Gender Inequity and Poverty: why gender?

Amsterdam, The Netherlands International consensus on development Reduce and eliminate poverty Stop preventable disease, promote health for all Build capacities across the population: support universal literacy and education Sustainable environment/resources

Amsterdam, The Netherlands What has gender got to do with “development”? Poverty Health Education

Amsterdam, The Netherlands Poverty Disaggregation of the poor: Across the world, women and children represent a disproportionate percentage of the world’s poor. Feminization of poverty growing phenomenon refers to the large and increasing proportions of women in agriculture, casual wage labour and unpaid labour Assetlessness Fewer women than men own assets necessary to earn a living or to offer collaterals to get loans.

Amsterdam, The Netherlands Gender differences and poverty Gender intersects with economic deprivation to produce more intensified forms of poverty for women than men: poor women are disadvantaged by being women as well as by being poor and the effects of poverty are therefore worse. Gender makes poverty harder to escape since women face gender bias in markets, barriers to labour market entry and poor access to productive resources including information. Women’s experience of poverty is different to that of men, for example women might experience time poverty as a particularly acute aspect of their deprivation. Gender makes women vulnerable to certain processes of poverty which do not apply to men, for instance, poverty resulting from marital breakdown, death of a spouse, or social exclusion resulting from sexual behaviour considered inappropriate.

Amsterdam, The Netherlands Why women are poorer than men Time poverty and reduced mobility due to unpaid work and responsibilities for domestic tasks and care of the household members; Biases in labour markets producing low returns to labour; Lack of access to resources such as credit, property and education, the latter in particular reinforcing women’s low returns to labour; Lack of control over earned income producing disadvantage within households; Limitations on access to ‘public’ space producing restrictions in access to labour markets, restrictions on mobility; limitations on legitimacy in spaces where resource distribution is negotiated; and limited access to information.

Amsterdam, The Netherlands Health Half a million women die and eight million women are disabled annually from pregnancy related causes (WHO et al 2000). Maternal mortality ratios (maternal deaths per live births) in 2000 standing at 830 in Africa and 330 in Asia In Africa and Asia over 40 percent of births are not attended by skilled health professionals trained in pregnancy, childbirth and the immediate post-natal period. About 25 percent of children are born with low birth weight due to the health problems suffered by the mother during pregnancy leading to long term poor health

Amsterdam, The Netherlands Education the number of out-of-school children is declining But girls still accounted for 57 percent of the out-of-school children of primary school age of primary school age worldwide in 2001 and for more than 60 percent in the Arab States and in South and West Asia (UNESCO 2005). amongst 83 developing countries with available data, only 16 have gender parity in enrolment at secondary level, and only four at tertiary level (UNESCO 2005) In 2002, about 800 million adults in the world were illiterate, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa and East and South Asia. Of them, 64 percent are women.

Amsterdam, The Netherlands Why should NGOs address gender? Global gender gaps Lessons learned in development: objectives of poverty reduction, better health and universal basic education cannot be achieved without addressing gender inequities Gender inequity and poverty are inextricably linked and mutually reinforcing

Amsterdam, The Netherlands So what is gender? Gender is the social definition of what it is to be a man or woman in a given society. Gender refers to the rules, norms, customs and practices through which the biological differences between males and females is transformed into social differences between men and women, boys and girls. This process results in girls/women and men/boys being valued differently, having unequal life chances and opportunities