More than one billion people in the world today, the great majority of whom are women, live in unacceptable conditions of poverty… women’s poverty is directly related to the absence of economic opportunities and autonomy, lack of access to economic resources… lack of access to education and support services and their minimal participation in the decision-making process.

More than 1 billion people live in poverty around the world, and a great majority of them are women. Women’s poverty is a violation of their human rights to health and well-being, food, adequate housing, a safe and healthy living environment, social security, employment and development. Poverty can also be the result of human rights violations when women are denied equal access to employment opportunities, are paid less than men for equal work, are prevented by law or custom from owning or inheriting land, or when women become the victims of physical and sexual abuse. When women are denied equal access to education, when they do not have the right to decide on the number of spacing of their children, or when they face an unequal share of the responsibility for raising children, their ability to earn an income and to be protected from poverty is greatly compromised.

During the last decade there have been several changes in way poverty is addressed, including changes to poverty eradication policies. These changes are reflected in the shift from a psychological model of deprivation, focused on the failure to meet basic material and physiological needs, to a social model of deprivation focused on such elements as lack of autonomy and dignity and powerlessness. Amartya Sen suggests that in comparison with income poverty, human poverty refers to the denial of opportunities and choices for living a basic or “tolerable” live. This new perspective was instrumental in clarifying the relationship between gender inequalities and poverty, and it was given increased weight by the United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Report in 1997. Women are vulnerable to poverty because gender inequalities distort the distribution of income, access to productive resources such as credit, command over property or control over earned income, and access to labour markets. In addition, women do not always have full control or command over their most basic asset: their own labour.

The number of women living in poverty should have been dramatically reduced over the past decade. Nevertheless the number of women in poverty is steadily increasing to disproportionate dimensions. The major finding of this review is that, although there has been some progress made on some of the specific Objectives, unfortunately the big picture confirms that poverty among women is worsening in most developing countries.

Download the complete INSTRAW Progress Report on Critical Area A. Women and Poverty.