women to 100 men, rather than a much more equal distribution.10 Boys are far more valued than
girls, particularly in rural communities because families want people to work in the fields and at
the farms work that generally is assigned to boys and men rather than to females. Girls are also
generally just seen as someone to support as well. An old Indian proverb describes the view
many families have on the birth of a girl: A daughter born / To husband or death / Shes already
gone.

10

Daughters are frequently just viewed as a burden someone to feed and pay for the

dowry and wedding celebrations when she is old enough to be married. Because boys are more
highly valued in many of these cultures, if a family has two children (one boy and one girl) but
can afford to send only one to school, the son will be chosen time and time again for the
educational opportunity. The same goes for health care and food girls are notoriously denied
the proper health care and nutrition that they need so that their brother can get it.
Many cultures also encourage marriage at a young age for girls. Today, sixty million girls
ages seventeen or younger in developing countries are married; many to men over twice their

10 Nussbaum, Martha C. Women and Human Development. N.p.: Cambridge UP, 2000. Print. p.
4.
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age.11 Particularly in rural places that arent as wealthy, a father might need the money from the
dowry in order to support their farm or family and so he will allow his daughter to marry very
early, or even arrange one. Sometimes it is hard from a western point of view to remember that
arranged marriages still occur but they are still quite common in developing nations. Child
marriage is something that robs children, particularly girls, their dignity and the opportunity to
make choices that are central to their lives, such as when and whom to marry or when to have
children.12 The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said, Child marriage is a violation of
human rights. By 2020, 142 million innocent young girls worldwide will be separated from their
friends and family, deprived of an education and put in harms way because of child marriage.12
For such a large number of girls to be ripped from their early years of childhood is horrendous
and something that needs to be stopped. While it is a cultural practice that is commonplace in
many societies, it is not a socially beneficial thing. Girls are wed as young as six years old in
countries like Nepal and Yemen (among others), often to men at least three times their age.
Often the young brides are denied access to education, and if a six year old (equivalent to a first
grader, here in the United States) is wed that young then she will remain uneducated her whole
life. She will probably never learn to read, much less learn more economically viable skills.
Many girls dont even know how babies are made at such a tender age. Tehani, from Yemen,
was married at age six and said, I dont know how children are made. They get pregnant they
carry it inside their stomach. Then they deliver and it comes out a baby.12 Girls like Tehani are
pregnant and having children but dont even know how it happens. Their health is also put at
tremendous risk when having a child because a child bride is so usually so young and small

11 CARE : Defending Dignity, Fighting Poverty. CARE, n.d. Web. 9 Dec. 2012.
<http://www.care.org>.
12 Too Young to Wed. UNFPA, n.d. Web. 9 Dec. 2012. <http://www.tooyoungtowed.org>.
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when they get pregnant. The risk of death in pregnancy and delivery for girls under the age of
fifteen is five times higher than it is for women in their twenties.13 The situation of these girls is
obscene no one should be denied such basic rights, no matter the cultural beliefs. Many
countries have outlawed the practice, recognizing the danger it presents to girls, but it continues
to happen regularly in many societies.
Researchers have realized this huge trend of the feminization of poverty, and have begun
developing various methods and tools to try to measure and alleviate these issues. One of the
strongest theories today with a focus on womens rights and abilities is the capabilities
approach. Martha Nussbaum is one of the main people who developed the capabilities
approach, and she created a list of ten central capabilities. This list that Nussbaum created is
focused on human capabilities what people are actually able to do and to be.14 The
capabilities approach is increasingly influential in many social sciences and has changed the way
the human development index focuses on poverty and finding a solution. The capabilities
approach also allows for a comparison of the quality of life; it can be used in a similar way as
GDP per capita, but is a much more humanizing approach with room for more than just numbers.
Nussbaum makes the claim that feminist philosophy should increasingly focus on the urgent
needs and interests of women in the developing world 15, which means adding new topics to the
list of capabilities such as hunger and nutrition, literacy, and child marriage, among others,
which might be issues that arent as crucial in more Western and developed nations.

13 CARE : Defending Dignity, Fighting Poverty. CARE, n.d. Web. 9 Dec. 2012.
<http://www.care.org>.
14 Nussbaum, Martha C. Women and Human Development. N.p.: Cambridge UP, 2000. Print. p.
5.
15 Nussbaum, Martha C. Women and Human Development. N.p.: Cambridge UP, 2000. Print. p.
7.
Page 8 of 15


While each capability will not be discussed here, a few key points from the list will be
referenced. The first on Nussbaums list is life, which Nussbaum refers to as being able to
live to the end of a human life of normal length; not dying prematurely, or before ones life is so
reduced as to be not worth living16. For many women in developing nations, it is relatively
difficult to live a full and long life. Women are often denied health care, particularly during
pregnancy, which can prevent them from getting the help they need causing a much higher
premature death rate in developing nations. Bodily integrity is another capability that all
women should be guaranteed but many are not. This is defined as being able to move freely
from place to place, having ones bodily boundaries treated as sovereignhaving opportunities
for sexual satisfaction and for choice in matters of reproduction 16 For cultures like those in the
Middle East who require that women remain covered at all times, or who are not allowed to go
places without a male escort, this can be an important right that is frequently encroached upon.
Child brides are also denied the ability to choose when they will be married and when they will
have children, which also falls under this same category. Another important and often
overlooked capability that Nussbaum includes on this list is play: being able to laugh, to play,
to enjoy recreational abilities. 17 This last one seems so simple and somewhat frivolous even,
that many other researchers do not include it on their lists. But what would life be without any
fun? This is a terrible fate that many women face in trying to please their husband and culture,
and it is not one that any person should have to endure. These are only three of Nussbaums
central ten capabilities but its clear from these few that her list is logical and extremely inclusive

16 Nussbaum, Martha C. Women and Human Development. N.p.: Cambridge UP, 2000. Print. p.
78.
17 Nussbaum, Martha C. Women and Human Development. N.p.: Cambridge UP, 2000. Print. p.
80.
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of a variety of aspects of life, which separates it from some of the other approaches that have
been created.
Why should there be so many efforts be focused on women specifically when there are so
many different people struggling around the world? Researchers say there is reason to believe
that by helping women find their way out of poverty, an entire family is being pulled from
despair. Women are proven to spend more money on their families than their male partners,
because they are the ones who are consistently looking out for their children. Particularly in
developing countries with very patriarchal societies, women are the ones who stay at home with
the children, giving up any professional dreams they may have had once. Their values become
their childrens values. In any given society, it is more than likely the primary caretaker of
children will be a woman, which explains the important influence she has on her children and
their outlook on life.
After reading and absorbing all of this information regarding the circumstances of women
around the world, it is easy to struggle with a sense of helplessness what can one possibly do to
alleviate the pain and suffering of the women who have become the face of poverty? People
everywhere have leapt into action after realizing the dire situation of so many women;
organizations are founded and they dive right into every piece of these issues. An example of
one of these organizations is the non-profit CARE, which has a particular focus on the rights of
women around the world. Their mission statement is the following:
CARE is a leading humanitarian organization fighting global poverty. We place
special focus on working alongside poor women because, equipped with the
proper resources, women have the power to help whole families and entire
communities escape poverty. Women are at the heart of CARE's community-

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based efforts to improve basic education, prevent the spread of disease, increase
access to clean water and sanitation, expand economic opportunity and protect
natural resources. 18
While CARE has a somewhat broad goal for the future, it demonstrates the long-term
commitment that the organization has to alleviating the situation of women, in particular, around
the world since 1945. Their slogan is Defending Dignity, Fighting Poverty and speaks to the
idea that women (as well as people in general) who have the sense of dignity and self worth that
often comes with education and a feeling of purpose are more likely to escape poverty than those
without. This sends an extremely powerful message to the rest of the world, and they have done
an incredible job of following through on their mission statement. CARE currently works in
eighty-seven countries around the world, tackling underlying causes of poverty so that people
can become self-sufficient. 19 Their programs have impacted millions of people in these nations,
many of which are women and girls.
Overall, there is one characteristic that defines most women living in poverty a lack of
education. Out of the worlds sixty-seven million out-of-school youth, sixty percent are girls.20 If
only one thing is done to help alleviate the situation of women, let it be this. Many cultures,
particularly in developing nations with patriarchal belief systems, do not encourage women to
continue with their education. Without an education, women are paralyzed. They are unable to
be economically viable or to make informed decisions on their own, causing a reliance on
another person, usually a man. For single mothers, this makes life very difficult because she is

18 CARE : Defending Dignity, Fighting Poverty. CARE, n.d. Web. 9 Dec. 2012.
<http://www.care.org>.
19 CARE : Defending Dignity, Fighting Poverty. CARE, n.d. Web. 9 Dec. 2012.
<http://www.care.org>.
20 CARE : Defending Dignity, Fighting Poverty. CARE, n.d. Web. 9 Dec. 2012.
<http://www.care.org>.
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left with no help from other people. For child brides, they never have the opportunity to just be a
kid and explore the world through books and learning because they are thrust into the role of a
grown woman so early in their life. Generally speaking, if a mother is well educated, then she
values that experience and will encourage her children in their pursuit of education. If a woman
hasnt had much education, she might not realize the difference it could have made in her life,
and so neither will her children. Healthcare and education are also related. HIV & AIDS spreads
twice as quickly among uneducated girls than among girls that have even some schooling.21 It
has also been shown that mothers with some education immunize their children fifty percent
more often than mothers who are not educated.22 In order to have a healthy world population,
education needs to be made available to women first. Women need to be aided and educated first
in order to break the cycle of undereducated, impoverished people in the world today.
In summation, there are countless reasons why women have reached the level of poverty
that they have around the world so many, in fact, that it can be hard to figure out exactly where
to start trying to fix the problem. But regardless of the most prominent cause, the point is that
women are the new face of poverty in every country of the world. Women make up a high
percentage of the impoverished people of the world, and so efforts need to be made to help them
improve their situations. Women are the key to absolving poverty throughout the world. Their
malnourished and under-educated children may be the first image that comes to mind with the
word poverty, but it is these women who are truly suffering the most. They dont necessarily
cause the same emotional tug that their children tend to, and they certainly dont draw the same
amount of attention; they remain in the background of the picture. But that doesnt take away

21 CARE : Defending Dignity, Fighting Poverty. CARE, n.d. Web. 9 Dec. 2012.
<http://www.care.org>.
22 CARE : Defending Dignity, Fighting Poverty. CARE, n.d. Web. 9 Dec. 2012.
<http://www.care.org>.
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from their struggle, or from the fact that they desperately need help. Whether the female in
question is a single mother living in Brooklyn, a woman veiled beneath a burqa in Iran, or a sixyear-old wife in Nepal, their opportunities have been made extremely limited by the societies
and cultures of the world. The feminization of poverty is not a theory created by researchers and
sociologists far removed from the people in study; it is a real trend that puts women at the
greatest risk of poverty over any other population in the world.

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Works Cited
CARE : Defending Dignity, Fighting Poverty. CARE, n.d. Web. 9 Dec. 2012.
<http://www.care.org>. CARE, as a leading humanitarian organization, fights for the
rights of women around the world, particularly when it comes to education. CARE
believes that women are the key to ending poverty, and so women and girls are their main
focus.
Chen, Martha; Vanek, Joann; Lund, Francie; Heintz, James; Jhabvala, Renana; Bonner, Christine
(2005). Progress of the Worlds Women 2005: Women, Work and Poverty. United
Nations Development Fund for Women. pp. 3657. UNIFEM is an organization that
provides financial and technical support to programs that promote womens rights,
political participation and economic security, and has merged into the organization UN
Women.
DeParle, Jason. American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids, and a Nation's Drive to End
Welfare. N.p.: Penguin Books, n.d. Print. DeParle's book shines a spotlight on American
women struggling with our current system of welfare and "solutions" to the issues of
poverty in our country. This book will be helpful for an American, as well as extremely
personable view of women in poverty.
Ferraro, Gary, and Susan Andreatta. Cultural Anthropology: An Applied Perspective. 9th ed.
N.p.: Thomson Wadsworth, 2006. Print. This is a textbook used in Anthropology classes
here at Furman and it gives a great definition and description of the "Feminization of
Poverty". It will be very helpful as I try to explain the important role that women play in
ending poverty. (p. 273)

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Nussbaum, Martha C. Women and Human Development. N.p.: Cambridge UP, 2000. Print.
Nussbaum's "Capabilities Approach" is a project whose goal is to provide a minimum
standard for what respect human dignity requires. She describes the situation of women
around the world, particularly in places like Africa and Asia which have particularly bad
circumstances for females, as well as going into some detail about her approach, which
identifies a list of "central human capabilities" which each person should be able to
pursue.
Pearce, Diana. 1978. The feminization of poverty: Women, work, and welfare. Urban and
Social Change Review 11:28-36. Diana Pearce coined the term, the feminization of
poverty after doing research and seeing how many women struggled with poverty within
the around the world.
"Poverty." Merriam Webster Dictionary. Merriam Webster. Web. 9 Dec. 2012.
<http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/poverty>. Dictionary definition of poverty.
"The Wage Gap over Time: In Real Dollars, Women See a Continuing Gap." National
Committee on Pay Equity. National Committee on Pay Equity, n.d. Web. 9 Dec. 2012.
<http://www.pay-equity.org/info-time.html>. This chart demonstrates the inequity
between the pay that men and women receive, and will be useful in describing the
difference between genders in the workplace.
Too Young to Wed. UNFPA, n.d. Web. 9 Dec. 2012. <http://www.tooyoungtowed.org>. A web
photography gallery with quotes and stories from child brides; part of a campaign to end
child marriage around the world.
World Food Programme. N.p., n.d. Web. 9 Dec. 2012. <http://www.wfp.org/hunger/stats>. This
website has interesting statistics regarding world hunger rates.

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